I said,
God, you don’t know what it’s like to be human.
You aren’t limited by forces you can’t overcome
but always have to watch out for.
You don’t have to dance with mortality,
never have to navigate vulnerability,
never even have to think about gravity.
You don’t know what it’s like to have to try so hard.
The danger. The impossibility. The not quite belonging.
We
don’t know what it’s like
to not even have to know what it’s like.

God said,
Hm.
Stay with that.
Maybe now
you know something
about
white
privilege.

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

August 13, 2019

 “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?
         No, I tell you, but rather division!”
                  —Luke 12.51

Not us-versus-them. Not good people on one side
and everybody else on the other. Not you against neighbors.

But you, distinct from what others want of you.
You, not what will please them.

The real you, true and unmodified,
standing for what you know and care for,

regardless of how others balk and resist and criticize
and cajole and manipulate and persecute and crucify.

Beware: those whose hearts are unwhole
will try to draw you in to complete them;

but you cannot be them for them. This is the great division.
You must be yourself, and let their incompleteness go,

without ceasing to love them. Let them press against you
even as you stand for them.

Jesus prays for strength for you to stand as self,
to stand without pleasing, without apologizing.

Stand with hope and trust, though you be alone—
for, standing alone, you find your true companions,

bound not by opinion but by the Whole, What Is,
given, not made, the Body of Christ.

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

August 12, 2019

         We are strangers and foreigners on the earth…
         seeking a homeland… a better country…
                  —Hebrews 11.13, 14, 16

Tongues corrupt and tangled,
lungs not made for this air,
we know it feels wrong.

Language of white supremacy,
habits of greed and violence,
our own tribe is betrayal.

How dare those foreigners
show us the map of our lostness.
Immigrants in our own house.

Pilgrim, marry your longing.
This world you were meant to change.
That heaven you seek is in the wrong people.

Find them, your other home there.
Seek that heaven, and bring your children,
all of us.

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

August 9, 2019

         Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit
                  —Luke 12.35

God is not sitting idly by
         watching our self-destruction.

God is at work in every moment,
the same dance of electrons
and embrace of gravity
vibrating with love,
creating and creating,
grace in the very being of it.

In every moment
God is mending what is
from the depths of what is.

Tragic or magic, momentous or mundane,
every moment is a choice
to join in harmony
or sit idly by.
Be ready.

The light of the lamp
of your heart, lit,
enlightens the world
and guides us in this darkness.

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

August 8, 2019

         Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
                           —Luke 12.34

Wherever your love is,
         there will be your will.

You pass by a lilac, and its scent allures you;
         you want it, and so you turn aside to smell it.

If you love it you will seek it.
         The more you love, the more might with which you seek.

Friends, learn to see the Beloved
         in everything, every person.

Let her beguile you,
         and without trying you will turn aside and do justice.

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

August 7, 2019

This is the day, August 6th,
when history reminds us
the terrorism, the barbarism we’re capable of:
destroying an entire city full of innocent civilians
just to frighten a leader or two.

Lest there be any question,
three days later we’ll do it again.
Not military targets, just shocking.
Pure terrorism.
We’ll justify it,
wrap it in strategy and politics and patriotism,
as if we had no other choice—
but hundreds of thousands will die,
and more will suffer, for a generation,
a generation.

It’s how we do things.
We firebombed Tokyo in the night of March 9,
killed 100,00, destroyed 16 square miles of city,
and left a million homeless.

We did that to 67 Japanese cities.
Civilian deaths. Sixty-seven entire cities.

We are a great people.
And this, also, is who we are.
We will never escape our own violence
until we confess it.
We will never attain true greatness
without true honesty.

Let this be a day of confession, mourning and humility,
and a day of compassion.
Let us begin to be people of peace.

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

August 6, 2019

         Strive first for the wholeness of Creation,
         and these things will be given to you as well.
         Do not be afraid, little flock,
         for it is the Beloved’s good pleasure to give you the whole realm.
                  —Luke 12.31-32

You strive for it
         yet it is pure gift.

You long for it
         yet you already have it.

You want to know your place in it,
         but it is all yours.

It’s easy to forget
         but it’s the most important thing.

You know you need it
         but even more you need to trust

it is given to you,
         all of it, gladly,
         
everything you need.
         Everything.

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

August 5, 2019

A meadow, a small crowd of trees
marching over the hillside
over a million years pauses for me here
and I’m so grateful.

God I thank you for every thing,
for the whole of it, not partial,
good and ill,
for the bird that ate my snack, thank you,
the morning walk and the poop stepped in,
for grace that hauled me from deepest pit,
sunlight on a pitcher handle, thank you,
for sickness— the body to be sick—
and recovery, always trailing death,
the small yellow stone happy on a city street,
always your mystery in it,
mountains leaping up can’t contain it.

Humility tackles me. Wonder erupts.
Thankfulness tangles my words.

I give you thanks,
my life:
may every thought word and deed be thanks,
and after I die
gratitude
linger in the air.

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

August 2, 2019

I forget you
utterly, completely.
I forget you with my whole self.
I forget you with my hands,
reaching for not you,
grasping something always else.
With my breath I forget you,
air passing out of me, never returning.
I forget you with my feet,
walking up stones,
not touching earth,
you are forgotten.
I forget you with my eyes,
seeing otherwise,
not even the shape of you,
the space in the air that isn’t you,
not what casts the shadow, not the shadow
but only the shape
I forget.
I forget you with my butt,
sitting where I please, not minding.
I forget you with everything I have
when I can manage it.
I forget you on the tip of my tongue
and at the back of my mind
how can I possibly
forget you?

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

August 1, 2019

          The farmer thought, “I will pull down my barns
          and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods….”
          But God said, “This very night your life is being demanded of you.
          And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
                  —Luke 12.18, 20

I’m always building bigger barns
to hold resentments,
what I’m sure people owe me,
storehouses of The Way I Want Things To Go,
reputation and pictures of myself—
oh, several silos of those pictures—
and barns, huge barns, of How I Like It,
my securities and assurances.
All built of wax.

But then:
my life is on fire,
all of it, house and barns, going up,
and I have 30 seconds to get out.
What would I grab?

My integrity? My wife? Those pictures?
My sense of humor? My mind?
Yeah, my mind. Or what about my soul?
Of course. My soul.

… Wait…
No,
I’d grab you, God.
Grab you and run.

          If you have been raised with Christ
          seek the things that are above…
                   — Colossians 3.1

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

July 31, 2019