Category: Reflections

A girl in my high school that I never knew
but saw a lot used to go around every
corner in the hallway as if she’d never
been there before. She’d lean way out to the
side to look, almost on one foot,
the other stretched behind, as if to see it
for the first time, as if to check it out before
she committed to making the turn. But she
always made the turn. It wasn’t fearful, just
a pause, a moment of expectation. “Look,”
she told herself, “I’m turning a corner!” I loved
it. Whenever I saw her do it I’d walk into my
next classroom with a little bit of anticipation,
even under pretense, a little expectation that
I might be surprised. Or I might actually turn
a corner and actually do something
for the first time. And I often surprised
myself. I looked as if for the first time, and
often saw something for the first time. Or saw
somebody I’d seen a thousand times as if
for the first time. I still love her for it.

May the corner you turn next be an opening,
an adventure. Look! You’re turning a corner!
May even a thing you’ve done a thousand times
be the first time you’ve ever done it, a surprise.
And if it is truly a new thing, imagine Jesus
leaning out around the corner on one leg, looking,
and looking back at you, smiling, then disappearing
around the corner.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           While he was blessing them,
           he withdrew from them
           and was carried up into heaven.
                           —Luke 24.51


So where exactly did Jesus go?
Up into which sky, beyond which clouds?
Where is the body now?

There is no where. That’s the point.
There is no where where he is
more or less than any other where.

As Jesus rose from his grave,
he rose from his body—the one
body—to all bodies, all places.

He ascended to “heaven,”
which is where God is, which is
not distant but at the heart of all things.

The body of the risen Christ
is here, surrounding you.
You are in it; it is here in you.

Yes, you want more. Something
more real. That is faith: the urge
to make love real in this world.

That hankering for something felt, that
absence that only love can fill, that
tension, that strength, so real: that is the body.

Let that body’s motion move you.
Take that urge out into a world
hungry for the touch of love.

Given or received,
wherever there is love—there!:
the Word made flesh.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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What if
the light of the Resurrection was so bright
it blinded Jesus
and you have to take him by the hand
and lead him into your life
and show him everything,
notice every detail for him
with the most loving attention;
and with something other
than his big, gentle closed eyes
he touches
your life, your wounds, your friends,
and blesses them,
feels your tears, your silences,
hears your heart, your hope,
becomes familiar with the little stones
beside the way, the blades of grass,
the flow of your breath
in and out?
What if he doesn’t have to see,
because you are his body?

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Why don’t miracles happen any more?
Because we don’t need them.
Because we’re too smart for them.
We think we’re better than primitive people
who believed in spirits and unseen forces.
Because we have explanations now, and AI,
and there’s nothing we can’t do
so who needs miracles,
or one who performs them?
Anyway, if we really wanted miracles
how could we possibly go back now,
unlearn all we know,
unbelieve all our powers?

Our openness is too primitive,
our humility undeveloped.
We’d have to practice.
We’d have to live in wonder.
We’d have to pay attention.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           He was lifted up,
                      and a cloud took him out of their sight.
           While he was going
                      they were gazing up toward heaven…
                                      —Acts 1.9-10


How like grief is our prayer,
looking up to heaven.
How like loss, this longing.

Our faith is rooted in an absence,
our loyalty in a leave-taking,
our religion an emptying
of a grave, of our pockets, our hands.
A religion of grief,
and acquainted with sorrow.

No less than the first death,
again we let go, and let go,
and acknowledge the void.

Always seeking completion,
our lack grants humility.
A broken heart
the cracked seed of compassion.

There moves in us a leaning
both uncertain and sure,
a reaching across an abyss.

Only so is our joy honest,
only so are we prepared
to love.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           I am in God,
           and you in me,
           and I in you.
                           —John 14.20


There is only one thing,
and we are all are part of it.
It’s all love.

God is the holy
One,
the holy Oneness.

The universe is inside God.
God is in us.
We are all part of one another.

Sin is the delusion of separation.
Salvation is being included in the Whole.
Holiness is harmony.

Love is including.
Faith is reaching out.
Hope is trusting all this.

Prayer is paying attention.
Righteousness is joy and gratitude
and being here.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Sometimes God is in our mistakes. At least, sometimes in our mistakes, grace happens. The penultimate line of yesterday’s poem contains a typo. But a pretty good one. You may sit with either the intended version or the unintentional one. That’s poetry. And I have to sit with the mistake. That’s life.

Mistakes happen. Sometimes it’s just the humorous slapstick of auto-correct gone wild. Sometimes it’s just us. We sin without knowing it more than we knowingly sin. Sometimes we hurt someone without realizing it. We intend one thing, but do another. We believe we’re doing one thing, but we’re actually doing something else. Our mind thinks one thing, our hand writes another. (That’s how we write poetry.) We can look at what we’re doing and, fooled by our preconceptions, not see it for what it is. St. Paul says “I know the right thing, then do the wrong thing.” Sometimes a big chunk of life is a Freudian slip. We never outpace our need for confession.

But sometimes when our lives slip out from under our control grace happens. As Joseph says to his brothers in Egypt, “You intended to do me harm, but God intended it for good.” I think of Jesus’ parable about the sower sowing seeds, and some seeds fall on the path and are eaten by birds. How the birds thank God for that. And how the parable forgives everyone, the birds, the seed, the weeds, the sower, the sun.

So today pay attention to what you’re doing. And be aware that life is not always in our control, and that grace happens no matter what. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. Look for blessing even there. But proofread anyway.

What I said in the poem: “the almost rests.”
What I meant: “the almond rests.”

They both work. Take your pick.


___________________
Weather Report

Variable,
as today’s temperature
repents of yesterday’s,
the wind’s erasures
not in your hand,
the sky a palimpsest of clouds,
and life continually
revealing and unrevealing itself.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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On the table by the window,
the light not elegant, cloud-shrouded,
a small yellow rose in an old vase
and a single almond, lying there.
The yellow rose
yellow against the grey
shadow of the bookshelf,
the almond by itself.
Yellow folded within the rose,
and not unfurled.
The light moves gently,
satisfied to hold the almond
and the rose. The rose
does not aspire, the almond rests.

The yearning,
and the peace,

to be as true

as this.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           God will give you another Advocate,
           to be with you forever.
                           —John 14.16

We’re familiar with the image of God as our Judge
(or, if we’re honest, maybe even prosecutor),
but that’s not how Jesus sees it.
The Holy Spirit is your Advocate— paraclete in Greek,
a person who accompanies you in a legal trial.
God is not your judge: God is your defense attorney.

God defends you against all society’s judgments:
whether you’re successful, good-looking, happy—
you know, normal.
And God defends you against all your own judgments:
whether you’re good enough, lovable, forgivable—
you know, worthy.

God advocates for you.
God is on your side, not against you.
God’s judgment is always in your favor,
not a verdict, but a promise:
“I favor you, now and always.”

All those charges against you—
not good enough, all that—
God has dismissed as spurious allegations.
Are you still hanging onto them?

God holds our souls in the light of love and says gently,
“I rest my case.”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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A king has been crowned,
someone elevated to a position
purely because of his birth. And yet— so are you.
Not by virtue of any skill or power,
nor seizing any throne,
but simply by your birth alone, you are God’s royalty,
honored and adored.
You have been chosen by God to bear justice in this world,
to guard the Realm and defend the poor.

You will not be heralded in the streets,
but in the heavens you are praised and prayed for,
precious in the Realm of God.

You have been given a crown of light,
a scepter of love, a sword of wisdom,
an orb of humility, a robe of beauty.
The coronation regalia may appear in your hands
as a coffee cup, a diaper, a gas pump, a walker.
But you reign in beauty and dignity.

Regardless of how the world sees you,
do not doubt your royal stature.
No one by their ignorance of your majesty
can dim your honor or depose you.
Carry yourself with regal poise.
You who are crowned by the sunrise, robed in love—
God save the royal one!

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