Those who go out weeping,
                bearing the seed for sowing,
        shall come home with shouts of joy,
                carrying their sheaves.
                                —Psalm 126.6

Your troubles, soul,
lament but do not regret.
They are your resurrection grave.

Only a broken heart is strong enough
to walk this path, for only a broken heart
is open enough to receive the light.

Your tears water the soil
of compassion and courage.
They are the flowing of God in you.

Your sorrow is Christ’s manger
where the Beloved lays
their tenderness for the world,

weeping in you, that love be made flesh,
the taking-in of this whole world
in loving delight,

born in pain and labor,
the opening of the heart like a womb,
born as joy.

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

December 7, 2020

        It is written in the prophet Isaiah:
        See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
                who will prepare your way;
        the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
                “Prepare the way of the Holy One,
                make straight a path for God.”
                                                —Mark 1.2-3

God, how shall I prepare your way?
How might I announce your coming?
How might I live to make your coming plain?
How will I think, speak and act this day
as a messenger of grace
so those who yearn may hope,
and those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death
may rejoice?
How do you enable me to live this gospel?
What path are you making in my heart?

How are you preparing your way in me?
Let me see, and hear,
and trust,
and follow
Amen.

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

December 4, 2020

Look! the Holy One is coming!
God, you come—
to feed your flock like a shepherd,
to gather the lambs in your loving arms;
you will carry them in your bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.
—Isaiah 40.10-11

You come!
Into this hell of cruelty and oppression you come,
without a sword.
No power but gentleness,
no bulwark but the warmth of your bosom.
No weapon against suffering but the willingness to suffer
to hold us.
No shield against death but to die first
before it can stop you from loving us.
You lead us through the valley of the Shadow;
you fill it in with yourself leveling it.
These hands that feed us, that gather the lambs of us,
these hands,
there are holes in them,
aren’t there?

To that bosom that comes, we will come.
In the peace in those arms
we lose hell,
we find courage to resist it,
you undo it.

Hungry, weary and alone, we cry to you,
not in desperation but hopeful wonder,
in joy, even:
Shepherd of Miracles, come!

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

December 3, 2020

Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low.
—Isaiah 40.4

What I have mounded up, O God,
what I have heaped for keeping,
level out and shovel off to fill another’s need.

What I lack, O Graceful One,
the cracks and canyons, the crumbling arroyos
of my will, smooth out, to make passage.

What great heights I face, O Humble One,
the steeps and crags I can’t traverse,
bring low, and come near.

What emptiness I hide, O God,
the pits and cavities and swallowings
and ditches of my heart, fill in with your grace.

Of the power and riches I grasp, relieve me,
that I may know the glory of your grace.
­
The shame and poverty I bear, redeem,
that I may know the blessing of your presence.

Transform this world, O God.
Begin with me.

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

December 2, 2020

In the wilderness prepare the way of the Holy One,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
—Isaiah 40.3

Not that God can’t come ’till we get it right,
not that we have to hurry up and clean house
before the householder comes,
but that the Beloved is coming,
and asks us to trust.
Not that we need to get the work done,
but that the Beloved is already working,
and we are asked to prepare for the victory parade.

How can we be so bold,
when injustice haunts, when evil rides unchecked?
By trusting in the power of gentleness
and the victory of compassion,
and by doing justice, which opens our eyes.
Justice arises from people who have hope;
their hope arises when they do justice.

Prepare your way in me, O Holy One.

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

December 1, 2020

Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem…
—Isaiah 40.1

My child,
comfort my people.
Even as you cry for justice,
let it lead to a peaceable life for all.
Even as you resist evil,
speak tenderly.
Be a voice of comfort, not blame,
a voice of hope, not doom.
Tell my people—show them:
I will be with you, one of you—
to see your struggles, to stumble with you.
I taste the cold mud, I feel the sharp wounds.
I know the fear that this cold fog will never lift.
Beloved, it will lift.
I will be with you
to manage the rough spots with you,
to carry you with tender delight.

My child, my people are hurting.
Speak tenderly to them.
Show them my hope and comfort,
and the words shall not be in vain.

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

November 30, 2020

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!
—Isaiah 64.1

This is the season we are arrested by our longing.
This is the season of the undressing of our hunger,
and a time to adopt our orphaned hopes.
Our spirits ache with the family not gathered for holidays, 
unfinished business of the heart, 
the pall of Things Gone Wrong. 
As the plague spreads out from the cities to the countryside,
mostly, cruelly, through happy means of games and weddings,
and the peasants grow hungrier,
and the Emperor has stomped off to his room,
our unease deepens.
How do we name our heartbreak, our lack?
This is the affliction that silts our veins:
that we do not know what we want, but we want it badly. 
Sandbags of darkness rise about us
and with the night, our wanting.
The door to the locked attic room in our hearts
that we have ignored for too long swings open,
and its great emptiness reaches for us.
This is the season we marry our longing.

Nothing will do now, but divine intervention,
yet not in the heavens, but somehow—
in a mystery the prophets have hinted at—
among us.
The empty place is the place of God.

Oh, humanity, set the table,
and keep the fire going.
But before you set out either to hope or to rectify,
your faithfulness now is to attend to the great, holy fullness
of the emptiness in your heart,
and be still.

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

November 27, 2020

A Thanksgiving prayer for those of us
who live in places that were colonized
and taken from native people.
Where I live they are the Wabenaki.
Who are they where you live? Use their name.

O Creator, we give thanks for this land and its fruits,
for the abundant gift of this earth.
We give thanks for the Wabenaki stewards of this land
who have gone before us,
who have blessed this land through the centuries.
We honor their elders, past and present,
and give thanks for their wisdom.
We confess that we have stolen their land,
and pray for restitution, a time of Jubilee.
We ask your blessing for them, for they are our siblings,
with all humans in the world;
and we pray that we may be one family,
sharing one table, one feast of your Creation.
We give thanks for the living beings of this place,
for plants, for the four-legged and the winged ones,
and for the gracious mystery
that you provide all living beings with food.

Bless our feast, that it may be a practice of gratitude and justice,
and that we may faithfully take our rightful place
in the great web of being,
giving and receiving and tending with care
as you created us to do.
We pray for those who are kept from the table,
that justice may be done.
May this feast draw us in
to the Feast of All Creation,
by your grace, and for your delight.
With gratitude we ask your blessing.
Amen.

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

November 26, 2020

              Keep awake—for you do not know
               when the head of the household will come.
                                          —Mark 13.35

You can smell when it’s going to rain.
You know when a kid is hiding a surprise.
You have ways of knowing.
Awaken your wakefulness.

Watch for how the World,
TV, noise, ads, expectations,
want to put you to sleep.
Even religion will do it.
Distrust the world’s cynicism.

Stay alert to the little cracks
where the Divine slips in.
Where do you see love?
Where do you sense the hunger,
the emptiness God alone will fill?

Stay awake with holy curiosity,
with hope—not knowing the outcome,
but staying alert, trusting
God is at work—
confident not-yet-ness,
waiting, watching openness.

The head of the household
is coming.

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

November 25, 2020

I bow to the four directions.

I bow to what is.
I bow to what is not.
I bow to what may be.
I bow that I may discern.

I bow to what is.
I bow to what I can do.
I bow to what I cannot do.
I bow that I may discern.

I bow to what is.
I bow to who I am.
I bow to who I am not.
I bow that I may discern.

With gratitude I bow.
With reverence I bow.
With courage I bow to this day,
and enter it with joy.

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

November 24, 2020