Category: Reflections

Keep silence.
Cry out.

Be still.
Dance.

Hunger deeply.
Be satisfied.

Love kindly. Do justice.
Walk humbly with God.

Even in darkness
be light.

You are nothing
but the light passing through you.

In this is your strength
and the glory of God
that will prevail
to the ends of the earth.

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

God is not a guy out there somewhere,
not a thing, but energy,
the energy of love,
the love that makes being be,
not a being,
but being itself, “I AM.”
I BE, being.
God is an act.
An act of love,
since that’s what love is:
not a feeling, but an act,
even it it’s an invisible act
of regard.
When you love someone,
even poorly,
God is.
The more you love
the more God you make happen.
This is the mystery of the Holy Spirit,
that it is given to us to make real.
The fire burns in us,
even when we don’t know it.

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

            Filled with the Holy Spirit
            they began to speak in other languages,
            as the Spirit gave them ability.
                      —Acts 2.4

So much of our words are foreign even to us.
“How are you?” “OMG.” “See ya later.”
We don’t even know what we mean.
What would it be like to have words
for the depths of the dark river flowing in us,
or even the light playing on the curls of its surface?
What would it be like to give voice
to the chorus humming their symphony in us,
the knot of old women singing their ancient wordless song,
what would it sound like to speak our love into the air
or into another’s heart?
What ancient tongue could pass on,
like putting a coin in someone’s hand,
what astonishing wonders we’ve seen,
what love we’ve known?
How might we speak to give voice to the silenced?
What language would convey it
when we listen to a foreigner not knowing their words
but knowing their sorrow, their joy?
What silent form of speech would translate
one turning their heart inside out for us
and us listening, hearing,
the electricity of that connection?
How might we learn to hear
in a tongue we didn’t grow up with
a story as real as ours?
For this mystery we pray,
to lose the words and receive the gift of tongues
for listening,
tongues like hands that reach across
to hands reaching out to us,
fluent in the silence of the soul’s native tongue.

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

Memorial Day:
we remember those who have
made the ultimate sacrifice.
“The price of freedom,” we intone,
believing in violence,
trusting it absolutely
to make us free,
knowing there are others,
the young and innocent,
we will ask to pay that price,
to be the lambs we sacrifice
in our religion of violence,
as we hold high and sanctify
our guns.
We send our young off
to the battlefield to kill,
to the school to be shot.
We will not repent, not yet,
or seek to become more gentle people;
God grant us the honesty to confess
that we do indeed, without apology,
practice child sacrifice.
Already the next classroom,
without spot or blemish,
is being prepared.

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

Sometimes you wake up and you’re alive
and it’s such a wonder it practically knocks you out again.
Sometimes you get up and go, and by the bottom of the stairs
you’re overwhelmed by the miracle of knees.
Every once in a while you’re hit with a bombast of beauty
or forgiveness, the way breath is given,
the way this shadow holds the stone in its hands,
the way someone sees a light they had resolved to miss.
You step outside and you want to cry to the birds,
“Hey you guys!” and they’re in the trees nodding
“Yeah, we know, we know.”
Sometimes it seems the world and its miracles
needs a flock of exclamation points.
And the thing is, the most amazing thing
hasn’t even happened yet.

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

           Thus it is written, that the Anointed One is to suffer
           and to rise from the dead on the third day.
           and that repentance and forgiveness of sins
           is to be proclaimed to all nations
           in the name of the Anointed One.
           You are witnesses of these things.
                           —Luke 24.46-48

It’s all one thing, this loop,
in which the Beloved ascends
not into distant heavens
but into the suffering of the world,
and radiates forgiveness
that changes people,
who rise into a wounded world
to proclaim altered lives
and the miracle of ascending
from suffering to forgiveness,
of which we are witnesses,
even this very day,
rising
to begin again.

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

            He was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
           While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven,
           suddenly two people in white robes stood by them.
           They said, “People of Galilee,
           why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”
                              —Acts 1.9-11

Because sometimes all you can do
is stare into the space where once there was
something you loved.
Because sometimes there’s a gap
between the last step of this journey
and the first step of the next one.
Because grief is the grain
in the pearl of believing.
Because sometimes there’s an empty place
in you that only the right kind of silence can fill.
Because we didn’t get here on our own
but now we’re afraid we might have to.
Because it’s sometimes only empty air
and a vast, insistent silence
where we can hear the voice,
the silent voice, and feel the presence,
the huge unsayable presence
of the One in whose absence
there is such nearness.
Because sometimes, God,
sometimes
you just really miss the skin.

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

           “Abba God, you are in me
           and I am in you;
           may they also be in us,
           I in them and you in me,
           that they may become completely one.”
                           —John 17.21, 23

In that song you love
that one beautiful note is a note in the song,
and when you sing it right
the whole song is in that note,
and the song is in you,
and you are in the hearer,
and the hearer is in the song,
and we are one,

circles within circles,
a fish in the ocean and the ocean in the fish,
the fire in the flame and the warmth in the light,
the mother in the child in the mother,
the blood in the flesh and the life in the blood,
the Lover and the Beloved and the Love that flows between,
the Infinite who makes room within themselves for us,
and the One who comes and brings us in,
and the room and all who are in it, who are in each other:
this is what we mean when we say “One,”
what you mean when you say “I.”

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

           He was lifted up,
           and a cloud took him out of their sight.
                           —Acts 1.9

The Ascension is not about Jesus’s body
rising above the earth,
but about Jesus expanding beyond his body.

He didn’t go up,
he went out.
Into all of us.

The disciple stand there,
almost ready to believe
(they won’t until Pentecost)

that the body is not there
but here: we are the body,
the body of the risen Christ.

Christ is not an individual but a community.
You are not an individual
but a member of that community.

When Jesus prays “May they all be one,”
it isn’t about opinions.
It’s that we’re all cells of one body.

See that way.
Act that way.
Love that way.


________________
Weather Report

Heavenly,
as warm, light air rises,
raising us all
into the realm of light.

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

           Peace I leave with you;
           my peace I give to you.
           I do not give to you as the world gives.
                           —John 14.27


I give to you a heart of serenity,
the grace to be undisturbed
even as chaos surrounds.

I give to you a heart of harmony,
that you may be forgiving,
knowing you are forgiven.

I give to you a heart of hope,
confident in the grace that moves
unseen and vast.

I give to you a heart of acceptance,
to be present with what is
even if it is not what shall be.

I give to you a heart of wholeness,
that you may know you belong
and all that is within you be healed.

I give to you a heart of gentleness,
to live graciously with all,
even those who are not at peace.

I give to you a heart of love,
that you know you are my Beloved,
and be at peace with all.

My peace I give to you,
the Peace of the Crucified and Risen One.
Peace be with you.

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