What more did Jesus say
than what we have recorded?
Surely in months of speaking
there were more parables, sayings, teachings?
What more did he say?

Maybe nothing.
Maybe the truth was pure enough,
and his faith,
that he honored it
with pages and pages
of perfect silence.

The Gospels are gracious
to give us no more words,
no explanations
as if multiple words could do
for the singular Word:
only the perfect silence
in which he still sits
with us.

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

 
   —June 11, 2019

The sound of a single chickadee.
The silence afterwards.
The taste of salt.
The incompleteness of my love
for one in whom is my twisted angel,
wrestling me toward gentleness.
Looking at a meadow
longing for my body
to become the grass.
Prayers that nearly form
then move on like clouds.

The clouds.

Everything feeds the fire
of my hunger for you.

I warm myself
by the flames.

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

   —June 10, 2019

We make our way along this way together,
our side-by-sideness a being,
so much of us in the other,
two voices in one harmony,
the going itself our path,
two ways twining, threaded in and out
of hopes and angers,
the bruise and heal become a song,
forgiveness a gravity, pains shared,
dreams carried in another’s inner pocket,
selves emerging in the mirror of the other,
giving mutual birth.
The sound of a river.
Feeling was youth’s energy,
the desert’s spring flash flood;
now deeper currents sing.
Miraculous, though not uncommon,
how marvelous a tapestry is woven of two threads.
Approaching only now the middle age
of love, so much to learn,
looking back in gratitude fades
in the brightness of what may come.
Singing softly, sharing a smile, we walk on.

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

   —June 7, 2019

         Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers,
         nor things present, nor things to come,
         nor powers, nor height, nor depth,
         nor anything else in all creation,
         will be able to separate us
         from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
                  —Romans 8.38-39

Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
         Not your sin, not your most horrible awfulness.
         Not your disbelief, or lack of faith.

Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
         Not your suffering, even if it feels deserved, which it is not.
         Not your jail cell, your cancer, your failure.

Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
         Not your anger at God when things stink.
         Not your questioning if God even exists at all.

Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
          Not your turning away when that love
          feels too hot, too confining, too challenging.

Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
         Not when you feel absolutely nothing of God,
         for God is not your feelings,
         which are feeble and fickle.

Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
         Not disaster, which is not God,
         or triumph, which is also not God.

Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
         You are in it like the air, like gravity.
         It is in you, for it is what you are made of.
         It’s for you. On purpose. With delight.
Nothing can separate you from the love of God.
       
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

   —June 6, 2019

         Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them,
         and a tongue rested on each of them.
                  —Acts 2.3

Not little candles,
but furious furnaces,
volcanoes of love,
burning as in you right now,
every heartbeat God’s arson of the soul,
each breath the Spirit’s inner hurricane
afire with mercy,
a dynamo powerful enough
to blow you out into the world
and do miracles.
Trust this when you feel small and fragile,
the flaming sun within.

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

   —June 5, 2019

Walking by the sea
you listen to the language of the waves,
you wish you knew what they were saying,
their foreign tongue,
sonorous, untranslated,
the sibilants so smoothly pronounced,
their vowels so nuanced,
priestly chants, blessings, perhaps,
and for you, for you.

Standing still in woods,
the wind in trees is a different dialect,
the accents in other places,
but prayers, you are sure,
of the same liturgy,
you want to pray the prayer.

Birdsong, unexpected, on a city street,
desert quiet, deep as sleep,
the tick of a patient clock,
the beat of your heart,
a voice without language
in the swaying of subway riders,
beloved, and what they mean,
voice without words that comes
and goes like prayer, like dreams.
The voice in the pure song of silence.

Sometimes, as with a kiss,
you needn’t know the words,
only that you are being spoken to.

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

    —June 4, 2019

Beloved,
you are the breathing
that breathed in me me through the night.
You are the darkness that held me in its secrets,
the dream that whispered in my unknowing,
disappearing into me like a breath.
You are the light that prepared yourself before me,
mother’s arms that received me at my morning birth.
You are the sun that awakens me,
the dawn that rises in me, always rising.
You are the day that unfolds before me,
your becoming my welcome, your living my ground,
your grace my one hope for this day.
Morning God, the world opens its eye
and I wake to you, given, and new.
May I wake to you all this holy day
and be your light unfolding.

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

   —June 3, 2019

         We have been buried with Christ by baptism into death,
         so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of God,
         so we too might walk in newness of life.
                  —Romans 6.4

God, take, me, all of me.
Let the “me” to which I’ve been clinging die.
Bury me in your love,
six feet under in your grace.
Your living heart be my grave.
All my schemes and beliefs,
my triumphs and failures, all gone.
All my powers ended,
my powerlessness a nothing.

Then in the darkness, the silence,
let there be light.
Let a new Creation arise,
and let it be me.
Let me be something you are creating,
moment by moment,
by your Word alone,
breathing your Spirit breath by breath,
risen,
new,
yours.

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

—May 30, 2019

         God raised Christ from the dead
         and seated Christ at God’s right hand in the heavenly places,
         far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.
                  —Ephesians 1.20-21

Think Higher Power… then go higher than that.
Imagine the embodiment of God’s love,
the divine Presence, God’s intimacy,
as the absolute fundament of Creation.
The love that begets you, that walks with you,
the tenderness that feels your wounds and dries your tears,
the noble courage that sees the magnificent in you,
the beauty that unfolds in you as in lilacs and galaxies,
that love that will die for you, and does, over and over,
that love—as the most powerful thing in the universe.
Imagine all our little tragedies gathered up
into those gentle, immense arms,
every sin and every triumph blessed,
every child and every tyrant held
in those tender, wounded hands.
The All of everything, the Is of the universe,
the One of infinite belovedness,
Christ, your Heavenly Lover,
above all and including all
and redeeming all of it. All of it.
Offer wonder, praise and trust.

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

   —May 30, Ascension Day, 2019

         He withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven.
                           —Luke 24.51

How dare he?
Just up and leave?
How hard to admit:
Christ is not ours.
There is an else-ness to them,
a beyondness we can’t comprehend.
The Anointed One belongs to something greater,
and is not ours.
For a time they have made themselves
as small as he could,
but now we see how infinite the Beloved is.
And if we have listened to what he said
while he walked among us so we could hear,
we would see this in every soul,
for none is apart from this whole.

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

—May 29, 2019