Just before the cock crows,
the fading echo of my blasted words
obscures the other sound I don’t yet hear,
the sound of cloth tearing,
or roots coming up out of the ground,
when I pulled the weave of my heart
from yours.
I packed up my eyes and left.
With a dull knife of muteness
I cut my pain from yours
and discarded the rest.
The threads make no sound,
nerves squirming on the ground,
reaching like so many baby’s arms
into empty air.

As the cock crows, the jagged sound
covers the silence of you
carrying the wound that is secretly mine,
healing what I can’t yet see,
forgiving what I will eventually know,
walking toward the grave I needn’t fear.

And then, after, in the startled stillness
pounding in my head,
that great vast echoing hall of silence,
I barely hear, though still it resounds in me,
the quiet of stitching, tiny and steady.

I haven’t cut the thread after all, have I?

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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We’re so busy standing on our own two feet
we don’t often notice the who washes them.
Embraces your stinky parts.
Accepts the most embarrassing things without judgment.
With holes in his hands,
trembling a little, but with skill and strength
washes you tenderly.
Your lowly servant. Your scapegoat.
Gently soothes what is rough and sore.
Patient, forgives what aches,
mends what is wounded,
blesses what has gone unloved.
Handcuffed, cleans you up.
Honors what has brought you to this place.
Enables you to stand tall, to walk on.
Asks nothing in return, but acts in pure devotion.
For your sake.

Every moment,
the Beloved kneels at your feet.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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His voice haunts still.
“This is my body.”
Of course the bread—
stone-milled, wisdom-leavened,
sorrow-kneaded, beauty-shaped,
suffering- baked, generously given.
“Here,” it seemed to say.
“Take all of me. I give myself wholly to you.
Consume me. Take me deep into yourself.
Let me become part of you; you of me.”
In fact the whole meal, all of it was his body.
But he was looking around at us.
As if he meant us, his living body,
into whom he had gone like bread.
But was he also looking out the window?
The olive tree offering its fruit, “Take,”
patient as dusk wrapped its scarf around it,
and the wind ruffling leaves, filling our lungs.
The city, the streets that led us,
the houses that cradled us,
the crows that cleaned the streets,
and all the people, the surging, longing mass:
“This is my body.”
The Beloved coming to me, embodied,
that I touch, that feeds me, that becomes me.
Not a fleeting idea, a memory or a dream,
but the flesh of the earth, all of it;
“This is my body,” as he hands me the world,
the feast of earth, the passage of time,
the wild leanings of love, the giving of life,
the quiet embrace of death. Everything
worthy of the same gape-mouthed reverence
as at the table receiving the warm crust from his hand.
Everything I touch now, his voice echoes,
“This is my body.”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Holy Week proceeds with human naivete
and divine irony,
from royal palms to crown of thorns,
from Peter to Barabbas,
from feet anointed to feet pierced,
from sacrificial lamb to sacrificial lamb.
People who demand answers are full of speech;
the one who is the truth is silent.
Year after year we rehearse our infidelity
till we have it down perfect.
We keep on being forgiven for we know not,
and we keep on knowing not.
Watch the consistency of our false accusations,
our bogus claims, our flaky promises,
and his faithfulness, his gentleness, his love.
Notice our self-absorption and his self-giving.
Every year we say “How can I thank you?”
Every year he says, “Watch.”
Every year we say “This happened.”
Every year he says “Come with me.”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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          He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
                          yet he did not open his mouth;
             like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
                          and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
                          so he did not open his mouth.
                                       —Isaiah 53.7

             Jesus was silent and did not answer.
                          —Mk. 14.61

The innocent are always silent.
They cannot defend themselves.
They are as silent as God.

We imagine we would respond
if only we knew. But we hold
their vocal chords in our hands.

We despair of hearing the voice of God
but we have already heard
what we’re willing to hear.

The only way out of the impasse
is not to come to some judgment,
but to renounce all judgment,

not to speak but to listen to the silence,
even the most deep-throated,
gut-wrenching silence.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me….
           one who is dipping bread into the bowl with me.”
                        —Mark 14.18, 20

Those times when I feel as guilty as Judas,
Jesus reassures me.
Jesus, as host, has seated Judas next to him.
The seat next to the host of a dinner,
sharing the bowl with him,
is the seat of honor, the highest place.

This is the depth of Jesus’s love,
his absolute forgiveness.
Even as Judas’ heart unravels and he plots evil,
Jesus honors him, seeks friendship with him, and offers grace.
When you feel like Judas, remember
you are affirmed, welcomed, honored—cherished, even—
as you are.
You are invited to share the bowl with Jesus.
You are invited to enter into a closeness that doesn’t depend
on what’s in your heart, or your past, or even your future,
determined solely by Jesus’ perfect love.

There is no test. There are no rankings.
Jesus knows you, knows you are more screwed up
than you think you are, and still says warmly,
“Come sit with me.”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The first day of spring,
a day of Hope,
for Hope is not not a wish
for what will happen,
but trust in the unseen
that already is.
I hope the sun will rise
because I know it is already rising.
So it is with all I hope for,
in myself, and in the world.
The cross draws ever nearer,
but my hope is in resurrection,
for even now already,
Christ is rising,
and all the world with him.


And for my friends in the global South:
yes, even on this first day of autumn,
spring is already rising.
Hope!

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Those who went ahead and those who followed
             were shouting, “Hosanna!

             Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Holy One!”
                        —Mark 11.9


Barefoot, rag-bound, the shambles of a crowd,
babies on hips, and wounds and knives under cloaks,
we shuffle in. We cry out.
Our lives have ended up like the little bits
at the bottom of coat pockets: fragments, leftovers, shreds,
staggered hopes, fractured possibilities,
bumbled and doomed.
Smutted and smattered, guilty and longing,
we wave our palms in sweaty palms.
Yes, our prayers will soon turn sour,
branches, like praise, soon trodden.
Smug, having seen us five days later, you may scoff.
But friends, your prayers, even the finest, are no better.
This is the best we do.
Limping boldly under the emperor’s soldiers’ gaze,
for a moment we see a different kind of hope,
a different kind of king.
Here, for a moment, our cry to be saved is real.
Hosanna: Not “Hooray!” But “Save us, we beg you!”
Yes, we will soon be frightened of our own vision
and flee to the safety of the old headlines and the usual suspects,
nails and hammer waiting.
We know. We cry with hollow praise, yes—
to be saved from our hollowness,
from the infection of our very hosannas.
Even though we don’t know how to ask,
and are too afraid to receive,
please, save us anyway, we beg you, save us.
Hosanna in the highest.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Gentle One,
I confess my saddest sin,
that I hurt the ones I love.
My deepest wound draws me to them,
but draws me in blood.
Instead of healing the wound I repeat it,
and they bear it with me.
Heal and bless those I hurt.
Give me courage to witness my own wound.
Open me to your deep healing; forgive me;
and transform me, that my wound may become
a source of wisdom and compassion, not fear.
God, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
God, have mercy.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           You desire truth in the inward being;
           therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
                        —Psalm 51.6

Let me sit and watch my inward city,
come to know what lies within, unseen,
the wholeness of the truth of me,
the teeming population
and all their wounds and dances,
all their ancient stories, and love them.
To behold the whole landscape of me,
mountains with memory of seas,
the river of things I’ve done, and not,
and those once done to me.
To come to know the microbiome
of my inward being, the living things
and how they tangle in the jungle of my will.
The beauty and violence, the family bonds
of the wolves who live there.
The creatures that survive by deceit.
The worms that work the sin
and turn it soon enough to soil.
The moss and lichens that fur the stone to sand.
The tendency of all, when left, to rot and rest,
and rise again transformed.
To embrace the mystery, seething,
the underground reaching and touching,
the flowing through the air of life,
the germ and spore, the spirit of it all,
the whole body of my soul.
Teach me, not to pretend to understand,
but to silently witness, to wonder, to trust you there,
and to live wise to that mystery,
true to the grace that flourishes there.

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