Those who want to save their life will lose it,
          and those who lose their life for my sake,
          and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
                         —Mark 8.35

  
God, I don’t have the strength to fail.
I don’t have the courage to let go.
I don’t have the life in me to die.
I am asking you to wound me.
I need to be broken-hearted.
I need the humility to receive your grace.
I need to be cracked open.

Of course… you are already working within me, aren’t you?
The strong walls I have around me
are really an illusion, aren’t they?

Light, and a gentle breeze,
enter through an open door.

Here and now… I will kneel.
I will trust.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The body of the woman floating down the Rio Grande,
child in her arms, not her own, but whom she had pledged
to carry to safety.

The girl in Afghanistan, wondering if she will have a boyfriend
before she is raped.

The Indonesian boy, maybe 13, enslaved, laboring in the bowels
of the shrimp factory far at sea, who hasn’t seen his family,
or land, in two years.

The black man, strapped by the incomprehensible
to the gurney behind the prison glass.

If you don’t kneel and bow your forehead to the ground
before them, you haven’t yet been to the foot of the cross.

Pierced by the suffering of the innocent,
and your part in it, and meeting the divine there,
you behold the cross.

When you kneel, you kneel, you bow,
but it is God who draws your forehead to the ground.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Loving One,
free me from my self-enclosure,
to trust I am fully loved and heard,
so I can love and hear others.
Help me to be fully present, to be aware of myself,
my reactions, my wounds and fears and filters,
and to mindfully, lightly, hold them aside,
so I can be fully present for others,
truly listening, opening a space in me
for them to be safe, to be true, to be free.
May I be a spacious and welcoming presence,
to offer people the precious gift of being heard,
being seen, being witnessed.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light www.unfoldinglight.net
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God, give me heart to hold the trembling hand
of one who is in pain, to sit with their pain,
to hold their trembling.
Give me faith to stand in the wound of the world
and hold the edges, be the healing bond.
Give me courage to risk the stones, standing
with one who’s being stoned by hate and fear.
Give me love to forgive the one who’s caused me pain
whose pain was too great to bear alone.
Give me spirit to give myself to healing, though it hurt,
to blessing, though it cost.
Christ be in me to suffer for the sake of love,
knowing that any cross I bear is yours,
who carry all the weight, and labor by my side.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           The Spirit immediately drove him
           out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days,
           tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts;
           and the angels waited on him.
                         —Mark 1.12-13


Spirit is a shape-shifter.

    The secret overpowering guide that drives us
where we otherwise wouldn’t have gone,
and discover blessing.
    The wilderness, the holy absence that envelops us,
the arms of dust and sand that receive us.
    The span of time, enough to lose ourselves,
enough to be delivered into God’s hands.
    Satan, masquerading as someone else’s fault,
until we see ourselves, the lie of our alienation.
    Wild beasts, untamed energies,
inviting humility, awareness, acceptance.
    Angels, the way love and grace hide in this world,
so close to us, so attentive, so generous.

All of it is Spirit, transforming moment by moment,
transforming our desires.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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We love our desires,
worship our wants,
covet lush parks where we can hide,
a lovely garden with no way out,
where serpents wrap themselves around us.

In the wilderness,
empty land stripped of cover,
the bones of our hunger are exposed.
Not a lush place where everything is given,
but sparse land where everything is questioned.
We pick our way through the canyons of fear,
along the dry riverbeds of our attachments,
the large stones of our desires.
Our hunger erodes.

Only when we collapse with no other option
do we know we are fed
by a different bread.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Not a box of chocolates
or spray of roses,
but ash smudged on your forehead:
a reminder, dust,
that you shall some day blow away.
Dirt in the shape of a heart,
dust in the form of a life—
now, this life:
given, but so briefly,
like a breath,
cherished, with such sweet hope.
A Valentine from God’s own longing heart,
both praise and plea:

Love you to death.
Won’t you be mine?

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Doubting, or woeful, or just bored, perhaps,
she sits in the overheated chapel,
end of the pew, by the window,
staring at the ochre splash of sunlight
against the communion railing,
and beyond it the dark corner
obscured in shadow behind the ray of light.

The voices drone on
but what she hears is the echoes
of all those prayers she has said
and psalms she has recited,
maybe to no avail, she thinks,
those hopeful words she now doubts
but still hears echoing like shadows
behind the light of all her thoughts.

A dust mote drifts out of the black into the light,
and she stares at it: like her, just drifting,
without ground, without purpose,
without flock or herd or home.
She sort of loves it for that—

and then a too-warm ray of sun,
an ocean wave of light washes over her
to behold that like it
she is held, in light, radiant,
and seen,
such
loved
dust.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The river calmly lends itself
to the the sea.

Earth lends itself to me,
a little slowly eroding hill

of nerves and tissues,
a potter’s work finished but not fired,

an earthling, luminous as the dragonfly.
Then I return the gift.

So you, Beloved,
lend yourself to me…

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Suddenly when they looked around,
           they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
           As they were coming down the mountain,
           he ordered them to tell no one….
                                 —Mark 9.8-9

Oh, we saw it all right,
the light, the Elders, the Voice.
But explaining it… don’t even try.

When you’ve seen mystery
it vibrates inside you without words.
Don’t still it with them.

When you’ve seen glory,
don’t prove it, don’t brag.
Let it shine.

They’ll argue about whether
he’s the Son of God. Ignore it.
Look at the light in what he does.

When Moses came down
the mountain from God
people just knew.

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