Evil has only one small power:
to destroy.
It’s not really power,
just fear with practice.
Evil can take down towers,
but it can’t raise a single one.
It can frighten but not teach,
it can wound but not lead,
it can destroy but not create.
It can cause sorrow,
but it can’t move the world forward.
It can only destroy.
So can, by the way, a germ.
It is no great power.

You need not save the world from evil.
Merely live gently with hope,
create beauty, spread love,
give of yourself even in the face of fear,
and evil with all its small terrors
will be outdone.
Even a massacre is not as great a thing
as a child’s drawing.

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

September 11, 2019

         What woman having ten silver coins,
         if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp,
         sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?
                  —Luke 15.8

The Divine One is searching for her silver coin
         in you.

The sweep of your life is your search
         for the Divine in yourself.

It is not outside or elsewhere
         but in your house.

If you are still and look calmly you will see it
         glinting in your soul.

Keep your eyes open until you find it. Then
        “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God.”

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

September 10, 2019

Beloved,
sometimes I feel so small and lost.
Do you hear my little cries?
Do you even notice you’re missing me?
In the gritty, lonely places where I need you,
in pain and struggle,
in the ordinary relationships,
you are so absent.
In the face of injustice and suffering
you aren’t there when I need you.
I am right here and yet I feel so far away,
so invisible, so insignificant to you, so lost.
I ache for you, for your steady presence.
How else can I cry out to you?
Come and find me.
Hold onto me and don’t let go.
Dare to leave all behind to search for me.
I am here! I am here! Look for me.
Look everywhere.
For I am everywhere,
and everywhere, I am with you.
I am the lamb that takes away
the sin of the world, and I love you.
I am right here,
crying out to you in your prayers.
Come to me, and I will give you rest.

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

September 9, 2019

O Love, as your own you know me,
                from within you see me.
You know my doings and not doings,
                you have taken all my steps.
My breathing is you breathing in me,
                you are the nerve, and I your muscle.                 
My thoughts are yours before they are mine,
                even my cries are you crying out.

Where can I find your absence?
                How could I be apart from you?
If I crawl down to the depths of my despair,
                you are there.
If I escape to the farthest island of my loneliness,
                you await me.
If I make my bed in my failure
                you lie with me in the dark.

You have formed me with love,
                love beyond my figuring.
You created me to be me, a wonder
                I will always only be discovering.
You are creating yourself moment by moment,
                unfolding in me.
I do not comprehend this mystery:
                I move in it,
and I rest in it,
                here, with you.

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

September 6, 2019

         The vessel the potter was making of clay
         was spoiled in the potter’s hand,
         and the potter reworked it
         into another vessel, as seemed good.
                  —Jeremiah 18.4

Potter God,
center me in the wheel of your grace.

As the world spins around me
lay your strong, wise hands on me.

Cup your creating fingers around me
and draw me up into your image.

Press upon me, steady, firmly;
let me feel you pressing,

let struggle be my making, pain my art,
your thumbprints on my soul, my flesh,

caressed into the shape of you,
molded to your knowing, your delight.

And if I lose the shape you will
smush me down into my lump

and shape me up again, anew, and
unafraid to be so pressed to beauty.

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

September 5, 2019

         “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother,
         wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself,
         cannot be my disciple.”
                           —Luke 14.26

It’s probably not your mother and father.
It’s probably someone else, or maybe everybody,
in front of whom you don’t want to look stupid. 
You don’t have to hate them,
but you have to be willing for them to hate you
for your politics or your trans friends or your anti-racist work,
or your letter to the editor or your allegiance to bees. 
You have to be willing for them to think you’re alien
for taking your faith so seriously,
for declaring a hope that looks silly,
for standing in a vulnerable place for justice,  
for sticking to the discipline that gives your life frame and strength.
And, let’s face it, sometimes
you have to care more about praying than you do about your friends,
or you would never pray.

You don’t have to lose your care for life,
but you do have to lose your attachment the life you engineer
instead of the life you’re given.

There’s some major letting go to be done.
Count the cost.
Don’t leave anything out.

Then count the cost of giving up. 

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

September 4, 2019

A road runs
around the edge of the world.

One one side is this place,
its green meadows and familiar cities.

On the other is pure mystery,
dark, starred, unseen.

How odd that we stay so much on the road,
going and going,

seldom leaving it,
neither here, nor there.

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

September 2, 2019

We pray for those who labor,
especially those who labor so we may take a Labor Day vacation.
Grant your grace to those whose labor costs them,
whose labors degrade or wound or endanger them,
body and soul.
Bless those who pick our fruit and pack our meat,
who clean our rooms, tend our gardens,
gather our waste and care for our aged,
underpaid and unprotected.
Be with those who risk
to advocate and organize and unionize
those who labor for our sake.
Sustain those who labor unhappily,
and those whose labors
would be better spent with their children.
We pray especially for those who labor
under threat or force,
who are not paid, and are not free.
May all who labor be granted Sabbath,
and know their worth apart from labor.
In gratitude for your labors, O God,
we give thanks for those who join you
in creating the world,
that all our labors may create and not destroy,
bless and not abuse, and yield beauty and joy,
for the sake of the wholeness of all Creation.

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

August 30, 2019

On a grey afternoon
(it was not suppose to rain)
after errands to the hardware store
and messing with a database
(is this how I mend the world?)
tired and mindless, at the pace of ennui,
I walk out of the basement office
into the dreary parking lot
and there flits onto a dead branch
a goldfinch—a stray bit of sun,
yellow alarm, tiny shout of glory—
and, having made its point, flies off.

All the way home I breathe,
         How can I not be grateful?
         How can I not be awake?

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

August 29, 2019

The sin was simple,
but its path was complicated,
like a long involved story,
maybe even a hilarious tale
by the campfire,
a story involving voices and characters,
lots of terrific playacting
that got me up and prancing around—

till I accidentally stepped in the fire.

But without complication or lead-up
your forgiveness is even more simple

and healing.

_________________
Weather Report

Fair,
the sun of grace shining
even through dark clouds,
light giving growth
even during storms.

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

August 28, 2019