You don’t have to believe in angels
to trust you live accompanied,
a creature in a meadow of creatures
linked body and soul,
as the planet of you
orbits in a field of gravities,
loves unseen
that lean and draw,
turn and pull
and gleam,
that know you,
walking with you even on this street,
prophets, neighbors, seers,
your ancestors, amazed and confident,
your other selves,
silently conferring,
even, yes, here along side you
in trust and wonder
your children’s children,
and indeed, breathing with you,
something, or since God is not a thing,
someone of God.

Better not to concoct exotic beings
than to imagine
the Holy
broken
into bits
of loneliness.

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

 July 9, 2019

         But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus,
         “And who is my neighbor?”
                  —Luke 10.29
         
People say you should be a good Samaritan.
You can’t.
Samaritans were despised outsiders.
Good or not,
you have too much privilege to be a Samaritan.
That’s for the queers, the immigrants,
the trans, the blacks, the homeless.

You can be good,
you can be generous to strangers,
even to your enemy.
But you are not the hero of this story.
You can’t be.

You’re the one in the ditch.
Your neighbor is the other one.
You call them rapists and they pick your fruit.
You call them shiftless and dangerous
and they build your economy.
You abhor them and they bless you.

Stop making it about you.
Confess your dependence.
Receive your neighbor’s grace.
Be humbly grateful.
Let yourselves be neighbors.

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

July 8, 2019

         I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.
         Cure the sick, and say to them,
         “The Realm of God has come near to you.”
                  —Luke 10.3, 9

Ours is not to triumph, but to love.
It will confuse us mightily, and defeat us,
If we think we are to have power or influence,
if we expect to have a rightful place,
if we look to be given the keys to the city.
It will disorient us if we forget the sacrifice asked of us,
if we think opposition and persecution are for others.

We are to bear witness to the One who has power,
and to display that power in healing, not in dominance.
Lambs will always live differently from wolves.
We will always be outside the norm,
outside the halls of power.
We will be inside the Realm of God,
which bears upon the world to transform it,
which the world will resist.
Our perseverance in grace will be our victory.

We are sent out: not to convince but to mend.
The grace we bear will always make us odd.
We will know failure and disappointment,
but the Realm we proclaim is at work in us,
healing, transforming, making new and glorious.
The Commonwealth of God has already come near.

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

July 5, 2019

You who despair that Nation has outlawed God,
has consumed Justice and spit out the bones,
take heart.
Love is eternal, and outlives Empire.
Spirit lives among the Little Ones
and power waits there, breathing.
If you become one of them
(surrendering much) you will know that power.

The Emperor struts and slays and displays
because he is desperate to believe his own lie.
The Powers that move in the shadows
wearing costumes of light
are certain of their powers. They are wrong.

The power of hope is greater than greed.
Compassion overcomes fear.
Our unity can’t be abolished.

The divine slave woman strains in childbirth,
the pain is deep, the labor hard,
and we attend, not as strategy,
but to be alive.

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

 
   —July 4, 2019

         The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
         patience, kindness, generosity,
         faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
         There is no law against such things.
                  —Galatians 5.22-23

You can’t give yourself joy or peace.
They are fruits of something else.
What you can do is do things
that move the Spirit in you
that bear the fruit of love and generosity.

Whatever you have to do today,
do something that gives you joy.
Let the Spirit do the rest.

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

 June 27, 2019

         As they continued walking and talking,
         a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them,
         and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven.
                  —2 Kings 2.11

Migration.

Pastors leave flocks,
sad or glad to go,
or both, and move on.
Kids graduate, chariots of fire
and whirlwinds separate them,
mixing feelings.
Mantles are passed.

Refugees stream over borders
with little knapsacks
of songs and trauma.
Hearts are transplanted.

Generations branch and root.
The world’s eyes get hooked on loss
but the pilgrim’s heart is confident
in the grace of the mystery
in which everything
is taken up.

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

June 26, 2019

         Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests;
         but the Human One has nowhere to lay their head.
                  —Luke 9.58

Jesus has made his decisive move, to go to Jerusalem—
love confronting power, God confronting the Emperor.
He is the protestor. He is the sovereign. He is the outcast.

For his solidarity with the victims he is victimized.
His disciples want to turn his enemies into victims.
Do you see how hard it is to fight this demon?

The New Human, the Messiah, the Fulfillment of Humanity,
is homeless. A refugee. Child in a concentration camp.
Whose side are we on? Whose side? Whose side?

O Love, O homeless heart,
may mine be yours
till you are not.

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

   June 25, 2019

         Now there was a great wind…
         but God was not in the wind;
         and after the wind an earthquake,
         but God was not in the earthquake;
         and after the earthquake a fire,
         but God was not in the fire;
         and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
                  —1 Kings 19.11-12

In roar of rush and tumble
whitewater-frantic traffic,
tangled in there,
a whisper;
in life bent wrong,
in rusty knife-edged days
cutting deep and rough,
a murmur;
in empty, looted places,
long hope-starved roads,
not separate from them,
in wrecks and ruins and regrets
a sigh,

not much, I know,
since even my mildest voice
shatters planets, flattens suns,
but in temple-deep silence
at the root of your thickest pain
enough to be distinct
from noise or nothing,
neither shouting nor a closed eye:
a wordless syllable, slight, and yet
enough to have created light,
enough to let you know
I’m trying to let you know
I’m here.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
   —June 24, 2019

On my little island this is the longest day.
Perhaps on yours it is the shortest.
The same day means different things
depending on which island you’re on.

Recently I lost something, and yet, I gained.
As I age some things work more poorly; some improve.
Everything has light in it, and dark.
It’s more full in our eyes when we see both light and shadow.

There is always the thing, and our judgment of the thing.
There is my experience of it, and yours.
Neither is right, nor wrong.
Wisdom is knowing both.

God help us see without erasing.
Help us discern without judging.
Help us imagine the other side.
Help us stand, and allow.

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

   —June 21, 2019

         Now there was a great wind…
         but God was not in the wind;
         and after the wind an earthquake,
         but God was not in the earthquake;
         and after the earthquake a fire,
         but God was not in the fire;
         and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.
                  —1 Kings 19.11-12

Juvenile hearts, candy-sated, antennae bruised
by brutal onslaught, have to dial way up to hear,
spoiled by flash and sparkle, useless here.
Here light is too loud, even shadows can shout,
deep places, caves, hearts, canyons, stay empty
to receive. Stones are best, they listen slowly,
no cross talk, thoughtless, simple. Neat.
Of seasoned heart, you tune yourself
to silence, the vastness inlaid in the moment,
the infinite tiny here in this deep sliver
of silence. Here is ocean bottom, farthest heaven,
deepest prayer, free of walls of tongues,
of comprehending noise, of knowing’s lie.
Here the Word escapes the words, enlarges
and becomes beyond, within, the listener
and the silence one. Echoes vanish, waves
defining distance null, the Lover now
so fully present here, and deep,
that nothing need be said.
Being looked at.
Being held.

Tarry, and attend.

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

   June 20, 2019