Category: Reflections

The flames of perdition are not in hell.
God does not punish.
Punishing serves no purpose.
Punishment is about the past,
but God is in the present.
However, God does not protect us
from the consequences of our choices.
God asks us to see, confess, and repent.
Maybe these heat waves
aren’t “waves” that come and go,
but the state of our collective denial
of our part in climate change.
Maybe the real forest fires are inside us.
For once—for real—
we can stop complaining about the weather
and actually do something about it.
God forgives and waits for us to repent;
until then we swelter.

________________
Weather Report

Hellish
as the friction between our ego and reality
generates heat.
The vortex between our selfishness
and the rest of the world
will create storm conditions;
expect widespread destruction.

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

What if we are playing with God
and there is no score,
no winning or losing,
only playing with God?
Oh, the play is serious:
justice and healing and the mending of the world.
But what if God doesn’t want us to perform well,
but only to play?
What if it’s not about being good enough
but being with God?
Forget the score and play.

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

           God forgave us all our trespasses,
           erasing the record that stood against us
           with its legal demands.
           God set this aside, nailing it to the cross.
                           —Colossians 2.13-14

The good news is that everything is forgiven—
everything.
All you thought was demanded of you
is actually an illusion.
There is no account,
no thought of how “good” you are.
Only love.

Does the sun judge the tree,
or punish it for growing poorly?
No, it only shines.

How hard it is to trust
that God is pure light, pure delight.
How we want to hang onto judgment—
but it is crucifixion.
From Cain onward that has been our sin:
to judge and to expect judgment.

Salvation is not “qualifying” for something.
It’s trusting you don’t have to.

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

           As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Beloved,
           continue to live your lives in them,
           rooted and built up in Christ and established in the faith,
           just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
                           —Colossians 2.6-7


You are not a potted plant,
dependent on your little cup of dirt for faith.
You are planted in Christ, the roots of your soul
tangled with the roots of a thousand saints,
like the million hands of a whole tribe’s memory
grasping deep earth, roots like a lover’s arms
reaching down into that love,
drinking water from underground springs
gushing up, roots wound like lovers’ legs
in fungal webs of trade and alchemy, each
providing what the other lacks, holding hands
beneath all that can be seen,
deep in the the earth of Christ.
You pray and praise with branches of the Spirit s hands,
passing news from bird to bird,
and life from sun to little mouths that sing.

Rooted in Christ you are not a tree.
You are a forest,
abounding.

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

Oh, Holy Mommy, Mommy,
Unimaginable but Here,
may our hearts revere you,
our lives name you who are Unnameable.
Your delight—unfold!
This world—be as you intend!
You are our life in this breath… and this one, and this one.
You who cancel our debts, real and imagined,
help us let go of everyone’s:
no one owes anyone anything. It’s all a gift.
Steer us past our desires and attachments;
save us from our selfishness.
Beloved, you are the only power;
you are the whole world;
you are the beauty of everything.
Wow.
Amen.



[Here is a collection of ten paraphrases of the Lord’s Prayer.]

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

You will not find the best from above.
Kneel in the bread-colored dirt.
Bow down among the weeds.
Draw your face near to the earth.
Lift their green hands, from beneath,
where they hold their offerings.

Let the smell enter you.
Let the wind lay its hand on your face.
Let the sun wrap its arms around your back.

Earth has no need to give you
what is not yet ripe, or already past.
Look for the pure red heart;
feel the gentle firmness.
You know you touch the light
of the first day of creation
slowly deepening in each little red sun.
Hear the soft “yes” as the stem snaps.
Like a child the fruit rolls into your hand.

This moment is really no different from all others.

They come to you one by one.
Imagine who might give such a gift.
In the silence of your own ripeness,
venerate the gifts on the altar of the afternoon,
genuflect with wine-red hands,
and receive your morsel.

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

Spider, teach me of prayer:
happy with where you work,
flowering shrub or rusting hubcap;
the first leap from here to there,
that suddenly possible connection,
repeated and amplified,
the little knot of hope, extended,
enlarged, layered out
in the architecture of patience,
the ever expanding rounds
more like a window than a door,
the thinness of your lines,
yet how they hold morning dew
and shrug off ripping winds. Teach me
the grace of not getting caught
in your own web,
not thinking or even looking
how your little feet work the tightropes,
on your legs as thin,
well, as thin as prayer.

And then the waiting,
so still,
the still, still waiting,
waiting

for the tiny bug of God.

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

           “Martha. Martha.
           You are worried and distracted by many things;
           you need only one thing.
           Mary has chosen the better part,
           which will not be taken away from her.”
                           —Luke 10.41-42

Beloved, oh Beloved,
you are distracted.
You have scattered yourself among many things.
Gather yourself into the one thing needed,
which is to be present.
Do what you do, no matter how hard or dull,
with love and attention.
Or do a different thing.
Even with many things to do,
do this one, being present.
Then do the next one.
One thing at a time, fully,
mindfully, giving yourself.
You can both do the dishes and look out the window,
but be fully present to the dishes and the window.
Don’t let wishing, regretting,
or how you feel about what you’re doing
distract you from what you are doing.
Be satisfied with being present.
This is the better part.
Being fully present can’t be taken from you.
You are yours to give.

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

           I am like a green olive tree in the house of God.
                           —Psalm 52.8

For 360 million years
in the tree that is my family
I have been learning how to live,
how to live together.
I have rooted tendrils into the hardest soils,
learned to make edible life from the scratch of light,
blessed and been blessed by a sorority of fungal webs,
holding hands unseen with whole forests.
I have fed and sheltered saints and scoundrels,
held fragile nests in my million fingers
and carried untold generations of little ones in my arms.
I have learned to let go
of all the leaves I have accomplished,
mastered the mystery of energy
raised in spring and hidden deep in my roots in fall.
I have stood on mountains and city squares,
through frown of heat and fist of ice.
I have been used to make ships and gallows.
But in all, I have survived; and I have served.
And whether you come to me for shade or lumber
I will praise God in the greenness of my being.

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

           Mary sat at the Beloved’s feet
           and listened to what he was saying.
                           —Luke 10.39

We drove through cities and towns,
little burgs and urban stacks of buildings,
suburban developments like giant microchips,
past apartment windows and farmhouses,
cozy neighborhoods and lonely hovels.
Each house a story. So many stories.
None are evident by appearances: the neat estate
may hide a story of abuse and loneliness;
the sagging single-wide a story of redemption.
The people we saw—the people you pass by—
every single one is a story with a beginning and a middle,
and you only know one sentence of it.
The nuanced setting, the alarming backstory,
the various characters and their own story lines,
the intertwining of so many subplots, these you do not know.
And the end? And how it all fits together,
and what the story is really “about?” Ah, wait.
But meanwhile what a privilege it is
to be welcomed into one home,
one story, even to just look around.
What a gift to know someone who is willing to hear
your whole story. And what a gift we have
to sometimes stop and listen.

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