No parades today,
no patriotic tributes.
To honor those who have served,
care for the wounded,
the traumatized, the destitute.
Tend to the suicidal, the lonely, the tormented.

To honor those who serve,
clean up the hell we create for them.
Repent of your own violence of heart,
the warmongering of fear and competition
and demonizing strangers.
Resist urge to project our will across the world.
Be people of peace.

To honor those who serve,
tend to others, protect the weak,
sacrifice for the sake of the whole:
to honor those who serve,
serve.

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

November 11, 2019

My head full of another world,
I march through this one, unpresent.

This earth waits upon me.
These beings call out to me.

How can I come to them?
How can I not?
There is no other way than to slow down.

Let gratitude catch up to me.
Let humility overtake me.
Let wonder stop me in my tracks.

See what I see.
Hear what I hear.

This world opens itself into me.

Now I am ready to live this day.

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

November 8, 2019

The tree pulls
at the earth,
hauling it up
into the sky.
It never quite
arrives, but can’t
stay down either.

I may be
dirt, God, but
you keep on
tugging at me
and I don’t
mean to but
I keep flowing
joyfully without fail
upward and upward.

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

November 7, 2019

                 God is God not of the dead, but of the living.
                                   —Luke 20.38

You spent your childhood planning
your retirement home.
You blew your youth laying out
that shuffleboard in your head.
You missed the fishing trip,
obsessed instead with
how you would be congratulated
for how you cooked the fish.

Never mind heaven.
Living is not rewarded. It’s just worth it.
Whatever you wait for, it isn’t
something God is withholding.

God is not the God of later.
God is in the present moment.

Life is this, not something else.
Pay attention.

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

November 6, 2019

         “They are like angels and are children of God,
         being children of the resurrection.”
                  —Luke 20.36

Resurrection is not just the afterlife.
It’s the new life God gives us
when we hand our old one over to God.
It can happen any time.

The old life we hand over is limited
to the space inside our body.
But the new one is not so limited:
we are no longer separate individuals,
but rejoined with our wholeness;
no longer belonging to one
but belonging to all;
no longer strangers but siblings.

Giving our life to God
(over and over again)
we are angels who have died
and gone to heaven,
who inhabit the universe,
who love all as if married to all.

The life you hand over is small;
the life you receive is infinite:
“eternal,”—not infinitely long
(you don’t even like long meetings,
let alone living millions of years)
but infinitely deep and wide.
The infinite dimension of eternal life
is not time, it’s love.

Children of resurrection,
we let ourselves love and be loved
infinitely.
It starts now.

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

November 5, 2019

The smell outside a bakery.
The look we can’t see
but know in someone’s eyes
when they might like us.
The breath a singer takes
between the notes
by which we know
they’re one of us.
The silence of the owl.

The way you slip between
what I know and what I say.
The way you stand,
like winter behind autumn,
unseen behind the evident,
the space never anticipated
between
when I am absolutely certain
and what I know for sure,
consistently suspecting.
The peace at the calm heart
of my not knowing,
knowing there is more—

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

November 4, 2019

         To all God’s beloved… who are called to be saints…
                  —Romans 1.7

To be a saint is to be sanctified;
set apart for a sacred purpose.
That would be you.
Every breath of your life is for a sacred purpose:
to shed light, to radiate God’s love.
You don’t have to be influential,
or pious, virtuous or pure.
You have to be yourself.
The You of you is what God has made holy.
You are God’s Beloved.
All you have to do is act like it.
Everything you do today is an opportunity
to embody God’s love,
not by your effort or skill,
but by the love you embody.
The light of God is in you.
Be transparent to it.

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

November 1, 2019

The day we prepare to honor
the saints who have gone before,
first we get honest about the skeletons in our closet,
about how monstrous we can be
and what’s spookiest about us
and what we most fear,
about our masks and false personas
and our secret aspirations,
about how we trick each other
and parade about stuffing ourselves with junk.
We get honest about it,
and also laugh about it.
We laugh at ourselves,
and also laugh at our evil.
Then, having lightened ourselves of the burden
of our righteousness,
tomorrow we can move on freely
without guilt or pretense
to be the saints we actually are.

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

October 31, 2019

He has seen you in your awkward need
         and given himself to you.
He has invited himself into your life
         and feasted with you.
He has made you his family,
         without judgment.
He has overruled the chastisement of the crowd,
         the shame that dogs you.
Why wouldn’t gratitude fill your heart
         and change your ways?

         “Half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor;
         and if I have defrauded anyone of anything,
         I will pay back four times as much.”

[Luke. 19.8]

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

October 30, 2019

He’s short, and everybody ridicules him.
He’s resentful and bitter. No sense of humor.
                  Give thanks for him.

He never gets along with others. Bad listener.
Hard to talk to. Always has his own agenda.
                  Bless him.

He’s a loner, can’t seem to relate to people.
Off by himself, in his own little world.
                  Honor him.

He’s selfish, obsessed with his own wants,
clever at cheating others, without remorse.
                  Lift him in prayer.

He’s no saint, nobody you’d set as an example.
Without morals. Surely without grace.
                  Revere him.

Then someone comes along and sees
who’s inside him, hidden, waiting—and says,
                  Zacchaeus, I’m having lunch with you.

Maybe the sooner we shed our judgments
and see us all as equals on the journey
                  the sooner we all become the saints we are.

[Luke 19.1-10]

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

October 29, 2019