We are joint heirs with Christ—
           if, in fact, we suffer with Christ
           so that we may also be glorified with Christ.
                           —Romans 8.17


Children of God
          heirs of all God’s gifts
                      arm in arm with Jesus

side by side in glory
           side by side on the road
                      side by side in the village

kneeling by the disabled man
           embracing the leper
                      enduring the scorn

entering into the suffering of the world
           his broken heart in ours
                      arm in arm on the cross

Glory

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01 — 1.4MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

           Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said,
           “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I—
           I did not know!”
                           —Genesis 28.16

In Hebrew the “I” is repeated:
“And I — I did not know.”
As if maybe there are two “I’s.”
One is the rational mind that doesn’t know,
that is incapable of apprehending God
because God’s isn’t a “thing” it can think about.
Imagine experiencing a passionate kiss.
Your mind can “get” the idea of it,
but it’s not your mind that’s kissed.
It’s not even your lips. It’s something deeper,
maybe that other, deeper “I.”

We spend most of our time in the shallow “I,”
spiritually asleep:
thinking, judging, and, honestly,
not knowing God’s presence.
But the deeper I is still there,
and when we awaken it knows.
It’s only your soul that can know God,
not by thinking or believing,
but simply by being in love.

The good news is, awake or asleep,
even when we are sure God is absent,
God is present.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:37 — 2.2MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

           And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth,
           th e top of it reaching to heaven;
           and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.
                           —Genesis 28.12

Was it a long, long ladder,
a skinny rickety thing
reaching up through clouds,
through the stratosphere, the mesosphere,

golly, all the way to the stars?
(Was there a little landing,
a resting spot on the moon?)
Or did it transcend space,
because it’s not about altitude,
but presence,
vanishing up into God?
Was the angelic traffic heavy,
was it like downtown or the airport,
everybody rushing to get somewhere?
Or was it more casual? Or maybe
more stately, like a church procession?

What if it was really just
a little wooden stepladder
and the angels of heaven
all went up and down on it at once
because heaven is the presence of God
and it’s right here,
and their going wasn’t so much travel
as a change of perspective?

What if your heart is the ladder,
and angels are on the move,
and a little bit of you goes all the way
to God and back,
even when you sleep through it?

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:35 — 2.2MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

           “In gathering the weeds
           you would uproot the wheat along with them.
           Let both of them grow together until the harvest.”
                           —Matthew 13.29-30

Oh, how we want to be among the wheat
at the last judgment, gathered and bundled off to heaven,
not separated out to be burned!

As If Jesus is talking about others—
you know, those bad people—and not you,
not what in you yourself is good and bad.

Maybe God lets you discern what is fruitful in you
and blesses it; and what is not fruitful,
if you are willing, God graciously, thankfully, removes.

Maybe we shouldn’t be ripping out weeds
because we don’t know what’s weeds and what isn’t;
we don’t really know what’s good or bad.

Maybe, though we’d love to get rid of those we hate,
we shouldn’t, because we actually also depend on them,
and removing them would uproot us, too.

Maybe we should go easy on our judgments because
we have no idea what wounds or burdens people bear,
so that what seems evil to us is actually pretty good for them.

Maybe it’s not that we shouldn’t judge
but that we can’t: we can’t know
what grace lurks in even the worst person or situation.

Maybe resisting evil and injustice is so hard
because there are weeds of hate and fear in our own hearts
and sorting that out is hard and humbling.

Maybe the stuff in your life that seems bad
is also graced, and your work is
to glean the fruit from it.

Maybe God is so present in everything
that even despite the vilest evil
grace is always possible.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:26 — 3.3MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

It is not the world you behold
until it calls out to you
with your own silent name.

It is not God you contemplate
unless that mystery includes you,
though it is nothing like you.

It is not God to whom you pray
unless that One is more
than the one to whom you pray.

It is not God you believe in
unless you know
you don’t know what you mean,

that “person” or even “spirit”
is an inept metaphor, too clear,
too manageable, too imaginable.

The Infinite Mysterious
will accept your unknowing lean
as worship.

The Gracious One
will cherish your wonder,
and speak in unintelligible tongue

your silent name.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

           Some seeds fell on the path…
                           —Matthew 13.4

All love is wasted.

It is not a wise investment.
It is not a powerful tool.

It is given away,
without thought of profit or outcome.

Often it is swallowed up by ingratitude,
or falls into gaping wounds,

or is sown among evil and hatred
where no amount of love can succeed.

Love is wasted gladly on the unknowing,
the ungrateful, the undeserving.

Even your love of someone dear is a waste,
for their love can only be a gift, not a return.

We tread on the seeds
of divine love.

Daily we go out to sow wastefully,
scattering as much love as possible.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:13 — 1.7MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

Gentle God,
give me your spirit,
that I may be a vessel for your grace,
empty of self-serving
and the will to get my way.
Give me your patience to listen,
your humility to set aside
what I or others think of me,
and your love, to be present for others
no matter what.
“Grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand.”
If I must believe even when hope is dim,
if I must forgive when I am not forgiven,
or love when I am not loved,
I take up your yoke.
If I am overlooked or even scorned,
I bear your burden.
God of grace, I root my humility in yours,
you who serve me silently.
I pray in the spirit of Christ, who thought me worthy
to give his life for me.
I lay down my life,
and find my rest in you.
Amen.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:28 — 2.0MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

           There is no condemnation
           for those who are in Christ Jesus.
           For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus
           has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
                           —Romans 8.1-2

My knees are going bad, but I don’t blame them.
If a part of my body has a hard time
I don’t condemn it; I care especially for it.
I don’t judge it for being susceptible
to age or hardship or injury or disease.
Since we are all members of Christ’s Body—
parts of the living organism of God’s embodied love—
God does not condemn us,
no matter how badly we fail.
God only blesses us.
We may imagine rules and requirements,
formulas and expectations governing
how we may avoid sin and impress God,
but they are “laws” which only alienate us from God.
They isolate us as if we are not part of God.
But God’s love sets us free from that illusion.
God’s law is that since you are part of God
you are blessed, and never condemned,
and the purpose of your life is to live out that blessing.
And if you fail,
you are blessed.
There is no escaping that law.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:43 — 2.4MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

           A sower went out to sow….
                           —Matthew 13.3

A person set out to live her life
and she tried to get things right
but some things she got wrong.
Some were good ideas but they went badly.
Sometimes she had good intentions
but they got choked out
by her doubts and fears and bad habits.
Sometimes she did good things
but they didn’t make any difference,
or they went unnoticed.
Sometimes she was misunderstood and ignored
and she wondered if her life mattered at all.
But she kept trying.
And the seeds of her trying bore fruit,
some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:54 — 1.2MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

           To set the mind on the flesh is death,
           but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
           You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit.
                           —Romans 8.6, 9

No, there’s nothing wrong with having a body,
or physical pleasure,
nothing bad about sex or chocolate.
Flesh and spirit are not enemies, or even opposites.
They need each other.

Appearances delude us into thinking
we are our flesh and no more than that:
separate beings defined by our bodies
like lonely asteroids isolated in empty space.
I think I am this thing, this body bag of flesh,
and you are a different thing altogether.
But no, in fact we’re all part of One Thing,
all separate fingers of the same hand,
distinct (in the flesh) but connected (in the Spirit)—
all members of one living organism
Paul calls the Body of Christ.
To be limited to my flesh alone is death,
as it would be for any of my organs.
But to “set the mind on the Spirit” is to stay connected,
to be aware that by the grace of God’s one Spirit
I’m part of The One, the Body of Christ,
the embodied love of God.
Each of the organs of the body (our life in the flesh)
is precious, essential and beautiful,
but only as it is connected with the others
(our life in the Spirit):
interdependent in mutual love and service,
in gratitude and delight.
To float in the loneliness of an imagined outer space
is selfishness and struggle and anxiety and death.
To be in harmony with love, one with The One,
is life and peace.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:20 — 3.2MB)

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS