June 25 — 3:30 —Poetry Reading at Wesley By the Sea, 51 Charles Wesley Ct. Wells, ME
June 27— 7 p.m.— Conversation, poetry reading & Q&A online.
July 10 – time TBA — Poetry reading, Bethany House of Prayer, Arlington MA.
Growing seed
Mark 4.26-29
The realm of God is as if
someone would scatter seed on the ground
God, I feel scattered…
Perhaps you have scattered me here…
and would sleep and rise night and day
How might I die and rise
night and day after night and day?…
and the seed would sprout and grow,
the sower does not know how.
I do not know, or need to know
how your grace works in me, to grow in grace.
The earth produces of itself
This is not my doing;
it is a gift, pure gift.
first the stalk, then the head,
then the full grain in the head.
Transformation is slow and gradual.
Help me discern, and trust, and be patient.
But when the grain is ready to give,
at once the sower sends the sickle,
because the harvest has come.
Abundant One, harvest me.
Send me. I am ready to give.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
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Siblings
“Whoever does the will of God
is my brother and sister and mother.”
—Mark 3.35
The old Italian woman doing her rosary,
the Hindu lighting a candle,
the homeless addict sharing a sandwich,
they are all my siblings.
The Episcopalian, the pagan, the child
too young to denominationalize,
they are all mine.
We fight over our lies.
How odd that we who have come
from the same womb
should belittle each other,
should give ourselves permission
to abjure our own.
This is enlightenment:
to say to every living being,
“This at last is bone of my bones
and flesh of my flesh.”
All else is illusion.
Breath prayer:
Siblings … welcome
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.8MB)
Praying
A fierce wind is blowing inside me,
a solar wind that puts tails on comets
and also the tails of fish and their oceans,
a vast forest breathing, underground river,
something unfurling like a bell long buried
coming empty of clay and bones, almost ready
to let go its sonorous secret, music
rising in me, sung by gatherings of peasants,
a great song passed on through long generations,
a liturgy of hours and minutes and eyes and hands,
of births and deaths and daily bread and small acts of mercy,
the strange harmony of everything tangled together,
the noise of tongues of flame all murmuring together
so I can’t tell what any are saying, though they’re all
speaking great wisdom, I know, or at least
I would know, if I knew any of this, but all of it
happens in me without my even suspecting,
like my microbiome at work, spirits of another world,
as I pray the words, and long for the words,
and only occasionally let in the silence in which,
faintly but really, the smallest feathers of all this
echo and call and leave room for me, and a great Knowing
sighs, and holds me, and the sigh is a fierce wind,
and I breathe it in, without even knowing.
As I pray I know this, and give thanks
and do my best to be quiet and let it happen.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.9MB)
New moon
As the new moon
bends its ear to the trees
something in me awakens:
Beloved, I have not listened
to you today, and yet
all day long
you have been listening
to me.
_______________
Weather Report
The forecast
is not the real thing.
Pay attention.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (841.6KB)
Ode to a zipper
You are made for joining,
purposefully incomplete.
As you lace your fingers
we are kept warm.
When you smile your toothy smile
things are brought together.
Whenever I zip you today
remind me:
to let my incompleteness
be my gift,
to let my affection
keep warm this world,
to join the others, embracing,
holding the world together.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.1MB)
Strong man
No one can enter a strong man’s house
and plunder his property
without first tying up the strong man;
then indeed the house can be plundered.
—Mark 3.27
The world may seem in the thrall
of a gangster whose henchmen haunt us,
each in our own troubled house,
scaring us into obedient selfishness.
But Jesus the burglar has broken in
to his place and tied up the boss:
grace defeats fear. Gracefully. Like 007.
That whole little kingdom is busted.
And in my own house—
sure, the enforcer lurks, or tries to.
But he too is bound up by love.
I don’t have to fear him.
He sits in my kitchen, cuffed,
tied down, squirming. I smile at him.
Friend, we’re free;
we just have to learn
to trust that.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.0MB)
Marigold meditation
Kneeling on crappy dirt
I dig a hole and make a nest
of good soil, take a marigold
from its seedling tray,
loosen its roots a little,
and nestle it in its new living place.
We choose what we nurture.
I mean it to brighten my street,
but it takes root in me, too.
What we do grows in us.
Every day I kneel on soil—
rich or poor, it’s dirt—
and remember:
this is a place for my ashes.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.2MB)
Withered hand
He entered the synagogue,
and a man was there who had a withered hand.
They watched him to see
whether he would cure him on the sabbath,
so that they might accuse him.
And he said to the man who had the withered hand,
“Come forward.”
—Mark 3.1-3
He always goes straight for the place where it hurts.
He walks into the synagogue of your soul
and sees what is withered.
(Notice…)
He also sees the fear—
the ruler, the controller, watching, defensive.
(Notice…)
He says, “Come forward.”
There is questioning, anxiety.
(Notice…)
Then what happens?
(Notice…)
Give thanks,
and trust.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (1.9MB)
Dew light
Across the yard nestled in the grass
in the shade of a tree
you see a light.
You investigate.
It’s just sunlight on a drop of dew
on the tip of the grass,
found by the sun through a hole in the shade.
The blade of grass is you.
The dew is whatever happens to you.
Whatever it is,
if you bear it in the light of grace,
it shines.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:42 — 980.5KB)