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

         When you give a banquet,
         invite those who cannot repay you…
                  —Luke 14.13

Make of your life a welcome home.
Make your heart a buffet of goodness.

Make yourself a front porch, wide,
two chairs, only one step up.

Think of yourself as a free sample,
a rocking chair, a bench by a lake.

People need a place to belong, to matter,
to receive without question.

Round up all your furniture of love and respect,
all your heirlooms of special treatment,

and put them out on the curb.
Go ahead and make a sign that says FREE.

It’s not about airing your laundry, “being yourself.”
It’s about letting them do that.

After all, you live in God’s house,
who has given you the run of the place.

         
         Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,
         for by doing that some have entertained angels
         without knowing it.
                  —Hebrews 13.2

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

August 27, 2019

Of course the laughing brook is singing.
So are the stones, even the big ones, singing.

The ice in Antarctica, the ice slipping off Greenland,
the river entering the ocean is singing.

Mountains are singing, and not the great deep
sonorous dirges you expect, but little ditties.

Air has a song. Excuse the obvious, but it’s a lovely little air.
The rock beneath the soil has a tune it can’t get out of its head.

The bottom of the sea and the stars
are joined in intricate six-part harmony.

The man in the moon—look and you’ll see—
is a happy man singing a sad song.

Cities sing. Houses sing. Airplanes don’t sing but
the people in them sing, long songs streaking across the sky.

Everything is singing, singing. Liturgies and chants,
oldie goldies, sea chanteys, incantations,

wedding songs and elegies, rope-skipping tunes, hymns,
fight songs, and loves songs… oh, the love songs.

Your guts are singing all the time, singing.
Your bones are a song. Your skin. Your eyes.

I don’t know what this means, but God
is singing a little song in you right now. Always.

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

August 26, 2019

After the gash the reaching, the weaving,
tendrils of flesh finding each other.

After the flash, the flames, grey ash—
the greening, small prelude to the immense.

Children, wounded, homing, stand
at thresholds and step through.

Root hairs stitch with patience, grasses
fur volcanoes’ ribs, mosses home bare rock,

arctic birds find place in ice, species drift
and shift and shape. There will be life.

The very word that there be light
ripens the dark. Being seeks its fullness.

Battered souls still mend and seek to mend,
and even caved do it to save and to defend.

Whatever is broken, bent or incomplete,
an inner knowing whispers make it whole.

Even in the year your mouth
is full of ashes, bones of smoke,

something new will rise, already is.
Bind yourself to this, through flood and flame,

in you and every soul, this mending will, the heart
of what it is to be, moving, given, graced.

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

August 23, 2019

Today you will see someone bent.
You will be tempted to wonder
how they brought it on themselves.

You will hear an offer
of healing, a brave and generous hope
denied, belittled, deferred.

You will see a hand outgiven,
a meeting yielding to frailty,
touching what can’t be touched.

You will witness a tightening,
old fears and excuses,
a caging, an act of depressing,

and yet a remolding
to unbow you, stand you straight,
a loosening, a raising, if you dare.

Today you will notice someone bent
and see with awe, not pity
a daughter of Abraham,

and with eyes unbent
be set free and given power to heal
if you choose so to see.

         “And ought not this woman,
         a daughter of Abraham
         whom Satan bound for eighteen long years,
         be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?”
                  — Luke 13.16

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

August 22, 2019