Category: Reflections

           In the wilderness prepare the way of the Holy One,
                      make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
           Every valley shall be lifted up,
                      and every mountain and hill be made low;
           the uneven ground shall become level,
                      and the rough places a plain.
                         —Isaiah 40.3-4


Love would move through me
but for the rubble and clutter I cling to.
God, move aside what needs to be moved.
Clear a way for loveliness.

Fire up the gentle bulldozer of your grace.
Put your little orange stakes of mercy where the road goes.
Mark what needs to be cut, and cut it.

Fill with your presence my pits of fear,
my potholes of discouragement and despair.
Level my piles of self-importance.
Smooth out my bitterness, straighten what’s bent.
Clear out what’s in the way of love.

In that wilderness in me, prepare the way
for your mystery to unfold.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,
but of course it’s not. It’s Advent,
the Season of Not Yet, a time of waiting.
Some dreams you work for;
for others you can only wait.
We can’t hurry The Time, we can only wait for it.
Sometimes the poet searches for the word;
sometimes they can only wait for it to come.

At the end of the musical piece,
just before the final note— the musicians pause,
for in that little pause the music arrives.
The magician knows, just before removing the veil
to reveal the amazing feat, just then—
… to wait a moment,
for it is in that moment that your heart leaps up.

In Advent we pin our hearts on what we’re waiting for,
and we rest our hearts in the waiting itself,
for in waiting is the meeting of the power of our longing
and our powerlessness, and there,
in the openness, in that magical blank space,
mysteries often happen.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
           Speak tenderly to Jerusalem.
                         —Isaiah 40.1

My people,
as you light candles and sing songs
I hear your hope and longing, yes,
but do not minimize the darker songs beneath that,
the deep energy beneath your yearning:
your grief and your terror.

I see that shadow of what you have lost,
what you have done, what you fear of yourselves,
the looming threat, the smoking ruins.

My people, do not be afraid.
My arms are around you.
I murmur gently to Jerusalem
even in the throes of your fear and anger,
the rage, the devastation, the unthinkable.
I know. I see the splinters of the manger,
the swords of the soldiers,
the nails of the cross. I see them.
And I am coming, not to vanquish,
but to comfort. To heal. To hold you,
with you, always.

Even in your despair, be at peace.
Be still enough to hear me
speaking tenderly.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           O that you would tear open the heavens
           and come down!
                         —Isaiah 64.1

But that’s not the way it works, is it?
You come slowly, quietly, infinitesimally.

Under the huge minor chords of our pleading
you are a single note, changing everything.
Beneath the dissonances of our longing,
the passing tones and conflicting lines
of our anxieties, your presence is the silence.

In the storm of our injustice you stand,
quiet, resolute, unbowed.
In the barren moonscape of my prayers
you abide calmly, giving breath.
And in the future I sometimes fear,
the uncertainty, the dark blank,
there you are, at peace.

No, what needs to be torn open
is the veil over the eyes of my heart,
to see you here in every little thing,
present in every moment, even times of terror,
the whole world opening like a flower
with you at the center, if only I will see,
… and if I can’t see, at least trust.

                He is near, at the very gates.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Unsuspecting at first, of course,
you only gradually begin to feel
an urge, a leaning,
slow to become a promise,
a yearning that will become
its own gift, given from beyond.
It grows from a tiny seed,
a grace that is not your doing,
a single cell:
a change of season,
a subtle turning of the heart,
until by some grace you will know.
But now you do not yet,
you are still only longing
for the longing.
But know this, you are Mary,
and Gabriel is near.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Geese abide on the pond, even as ice descends,
reflected in the iron water, walking on air.
Winter closes in. How do they know when to go?

In the stillness they kneel
on the slate tiles of their water chapel.
Earth tilts in them, southern lakes open.
Something in them (the scientists will never find it)
reaches out to them.
When it is time they don’t know, they simply go:
not an understanding achieved, but a beckoning accepted.

We enter that sanctuary, let the silence reach out to us.
We kneel, and allow the needle of our compass to be turned.
We wait for the longing that emerges in us,
stronger than our mere desires,
the invisible, deepest “Yes” that calls.
It leans us, until we lose our balance and step forward.
It spreads its wings in us, and only then
we rise and go.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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At the bird feeder I see sparrows and finches,
catbirds, chickadees, mourning doves,
woodpeckers (downy and hairy,
and even the occasional huge pileated
hanging comically on the tiny suet cage),
bluebirds, jays and cardinals….
each with their own calls, their own habits,
their flight patterns, their ways of flocking.
Each different. All distinct. All their own.

God grant you the grace to have your voice, yours,
not another’s, not what another wants of you,
even if you upset them.
God grant you faith to trust your own goodness,
in your own form, with your own gifts,
not what others wish or expect of you.
Let the bluejay next to you squawk all they want;
you don’t have to be a bluejay, or pretend,
or make the bluejay happy.
Don’t let even the mockingbird get you
to sing another’s song. If you’re a sparrow,
be a sparrow, sing your sparrow song.
That’s what gives The Listener such joy.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Scientists hammer away at a unified field theory,
explaining the electromagnetic force,
the weak force, the strong force and gravity
in one grand dance. They haven’t got there yet.

But we know. The Unified Field that makes it all happen,
that makes us and makes us alive and keeps us so,
the power greater than any ruler or weapon
that runs through it all and holds it all together

is the grace of the Beloved. It’s not as poetic to say
“The embodied love of God is the Unified Field
that includes everything,” as it is to say “Christ is king,”
but there you have it.

Both scientists and theologians spill ink trying
to explain it, but the fact—the Mystery—is that
it all holds together anyway, and it all works.
Let wonder be your theory, and faithfulness your proof.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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It does not take—although
it could—our breath away,
this warm November day
that should be dense and dark;
instead it gives.

The park is washed: a tide of light
leaves the day’s bright spine
exposed, the clear sun beached
upon the evening’s shore,
reposed where children each
reflect it, young and pure.
How is this day not old
and grey, but yet a bride,
lap full of wedding gifts,

all tied with gold, with light?
It lifts our hearts, too cold,
and too soon winterized,
to watch our children run
in ribbons through the gold,
the bright gift

wrapping strewn, untidy sheets of light,
across the afternoon,
not innocently laughing
jewels into our laps
until our arms collapse,
and we are warm. How can
this laying on of hands
of light, so late, be right?
What are we to remember
of this gilded not-november
miracle of days?
The oracle of praise
this day of Magi lays
abiding at our feet,
the reason given

for tidings of light,
light piled against
the trees and benches,
against our legs and feet,
against our thoughts of sleet:
God has no oughts, but gifts.

This is our tithe: let light
be more than interlude,
life little more than this—
delight and gratitude.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Evening light, its hands all over a tree trunk.
A little child, earnest, on the stairs, ascending.
An old woman who has lost much, smiling.
The sudden quiet knowledge, standing on a hillside,
that you are alive, breathing, and meant to be.

Sometimes it takes a great beauty
and sometimes a plain, simple one
to make you forget the life you were supposed to live,
forget your doubts and disappointments,
mindless but of this moment,
and, without need of explanation,
a gentle, rising joy and gratitude.

Forget everything, the Beloved says.
Here we are.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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