Category: Reflections

We are surrounded by death,
and we are well, and we will be well.
We breathe in and breathe out.
We know we are dying,
and we dance on our graves.
We know how to love, how to forgive.
We know how to live for the well-being
of all life and nothing less—
and nothing less can sway us.
We have the courage that cannot fail:
in the face of evil, to choose kindness.
We are borne on untiring wings
older, and newer, than us.
We are carried by a current deeper
than gravity, stronger than time.
Our hope is not in the future
but a river already flowing.
We have already died and gone to heaven,
angels who can’t be prevented from blessing.
We are seeds of the One
who has already died and risen.
We will sing of justice and mercy
until the end days, for even at the end,
life throbs and thrills and burgeons with grace.
We will go on. We will be well.
We will die singing.

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

         Jerusalem, Jerusalem! How often have I desired
         to gather your children together
         as a hen gathers her brood under her wings,
         and you were not willing!
                           —Luke 13.34

Gather me, Mother Christ.
Gather me in from my fears and doubts.
Hold me under your tireless wing,
shield me from hungers that wander,
guard me from flighty desires.
Save me from the evil I would suffer
and the evil I would do.
Gather me with all your children,
those I love and those I do not,
for we shelter together but alone, wander.
Mother Christ, keep me by your covering side,
tender me at your nursing breast,
close by you wherever you go,
so that even up Golgotha’s hill,
bearing the cross with you
I am under your wing,
under your wing.

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

           “Herod wants to kill you.”
           “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures.”
                                 —Luke 13.31

           Stand firm in the Beloved.
                                 —Philippians 4.1

           The Holy One is my light and my salvation;
                 whom shall I fear?
           Though an army encamp against me,
                 my heart shall not fear.
                                 —Psalm 27. 1, 3


You belong to the Beloved.
You are a member of the Body of Love.
Your Source is infinite; your power is divine.
Your treasure is in an earthen jar —dust,
that will return to dust.
But in this moment, in this jar, you bear light,
light that cannot be hurt or diminished.
You are not the jar. You are the light in the jar.
Bear your light; bless the shadows with it.
Stand firm. Don’t let your light be dimmed
by other people’s fears.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness cannot overcome it.

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

Child, the best way you can repent today
is to stop avoiding God’s love.
Stop ignoring the Beloved calling your name.
Stop declining the deep blessings meant for you,
the mysterious love that flows beneath gravity itself
the kindness the Spirit has for you
even when the world is mean.
Stop pretending it’s not for you,
that you yourself are not a cell in the Body of Love.
Let the earth hold you, as it will forever.
Let the sun and rain fall on you
like a lover falling on their beloved.
Repent of ignoring yourself, belittling yourself,
acting as if you’re not worth it.
Forgive yourself. Soften your heart, and forgive.
Indulge yourself in sacred time
simply to marvel at the gift, the miracle that is you.
Repent of how hard you are on yourself,
your judgment, your despair. Have mercy. Have faith.
Your sin is denying your belovedness.
You are Beloved. Your penance is to live like it,
as God would have you do.

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

           Some Pharisees said to him, “Herod wants to kill you.”
           He said to them, “Go and tell that fox,
           ‘Today and tomorrow I am performing cures.’
           Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I desired
           to gather your children together
           as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…”
                           —from Luke 13.31-34


Holy One, my Beloved, my Savior, my Chief,
you choose to be a hen in the realm of the fox.
You choose kindness in the face of evil.

Give me faith to do the same,
to heal instead of hurting,
to choose kindness even when threatened.

Give me courage to be a mother hen
in a world of foxes,
for always I am under your wings.

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

            The devil said, “To you I will give the glory
           of all the empires of the world
           and all this authority if you will worship me.”
           —Luke 4.6-7
                           

Evil men (yes, it seems it is men)
seek empire and its power and authority.
Twisted souls seek glory.

Such empire only ends in flame and ashes,
in hearts or buildings crushed, or both,
in weeping in the streets.

Beloved, do not seek power or authority or glory.
You already have them.
The realm is within you,

the realm of unearned kindness and mercy,
the empire of grace and healing,
the commonwealth of cherished belonging.

Even in the shadow of tyrants,
awaken to the realm where you abide,
the realm of shared bread and open hands,

of steadfast friends, and mothers who tend their children,
of voices raised in songs in a thousand tongues.
For love outshines every ruler and undoes every empire.

Don’t leave, in lust for a dream,
the world where you already belong,
and shine, and reign as royalty.

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

           The devil said to him,
           “If you are the Son of God,
           command this stone to become a loaf of bread.”
           Jesus answered him, “It is written,
           ‘One does not live by bread alone.’”
                           —Luke 4.3-4

So much we are hungry for that does not feed us.
So many stones we wish we could turn to bread.

Call them to mind. Hold these stones in your hand,
feel their grey mass, their lightless insides,

the weight of disappointment, the hard edges
of refusal, the dense failure to satisfy.

You can’t change them. Cease gnawing on them.
Let them be stones. Set them down.

In the breeze feel the breath of the Present One,
moving among the unmoving stones, light and sweet.

Let yourself be nourished by that wind, freely flowing,
invisible, rich with grace, thick with energy.

Even among the hungering stones the Spirit lives;
even in barren places love offers its merciful bread.

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

We are dust and breathing—
sadly, more attached
to the dust than the breathing.
We are the mark of sorrow,
not a body but particles:
ashes of grief, borne on wind,
ash of 9/11, of towns burned,
dust of Mosul, of Kyiv,
of a million dead,
of ten million enslaved.
Time’s faint dust settles on us,
till we ourselves become
a faint layer in the earth.
Living among death and its dealers,
we stand at the edge
of our own grave.
Our dust cries silently
not merely of our evil
but most deeply of our sorrow,
our need to be saved,
to be revived, to regain our breath.
And so, Forgiving One,
you both stain and anoint us,
mark us and heal us:
we bear your agony on our foreheads;
you bear our sorrow,
so we may bear you.
You who breathe us into life,
Spirit that blows where you will,
gather tenderly our grieving dust
up from the earth
and breathe into us once again
that we may become a living being.

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

To shrive is
to hear one’s confession
and to impose penance
and to forgive.
All of them.

Before Lent even begins
God has heard your sorrow and regret
and you already know what you need to do
and now—before all else—
you are forgiven.

The Beloved whispers to you
every morning,
“I know you are broken.
There is a way forward.
I will love you no matter what.”

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

When injustice strides so easily,
when evil reigns
and you feel there’s little you can do,
remember we are all one.
You are part of the Great Oneness
—some call it the Body of Christ—
and what you do affects the whole.
You can choose goodness.
When you change your life you change the world.

An immense grace hums beneath
the noise of this world.
When you live in harmony with it,
you intensify the great music of life
that renews the earth.

You are a voice in the chorus,
a string on the Beloved’s guitar;
when you change your note
you change the whole chord.

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