Wuneekeesuq!

We’ve called this “Columbus Day.”
But it turns out he was a savage man,
racist, violent, selfish and abusive.
The land he “discovered” was somebody else’s,
but he took it anyway,
along with a few hundred lives,
and few hundred slaves.

So what do we do when our hero
turns out to be the bad guy,
the one who personifies our sin?

We name it. We confess our mistake.
We repent. We turn toward reparation.

Today I invite you to honor Indigenous People’s Day.
One simple thing you can do:
Learn where you live.
Look up the name of the people who lived where you are
before the Europeans came.
Learn how to say hello in their language.
(Yes, you in Canada and South Africa and Australia and New Zealand, you too.)

I live in the land of the Wampanoag people.
Their greeting is “Wuneekeesuq.”

It’s a tiny thing.
But it’s a step,
a step toward honoring the right people.

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

October 14, 2019

         One of them, when he saw that he was healed,
         turned back, praising God with a loud voice.
         He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him.
         And he was a Samaritan.
                  —Luke 17.15-16

The Samaritan, the foreigner, the outsider.
Not accustomed to being treated well.
Not burdened with a sense of entitlement.

How often I expect life to go well because,
well, because I’m a good person and I deserve it.
How we privileged folks take our blessings for granted.

What if I were to shed that arrogance, lay down
the burden of expecting everything to be fine,
and greet every grace with wonder and amazement?

I’d spend my life at the feet of Jesus. I’d burst
into flames, a burnt offering of thanksgiving.
I’d be glad. Always. Every breath I’d start again.

Every moment would become miraculous.
I’d become impervious to heartache.
I’d spend my life dancing.

What am I waiting for?

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

October 11, 2019

I don’t see you or feel you.
I know you coming out of things to me,
a breathing out into me,
a light pouring out of pure darkness
into me, full of the mystery of that dark,
full of this light, invisible darkness.
The urge in me that makes me breathe
I can’t find, but always comes, always.
You are the point on the horizon, the faint star
I see not by looking at but slightly away,
or even in the opposite direction,
where you smile like a knowing beggar,
where you reach out just before I suspect you
like a friend, with the perfect surprise,
like, in a foreign, unsure, impossible place
someone covering my eyes from behind and saying
“Guess who,” and I hear the unmistakable voice
of my lover.

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

October 10, 2019

         And as they went, they were made clean.
                  —Luke 17.14

Jesus sends lepers to the priest
to show him they are healed—
before they are healed!
It’s only as they go they are made well.

Jesus seems pretty confident.
They must be, too, or they wouldn’t be going.

Take for yourself this confidence:
that God wishes you well,
and that it shall be so.

What afflicts you now
will not determine you.
Already your blessing is decreed.
Go and show yourself.

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

October 9, 2019

         Ten lepers approached him.
         Keeping their distance they called out,
         “Jesus, have mercy on us!”
         When he saw them, he said to them,
         “Go and show yourselves to the priests.”
         And as they went, they were made clean.
                  —Luke 17.12-14

Leprosy meant uncleanness… impurity…
some distance from God… and from others.
If one were cured of leprosy
one had to be pronounced clean by a priest.

Call to mind all your impurities, your flaws,
your failings public and secret,
what distances you from God, from others,
from your true self, what’s disgusting about you.

Show yourself to God. You are made clean,
pure, whole, acceptable, good. You’re fine.
Imagine all shame, guilt and sorrow gone.
Evaporated. You’re perfectly fine.

Humility and gratitude dance hand in hand.
Judgment has no footing. Only wonder.
Tenderness toward others flows naturally.
Once you know everyone’s secret we all look different.

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

October 8, 2019

The leaves fall and fall,
and then the colors wander off,
and then comes November’s cold, its grayness,
all reduced to shades of gray, then winter.
First there is some loss, and then there is some loss.
The birches and maples and beeches
stand silently without birds, without regret.
They are not counting. They are not trying.

Once you have let go of all you are fond of
you are empty enough to listen
for a presence only absence can reveal.

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

October 7, 2019

Well, we’re all looking, aren’t we, for something?
Sweeping the house with every broom of indulgence,
every whisk of duty, poking under every chair leg
with the roaring vacuum of desire. Finding nothing yet.

Or studiously avoiding what we’re seeking, desperately
averting our eyes, staring at a piece of trash glinting…
How silly, or sad, the way we trade our hungers for ones
we’re more comfortable complaining about.

No one told us, or did they?, that the sweeping sound
is music of the greatest genius, but only if we go slow
and listen to it, the tune of our longing without finding,
because what you would find is always what you don’t have,

and what you most need you already have. It’s here,
and never left the house of your heart, given to you
like your skeleton, your gravity. Your whole life, precious
one, is the sound of God sweeping the world for you.

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

October 4, 2019

You are going to die.
                  Probably not today… but keep it in mind.

You are going to shine.
Definitely today, though it may not be visible
from the outside, outside being too distant
from the throne of your being,
the gem of your you.
Today beneath the rumple and muddle
                  you will shine.

You will trip and fall,
though in what way or how badly is yet unclear.
But you probably will not die.
                  Keep that in mind.

Today you will pass by the actual gates of heaven,
their confounding pearlescence hid from your naïve eyes,
but there it will be.
                  You can go in.

Today you will be loved from every direction,
though you may not see a hint of it
till the stars come out holding up their lights
like your fans at a rock concert.
                  That’s what that will mean.

Today you will be loved by the One whose love
is powerful enough to spin planets and fill oceans
and make something as glorious as you.
Keep that in mind.
Even as you pick yourself up off the floor today,
                  keep it in mind.

________________
Weather Report

Transitive:
you will reflect on the weather,
which will reflect you.
Though you will see it all about you
none of it will be about you,
and as you find yourself in the thick of it,
in the thick of it you’ll have to find yourself.
Whether or not you do,
it will still be weather.

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

October 3, 2019

         “We are merely slaves;
         we have done only what we ought to have done!’”
                  —Luke 17.10

Admire the heroes.
Let their focus and perseverance fill you.
But don’t bother trying to emulate them:
you’ll only feel inadequate.

Listen for what you yourself are called to do,
the gyroscope in you that leans you,
the magnet that pulls you toward something.
Merely do what is in you to do.

Don’t try to be the hero who dashes out of the ranks.
Be a mere slave to the passions you’re given,
the lowly servant of goodness and beauty and justice,
quietly obedient to the voice within.

Light is generated not by success,
but by obedience to your given gifts.
Tie a rope around your waist and your vision.
Follow humbly. That’s all your heroes have done.

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

October 2, 2019

Faith is no superpower;
it isn’t a substance with quantity.
Faith is trust in God,
openness to the power inherent in what is.

Faith is being in the grip of the gravity
of God’s grace.
It’s the gravity that does all the work,
and no one is without it.

Faith is a tiny, weak finger
willing to flip the light switch of God.

Faith is whatever the bird knows
of feather, of wing, of air.

Faith is allowing light to shine,
lungs to breathe, God to love.
         
         If you have faith the size of a mustard seed…
                  [Luke 17.6]

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

October 1, 2019