“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
         No one comes to our Abba except through me.”
                  —John 14.6

This is not a treasure map for conversion,
not a filter to screen out unbelievers,
no “One Way” directions to some secret entrance
to the favor of God. Jesus speaks
not to unbelievers but to us who already believe.

We want to know “the way.”
There is no “way,” Jesus says,
no set of instructions, no formula,
no Thing You Do to get to God.
He says, “I am the way. Me.
Not beliefs about me, but me, myself.”

We don’t come to God on Jesus’ coattails,
behind him, or beside him,
but through him. Inside him.

Be Jesus. Be God’s self-giving love
embodied in the world.
That’s how you come to God.
Be God’s love for you (yes, yourself!)—
which becomes God’s love for the world.
Get right inside that love. Move through it.

We don’t get close to God by our beliefs,
even our righteous obedience.
We get close through love.

Love is the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to God except through love.

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

May 6, 2020

O ceaseless God, sometimes I am tired.
I get tired of serving when the need is so great.
I grow weary of loving the dying,
healing the shattered,
rejoicing with the hopeless.
I tire of caring for those who do not care,
and forgiving the unrepentant.
I am spent, crying for justice to unhearing ears.
I am not a strong horse, but only a little burro, God,
and I can’t carry the whole load.

Beloved, you are smaller than that:
a tiny blue butterfly
in a blossoming tree.
I do not ask you to transform the tree:
only to do your work
in the bloom where you find yourself,
for there, in that labor,
which is enough for one butterfly,
the nectar of my delight revives you,
and the whole tree rejoices.

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

May 5, 2020

                 In my Mother’s house there are many dwelling places.
                  —John 14.2

May your many-mansioned heart
be mine, Beloved,
with room for all,
each belonging,
each wondrous in their own abundant ways,
each one kin, beloved, and a gift.
May the house of my heart
be blessed with the noise
of many languages of prayer,
and the prayer of many kinds of silence.

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

May 4, 2020

             I am the gate.
         Whoever enters by me will be saved,
         and will come in
         and go out
         and find pasture. 
                 —John 10.9

Come in and rest.
Go out and serve. 
        Find pasture.

Hear the voice from within.
Hear the voice from beyond.
         Answer.

The voice unlike, challenging.
The voice familiar, calming.
         Follow.

In green pastures,
in death-shadowed valleys,
         want nothing.

Both centered
and engaged,
         whole.

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

May 1, 2020

Beloved, you shepherd me gently.
         You free me from desires.
You bid me lie down in green pastures.
         You lead me beside calm waters.
You revive the breath within my breath.
         You guide me in the paths of harmony
         for the sake of your delight.

O, though I walk through deepest canyons
         shadowed by death
I fear no evil
         for you are with me.
Your shepherd’s staff, your steady hand,
         they comfort me.

In the face of what I fear
         you provide a feast for me.
Your blessing is a long, warm shower.
         My plate is full.
Surely goodness and mercy will companion me
         all my days,
and I will dwell in your intimate presence
         every moment of my life.

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

April 30, 2020

        When she has brought out her own,
         she goes ahead of them,
         and the sheep follow her because they know her voice.
                   —John 10.4

In the West where I come from
shepherds and cattle herders
and their dogs nip from behind—
but in agrarian societies
the shepherd goes ahead
and the sheep follow behind.

The Good Shepherd does not send you alone
but goes first.
In paths of righteousness,
even in the valley of the shadow of death,
the Beloved is ahead of you.

If you are lost or misplaced
maybe you listened to
the commercials of fears and desires
instead of the delight of the Beloved.

Even then, you will find no path
where the Beloved has not gone first
and found the way.

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

April 29, 2020

       He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
                  —John 10.3

The Beloved knows you
and calls your name—not the name everyone says,
but the name whose saying brings you to life,
as surely as God brought Light into being
by calling its name.
The gentle shepherd knows your hurts and fears,
the wounds and frights that bind your will,
the bonds that bend you from your beauty.
The Beloved knows your infant and your toddler,
struggling to walk, to please the mighty ones, to stay upright,
and understands and forgives your stumbling tries
to be yourself in a treacherous world.
The Shepherd knows the precious soul within
and calls you by the name of God’s knowing,
and bids you come.
The Beloved goes ahead of you into your own beauty,
into the serene meadow of God’s green presence.
Listen for that voice, for the shepherd
who does not point but leads.
Follow that one, whose deepest delight
is to give you life, and give it abundantly.

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

April 28, 2020

Forget about the afterlife.
Resurrection is not for dead people.
It’s for those of us most alive.
It’s the way we live when we’ve gotten over
being afraid of dying, maybe because
we took to heart the raising of Jesus and maybe
because our life got ripped out of our hands.
Either way God stayed with us and gave us life,
raised us up out of the coffin of our individualism
and its brittle, consuming survival,
and made us part of the Risen Body of Christ,
alive with a life that’s irrevocable, and such a gift
that we’ve gotten over death as a thing and now
we live not in the afterlife but this very life,
the afterlife of what we’re no longer afraid of,
totally free to love no matter what.

Resurrection is the unkillableness of love
that nothing can stop, not even death and despair.
Resurrection is when we love to the bitter end
even when it’s really bitter, and really the end,
and God carries it on anyway in a grace we can’t see
because the love we have is actually God
and God is eternal. Resurrection is what gives us
the audacity to get all up in the devil’s face
with joy and kindness and hope,
and laugh at all his threats, and love people
as if there were no tomorrow precisely because
there always is one, and it’s always God.

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

April 27, 2020

It’s early spring in these woods,
bare trees like quiet old women
wearing little girls’ green things.
But in the cities, silence, and grief.

Some days
I want to lie down in ignorance,
deep in the not yet green grass,
bury my face in the cold unknowing dirt,
not seeing more than a foot or two,
that’s all I want to see.

I get down there just to look
and the brook flows on,
I can hear it, and overhead
long haul geese passing by
on their way north,
farther north than I imagine,
where spaces open out
in a different kind of quiet,
and even the small birds nearby
in the shifting trees
above the prayerful grass
sing on and on.

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

April 24, 2020

                   When he was at the table with them
he took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to them.
                   —Luke 24.30

We are taken:
gathered up in God’s grace,
belonging not to ourselves now, but God,
taken out of our lives, and made part of something
greater— infinite, gracious and unendingly good.

We are blessed:
God’s love and delight poured out upon us,
God’s mercy filling us,
so no matter what our circumstances
our lives bear grace and the power of healing.

We are broken:
sinful and incomplete, brokenhearted in love,
perfectly weak and flawed,
we are broken open
so the love poured into us may flow out
into the world.

And we are given
to the world,
resurrected, vessels of blessing,
given to love,
bread of life for others.

God, in your mercy
take, bless, break and give us,
raised, renewed, imbued with your Spirit,
full of beauty, love and courage,
the Body of Christ.

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

April 23, 2020