I am in God,
           and you in me,
           and I in you.
                           —John 14.20


There is only one thing,
and we are all are part of it.
It’s all love.

God is the holy
One,
the holy Oneness.

The universe is inside God.
God is in us.
We are all part of one another.

Sin is the delusion of separation.
Salvation is being included in the Whole.
Holiness is harmony.

Love is including.
Faith is reaching out.
Hope is trusting all this.

Prayer is paying attention.
Righteousness is joy and gratitude
and being here.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Sometimes God is in our mistakes. At least, sometimes in our mistakes, grace happens. The penultimate line of yesterday’s poem contains a typo. But a pretty good one. You may sit with either the intended version or the unintentional one. That’s poetry. And I have to sit with the mistake. That’s life.

Mistakes happen. Sometimes it’s just the humorous slapstick of auto-correct gone wild. Sometimes it’s just us. We sin without knowing it more than we knowingly sin. Sometimes we hurt someone without realizing it. We intend one thing, but do another. We believe we’re doing one thing, but we’re actually doing something else. Our mind thinks one thing, our hand writes another. (That’s how we write poetry.) We can look at what we’re doing and, fooled by our preconceptions, not see it for what it is. St. Paul says “I know the right thing, then do the wrong thing.” Sometimes a big chunk of life is a Freudian slip. We never outpace our need for confession.

But sometimes when our lives slip out from under our control grace happens. As Joseph says to his brothers in Egypt, “You intended to do me harm, but God intended it for good.” I think of Jesus’ parable about the sower sowing seeds, and some seeds fall on the path and are eaten by birds. How the birds thank God for that. And how the parable forgives everyone, the birds, the seed, the weeds, the sower, the sun.

So today pay attention to what you’re doing. And be aware that life is not always in our control, and that grace happens no matter what. Forgive yourself for your mistakes. Look for blessing even there. But proofread anyway.

What I said in the poem: “the almost rests.”
What I meant: “the almond rests.”

They both work. Take your pick.


___________________
Weather Report

Variable,
as today’s temperature
repents of yesterday’s,
the wind’s erasures
not in your hand,
the sky a palimpsest of clouds,
and life continually
revealing and unrevealing itself.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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On the table by the window,
the light not elegant, cloud-shrouded,
a small yellow rose in an old vase
and a single almond, lying there.
The yellow rose
yellow against the grey
shadow of the bookshelf,
the almond by itself.
Yellow folded within the rose,
and not unfurled.
The light moves gently,
satisfied to hold the almond
and the rose. The rose
does not aspire, the almond rests.

The yearning,
and the peace,

to be as true

as this.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           God will give you another Advocate,
           to be with you forever.
                           —John 14.16

We’re familiar with the image of God as our Judge
(or, if we’re honest, maybe even prosecutor),
but that’s not how Jesus sees it.
The Holy Spirit is your Advocate— paraclete in Greek,
a person who accompanies you in a legal trial.
God is not your judge: God is your defense attorney.

God defends you against all society’s judgments:
whether you’re successful, good-looking, happy—
you know, normal.
And God defends you against all your own judgments:
whether you’re good enough, lovable, forgivable—
you know, worthy.

God advocates for you.
God is on your side, not against you.
God’s judgment is always in your favor,
not a verdict, but a promise:
“I favor you, now and always.”

All those charges against you—
not good enough, all that—
God has dismissed as spurious allegations.
Are you still hanging onto them?

God holds our souls in the light of love and says gently,
“I rest my case.”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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A king has been crowned,
someone elevated to a position
purely because of his birth. And yet— so are you.
Not by virtue of any skill or power,
nor seizing any throne,
but simply by your birth alone, you are God’s royalty,
honored and adored.
You have been chosen by God to bear justice in this world,
to guard the Realm and defend the poor.

You will not be heralded in the streets,
but in the heavens you are praised and prayed for,
precious in the Realm of God.

You have been given a crown of light,
a scepter of love, a sword of wisdom,
an orb of humility, a robe of beauty.
The coronation regalia may appear in your hands
as a coffee cup, a diaper, a gas pump, a walker.
But you reign in beauty and dignity.

Regardless of how the world sees you,
do not doubt your royal stature.
No one by their ignorance of your majesty
can dim your honor or depose you.
Carry yourself with regal poise.
You who are crowned by the sunrise, robed in love—
God save the royal one!

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Holy One,

you are the gentle water
that wears down the mountain of me.

You are the soft root hair
that splits the rock of me.

You are the worm
that digests me.

You are the mycelum
that weaves my soil.

You are the silence
that utters me.

You are the Oneness
to whom I belong.

With all of my being
I belong myself to you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           “No one comes to the Father except through me.”
                           —John 14.6

Jesus, I do not come to God through my prayers,
not my belief, or being good enough, or being a Christian.
I come through you, Jesus, the love of God made flesh.
You bring me, as you bring all people, no matter their religion.
It is your love, and not anything I do,
that is the way I become close to God.

Jesus, I do not need to “ask you into my heart.”
You are already here, loving me infinitely.
I only need to allow you.
I surrender my doubt that you love me,
and my pride that you should love me.
I surrender my resistance. I allow you to love me.

Christ, I do not come to God beside you, but through you.
You take me into yourself, and I come willingly.
You take me in, and I become part of you,
as I take in your bread and it becomes part of me.
I am part of the life of love,
the love that is the Way and the Truth and the Life.

Take me in, Beloved, that you may live and love through me,
and I may live and love through you.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           I will come again and will take you to myself,
           so that where I am, there you may be also.
                           —John 14.3

Forget, for a moment, the afterlife.
I am not speaking of death, but of love.

I am going to a place of radical love,
of total self-giving.
You can’t come because you can’t give me,
only I can.
But in my giving I make a place for you,
a place on the cross.

And then I will bring you with me in self-emptying,
so that where I am pouring out my life
you may be also pouring out your life,
pouring out my life through yours.

You won’t be alone. No matter where you are,
no matter what you choose or others choose for you,
what is forced upon you or is draining out of you,
I will have taken you into myself.

This is the way.
You do not go on the way. I take you.
I take you into myself, and I go the way.
As if I am with child, I carry you everywhere you go.
I am the way. I am life.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           In our parents’ house there are many dwelling places.
                           —John 14.2


There’s room for you.

              •
There’s room for everybody.

              •
There are many ways to be at home in God.

              •
Make yourself at home.

              •
In God’s house you have many roommates.

              •
God’s house is wherever God is.

              •
God is infinite. Everywhere you ever are is a room in the house of God.

              •
Take off your shoes.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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It’s not just mud season,
but the season of sludge and slime,
the slippery slop at river’s edge
beneath the veil between the light and dark,
down underneath the hedge, among the roots
and warrens of the now undead,
where all that winter’s taken spring is taking further:
what once was frozen whole
is broken down in pools of brackish goop,
where grief is chewed and swallowed into hope.
Above the ground the thawing breezes, mendicant,
seek fragrance where it may be found,
and also reek of teeming fermentation in the soil.

Rebirth’s no lightning spark, a finger from above,
but deep below, a slow and smelly moil,
a churning of what’s lost—and it stays lost—
toward something fragile, rank, and new.
Once dead, now decomposing, death’s digested
by the worthy work of worm and rot and gut,
by grace’s blessed fungus, resurrection’s germ,
spurred on by longing, labor, and a kind of lust
where burrowings of bugs and beetles
make a womb where life is woven out of death,
and slowly seething, gravid earth gives forth,
gives joy, gives birth.
And you then, creature, will you wade
into the grave and puddle of this world
and venture into life‘s deep mud, and be remade?

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