Unfolding Light

We don’t hear from you,
but I see you
gazing out the palace window.
Your silence roars.
David had his private little comeuppance
but you have had no hearing.
David’s punishment was the death of your child,
to add to your husband’s.
(Surely your grief sobered him.)
But have you had reparations,
or even a door for your grief?
Our beloved king, so brave and wise,
is also a monster. We sing his psalms
and repeat his transgression.
When the palace trumpets are still
there hangs the dark melody of your lament.

Bathsheba,
to you and your millions of sisters,
we confess. We all have ravaged,
the whole palace, the entire nation.
Our abuse has wounded you,
our language belittled you,
our policies excluded you,
our jokes isolated you.
Our silence has harmed you.
Our fear has disappeared you.
And still you walk the palace halls,
gaze out the window at that shadow,
and wait for us to become worthy
of sovereignty.
By God’s grace, some day soon,
may we become so.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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God,
Giver of Light,
you who are the clarity at the center of all things,
the truth that makes all things appear:
Open my eyes.
I confess: I am easily confused,
quickly distracted by my fears and desires.
Wake me.
Heal me of my dread of what I may behold.
Draw me out of the gloom
where I hide my eyes inside my head.
Peel from my soul’s seeing
the husk of my own mind.
Free me from myself so I can see
without fear or delusion.
Steady me.
Pierce me with your light.
Draw out in me a horizon of peace
so I can see the whole of things,
see with clarity and compassion,
see with gentle eyes.
With the eyes of heaven,
help me see.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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What if all you possess
is the love of God?

Pile up everything else—
your goods, your reputation,
your desires and opinions,
your control over things…
everything.

Set it on fire.

In love,
you can warm yourself by those flames
for a long time, and be guided by that light.

______________
Weather Report

Clearing,
as the occluded front of your desires
meets the low pressure zone
of God’s desire for you,
resulting in reorienting storms.
Warning: the Spirit’s wind will sweep much away.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light     
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Thimble full of flavor,
thumb print of grace,
humble berry offered
among sun and bumblebees,
your thorns draw blood,
love’s price, amid this blessed
giving and receiving.
Flesh of presence,
flavor flowing in self-giving,
the All of the Divine in our mouths,
the bread and wine of this afternoon,
we come not to observe but to join,
to savor, swallow, and be saved
by what ripens in our souls
until we hold the world
and say like a mother to her child,
“I love you so much
I could eat you.”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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            Moses said to God:
            “If your presence will not go, do not bring us up from here.
            For how shall it be known that I have found favor in your sight,
            I and your people, unless you go with us?”
                                     —Exodus 33.15-16


A way to discern a path
when faced with a fork in the road,
maybe a tough choice, maybe just a moment’s attitude:
which way is God going?
Of course God will go with you either way,
but maybe on one path God comes along
with great sighing and rolling of eyes,
while God is happy to be on the other path.

Trust that whichever direction you go,
even the most mistaken,
God will find a way.
And in the direction God most favors,
even the most difficult or dangerous,
God has already made a way.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           Those who are well have no need of a physician,
           but those who are sick.
                           —Matthew 9.12

I won’t tell you how to live.
I won’t argue about what you believe.
When I say I’m following Jesus
I’m not comparing myself
or setting myself apart.
I’m not claiming anything more than
my life.
I’m not professing anything more than
the power mercy has over me.
I don’t expect preferential treatment
or even kindness.
I’m simply trying to find the light.
I’m just trying to reform my life.

It’s the question life asks of us:
what is your story of the universe
and how do you fit in it?

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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            Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s
            and to God what is God’s.
                         —Matthew 22.21


There is so much more to give to God
than to Caesar. So much more.

Not only Caesar, but Caesar’s world—
that throne and all its scaffolding,
its pomp, its might, its falsehood,
its marketplace, its language,
its map of the universe.

What I am tempted to misgive to Caesar,
to entrust to that greedy world,
I offer instead to God alone.

The power to tell me what I see.
Trust in the truth, and clarity of What Is.
The power to tell me who I am,
what I am worth.
What anything is worth.
The power to make me whole.
The power to guide my thought,
to lead my heart.
My pledge of allegiance, my loyalty.
Myself, an image of God,
love’s likeness stamped on me,
my whole, my all, my holy.

I give myself to you, my God,
to whom I already belong.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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People often say they wouldn’t want to live
in a house where someone had been murdered.
It would spook them too much.

Maybe one reason our nation seems so crazy
is that there’s hardly a square mile
that wasn’t once the home of a Native,
an individual or a community,
that was killed. Like right where you are.

Maybe our problem is that we live
in a haunted house, brooded over
by our murderous ancestors, haunted
by our murdered neighbors.

We probably don’t need to move.
But we do need to confront our own spirits,
the real skeletons in our closets.
We need to exorcise our demons.
We need grace.

And maybe we need to get to know the ghosts.

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

You walk among silent trees.
Sun slants down,
includes you gently
without a word.

All those thoughts and worries,
worth’s calculations and predictions
filtered out by trees
rubbing their hands in the wind,
grasses telling stories about rain.
Dragonflies dip and sway over the pond.
Everything weaves, speaks of belonging.
Afternoon light settles around you.
You have been given this amazing life.

The sun falls patiently.
A crow calls “Now! Now!”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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            The king was enraged. He sent his troops,
            destroyed those murderers, and burned their city.
            He noticed a man at the wedding
            who was not wearing a wedding robe,
            and he said , “Bind him hand and foot,
            and throw him into the outer darkness
            where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

                         —from Matthew 22.1-14

Nice king, huh?
Notice how in Jesus’ parables
we think of powerful people as God—
and then figure out how to live
with that kind of divine tyrant.
But Jesus is the Prince of Peace,
not not the master of vengeance.
Jesus looks more like the one thrown out.
Despised and rejected by others,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with suffering.
Beware of your scorn of outsiders and misfits.
Every time you do, someone gets thrown out
of the heavenly banquet.
Beware of the divine sanction
you give to power and violence.
Every time you do,
there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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