Category: Reflections

           For the hurt of my poor people I am hurt;
                      I mourn, and dismay has taken hold of me.
           Is there no balm in Gilead?
                           —Jeremiah 8.21-22

So much vanishes. A glacier, a species, a friend.
A tattered shirt on a clothesline, in an erasing breeze.
September 11, January 6.
A hole that weighs too much,
an absence that lumbers around like a tractor.
Paper on a chain link fence, swaying.
A future fading to something else.
A voice in the square become silence.
An angel of despair who doesn’t know her words.
Grandchildren picking through shells in a barren landscape.
A thief of fire. Hope in rising waters.
The monster living in this world
that doesn’t live in this world.
A prairie in mourning, inconsolable sea.
No living thing is free of this grief.
We dip parched hearts in the spring, the balm of the whole.
We hold trembling cups to the rain,
or we wither.
A mighty God will not save us now;
vengeance will do no good.
Only tenderness will save us;
even the valiant soldier on
with broken hearts.

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

In the evening I walked through the meadow,
hip deep in wet, seeding grasses.
I came home serene and warmed.
I sat down to read and noticed
grass dander all over me,
felting my pants, shedding on the sofa.
I had to pick away at the cushions
and go out and shake off, pat myself down.
Maybe I shouldn’t have.
I imagine in the spring a field of tender shoots
rising from the rug, the verdant upholstery.

Tell me, what do you have to walk through
to come home with glory all over you?

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

I do not walk among these trees to learn
or become wise, or figure things out,
but simply to be here,
and not (even in my head) elsewhere,
to root myself in this present moment
with roots that go deep, hold, and draw water,
and where I am standing, with this breath,
to find myself in Divine Presence.
I gather myself until I am all here,
and all Creation gathers, all Creation meets me.
Step by step, under oak or pine, crab or beech,
among wet grasses or exultant blueberry bushes,
I am here,
and now I am here,
and that—no thing or thought—
is sacred.

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

           When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors,
           saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.’
           Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God
           over one sinner who repents.
                           —Luke 15.9-10

In centering prayer my mind kicks in,
wanders, thinks, does its thing.
Even if it’s a thought about how wonderful God is,
it’s a thought, a calculation. Not pure awareness.
I let go of it, and return
to simply being present for God.
That moment of return is repentance.
And it’s a source of delight for God.
Not mere satisfaction, as in a debt paid,
but rejoicing, as in a hope fulfilled, a gift received.
Imagine that—God delighted every time I turn around,
every time I release a resentment,
every moment I open the door of my heart to grace.
How could God be angry with our sin
when she is so constantly delighted?

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

They’re building a new neighborhood next door.
My morning prayers on the porch are often accompanied
by rumbling and beeping and crashing and dust.
I pray anyway.
My morning walk now begins in a ruin
of scraped earth, mangled roots and machine tracks
before I reach the woods.
I walk anyway.
We’re always having to learn to be at peace amid chaos,
to be kind and patient when others are mean,
to be grateful amid disaster, to pray in the mess.
And the Divine One is always there.
In the destroyed meadow,
among the shattered stones and bulldozer treads
I find the tracks of birds.

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

           What woman having ten silver coins,
           if she loses one of them,
           does not light a lamp, sweep the house,
           and search carefully until she finds it?
                           —Luke 15.8


What is lost in you?
Silenced, ignored, abandoned,
repressed, forgotten, hidden?
God is looking for it.

A peasant woman’s ten silver coins
is surely her dowry: a symbol of worth,
assurance of security, a promise of marriage.
So precious are you to God.

Where is there hidden in you
a coin of your belovedness,
a treasured future,
the gleam of divine fidelity?

She will find it,
and she will rejoice.

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

           Which one of you, having a hundred sheep
           and losing one of them,
           does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness
           and go after the one that is lost until they find it?
                           —Luke 15.4

None of us, of course.
Which makes God’s love all the more radical.
God will find you no matter how lost you are.

But wait. This is not about you.
(How readily we center ourselves
in Jesus’ stories, make them about us,
and make them comforting…) But.
Jesus is talking to us privileged insiders,
describing God’s joy in finding truly lost sheep—
“those people”—others—not us.
You are not the lost sheep. They are.
The kid entangled in gangs, drugs and violence.
The junkie glazed in the street.
The MAGA nut paranoid about bogeymen.
The CEO who couldn’t care less about people.
The person who just can’t believe. Nope. No way.
God is more delighted in the love
of people who are truly lost
than in those who already have it right.

Find yourself in that.

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

A friend is dying and I am sweeping the garage.
I am repairing the upper rack in the dishwasher
and he’s being detached from life support.
I am shopping, in the produce section,
looking for good organic baby spinach
and remembering to get shallots
and his family are gathered around
in that strange camaraderie of abysmal love and loneliness.
I am strangely here.
Life goes on, he has died, life is going on.

Loss is not an object we encounter, but a landscape.
The presence of an absence that haunts without leaving.
Grief is not a thing we have,
like a stone in your pocket, or a boil;
it’s music deep within us and around us,
music of love in the key of longing,
and sometimes we can’t help but sing along,
full throated, heads tipped back,
because it’s all we hear, and at times
we just hum the tune while we go on with life.
But the music doesn’t stop, beautiful and sad and grateful,
and it makes us dance, even if wee just sway a bit—
and always, just beyond our hearing,
God singing with us.

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

           Just like the clay in the potter’s hand,
           so are you in my hand.
                           —Jeremiah 18.6

There are those who hope to get through life unaffected,
untouched.
But I say: life, affect me. God, touch me.
Let this life and all its pains and beauties shape me.
For whatever genius you place
in the wrenching hands of fate and all that befalls me,
you also work your art in me;
and it is only in the dance between hand and clay
that the masterpiece is born.
I’d rather be shaped by life than by my own little self.
So, yes, I will let beauty shape gratitude and wonder in me,
and suffering shape patience and gentleness,
and failure shape humility and perseverance,
and pain shape sensitivity to the heart,
and even loss, oh, the firm hand of loss pressing on the clay,
shape love and more loveliness, and attention to this day.
I will be shaped, molded and remade a thousand times,
because all the Artist ever means is to perfect me,
I who have always been, ever from the beginning,
dust of the earth you have gathered up,
shaped with loving hands, and breathed your life into.
Shape me, God, create me again, and keep breathing new life into me.

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

Everflowing Love,
Infinite Compassion and Delight,
rain on me.
Sheets of water, roll, Jordan, roll.
Wash me clean and new.
Rinse away what rinses away.
Rain deep into me.
Rain gently and long.
Soak in,
so my deep roots are bathed in you,
so my little streams run with clear, fresh love
and rivulets of joy.
Let all my creatures rejoice
and find delight in the waters of your grace.
Let your grace sink in deep
and turn things green,
living things thriving, flowering, bearing fruit.
Let me be your verdant garden,
your teeming forest
whose deep roots know how to hold your water
long after the rain is gone.
Rain on me, loving God,
rain down, rain down.

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