Category: Reflections

           The chief priests and the elders asked
           “By what authority are you doing these things,
           and who gave you this authority?”
                         —Matthew 21.23-24

Who gave the wren the authority to sing?
By what authority does the hurt child cry?
What authority is required of you to speak truthfully?
By what authority does a wound heal so magically?

Listen for the Spirit in you, that gives you life,
and that empowers your life-giving.
Listen for the truth that wells up in you,
whether it cries out in pain or in joy.

Though silenced, speak.
Disbelieved, proclaim.
Doubted, be true.
Listen to the Infinite Author who gives you your lines.

Take thou authority to speak and to act accordingly.
Surely you will be questioned by fearful people,
but they have no authority to question the divine.
Listen deeply, and fulfill the sacred office of your life.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Kiss me with the lips
of your Word,
lips that are petals,
petals that fall like words
in a garden I didn’t plant,
lips of seeds kissing earth,
words falling like
“Let there be…,”
like “You are mine,”
your lips kissing
the lips of my heart
from which all day I am dizzy
and in love.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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O Darkness,
     come for me.

O Darkest One,
     eclipse my knowing.

Hold me in your mystery.
     Enfold me in your depths.

I give to you my bright naivete,
     my obvious, my polished day,

my candlelight, my handheld hope:
     nope. Blow it out and let me trust,

held in your night and knowing
     all is right.

Oh, let that darkness be my light,
     that eyelessness my only sight.

O Darkness, cover me,
     unseeing, knowing still,

and darker yet, unknowing,
     and yet known.

O Black Unfathomable,
     entomb me, womb me.

Let my darkness gently, closely hold
     you whom I never can behold.

O Darkness, close my eyes
     and let myself be held.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Morning walk,
in my head more than the woods,
troubling about my old knees,
this chilly day, self-doubts, chores.
Standing by the brook, brooding.
An oak tree lets go an acorn.
Ploop.

Here. This. Just this.

This moment is enough.
I am enough.
Attend.
This body, this day, given.
My doubts, my worries, unreal.
All of that is elsewhere.
But right here:

Ploop.

I am beloved,
life, the huge of it, magnificent,
and I a member, here,
right ploop here.


Keep listening
for the call.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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On the ocean in an open kayak,
coming in through surf
is asking for trouble.
I batten down, time my entry,
paddle like I’m on fire,
and watch behind for the inevitable:
the wave bearing down, breaking,
swallowing me. I’m dumped.
And I still have to get back up the river.

You can stand on the shore and admire the grace of God—
but in it, swept over by that infinite sea of forgiveness,
you get tumbled. Things are upside down for a bit.
You treasure your breath.
You think of what you hang onto, what you let go of.
Sometimes you lose things.
Everything is washed, rinsed out.
Then you have to drag your boat—it’s awkward—
empty it out, start anew.

Sometimes the love of God so capsizes you
the ocean could be your own tears,
and you find yourself having to tell onlookers,
“It’s OK. Really. I’m fine.”

Sometimes the mercy of God upends you
and you go home humbled, grateful, overjoyed,
wet as a newborn
born again.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The great blue heron,
beloved in our neighborhood,
symbol of all that is elegant and divine,
mysterious in migration, and in movement
contemplative, patient and wise,
stands regally by the pond
with a frog caught by one leg.
It will not go well for the frog.
Beauty has its price.

Why ask,
why this frog and not another?
(This one, loved of every slimy spot
and raspy evening song,
its placid grin, its humorous fingers, this one,
deeply adored even all the way down.)
Don’t ask for why.
God doesn’t choose the food for the bird.
But God loves them both,
and all the other frogs, and birds,
and struck onlookers.

Why do two get sick, and one recovers,
and one dies?
Why does the tree fall on one house and not another?
There is no why.
There is only this mystery,
that to predator and prey alike,
to both sufferer and bystander
God gives exactly the same grace.
Even to the perpetrator of the gravest injustice
and also to his victim
God gives equally infinite forgiveness.

Which is more confounding:
the unfairness of life,
or the constancy of God’s love?

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Oh, we had a terrible time of it, there’s no doubt about it.
They were the worst years of our lives.
Never mind the tales of heroics in the desert.
It was hell and we all just barely made it.
One day or another, every one of us lost our way,
our self-assurance, our hope— and also our parents.
Don’t you believe a word you hear from the cocky ones
about self-reliance. They withered with the rest of us.

No, here’s the truth, that we could hardly comprehend
then, and can scarcely believe now: there wasn’t one of us
in that wilderness that didn’t survive on manna.
Every day, out of the blue, there it was. We lived on
mystery. We never did get used to leaving
each place where we’d found it, nor seeing it again
wherever we ended up. Troubles came and went,
but what was constant was the gift.

Divisions between strong and weak,
deserving and undeserving,— these are lies, made up
by minds too small and hearts too fearful to grasp
that everything is a gift.

Look around you, child:
your house, your work, your struggles,
your dreams, the air you breathe. It doesn’t matter
how hard you worked for them. You don’t really know
where they came from, do you?
It’s easy to miss now, because it looks like other things.
But it’s all manna, I’m telling you.
It’s all manna.

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As I sat for morning prayers a fly lay still
upon the windowsill, a little buddha,
hands folded reverently on his chest,

not careening frantically in mindless loops
like the executive chasing his millions,
or the TV buzzing in our heads,

not swatted and dodging, the constant refugee,
living off the crumbs from the master’s table,
like the tattered man under the bridge—

no, completely, in his death, himself,
and cleansed of all success or failure,
unjudged, and uninterpreted, and still.

In our piety we may receive him as an icon
or dispose of him, without his least concern.
How lightly he rests, his labors ended,

beckoning us to the perfect place where
he has always lived, where no one asks,
“Who do you think you are?

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           “How often should I forgive?
           As many as seven times?”
           “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven.”
                           —Matthew 18. 21-22

Resentment seeps back in
like water into the boat.
You have to keep bailing.

Regret returns
with its lingering hunger.
You have to keep feeding it grace.

Grief comes back,
asking again.
You have to hold it till it’s OK.

Love is continually renewed.
It doesn’t just stand there like a rock.
It flows like a river.

This is how we live.
Every breath, every heart beat
is God forgiving you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Loving One,
in deep trust of your grace
I rest in your mercy.

Trusting your goodness,
I call to mind how I have needed your forgiveness,
and how greatly, how deeply and completely,
how continuously you have forgiven me,
and I give thanks.
Love, have mercy. …

Shine the light of your love
where I have shaded my guilt from your grace,
where I have not allowed myself to be forgiven.
May your will be done, your love find home.
and assure me again.
Christ, have mercy. …

Gentle One, shine the light of your love
where I have not forgiven.
Heal me of my blame;
release me from the burden of my judgment.
Help me be as forgiving as I am forgiven.
Love, have mercy. …

In the name of the One who broke bread with his betrayer,
in the Spirit of the One who forgave his torturers,
I pray for the gift of forgiveness.
Amen.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:44 — 2.4MB)

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