Unfolding Light

             You know how to interpret
             the appearance of earth and sky, but why
             do you not know how to interpret the present time?
                                                          —Luke 12.56

Oh, we see the orange blades of fascism
knifing out through the leaves.
We feel that autumn edge to our easy days,
the coming frost of fear.
We know what we’re seeing,
the erasure of truth, the hoarding of power,
soldiers in the streets
and neighbors disappearing.
We know how to interpret these.

But there are other signs hidden in the present moment:
the great tidal movement of compassion,
strangers holding hands,
the tilting of the earth toward light,
the buds of God swelling,
the hands of Love on the clay as it turns on the wheel.
The present moment is not just these minutes.
(Relax; you will arrive in time.)
It’s not jut these days, or even years.
(Yes, this will get harder before it gets easier.)
The present moment belongs to the eternity of grace;
this moment, this year and this eon are enfolded.
The final resurrection is also today.
The Suffering One is already present,
who inhabits every tragedy with mercy.
The end, in which all is made well and whole,
is also in this moment.
The present time isn’t just one phrase,
but the whole story.
Eyes open, friends. Even now the Mystery expands.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “Do you think that I have come
              to bring peace to the earth?
             No, I tell you, but rather division!”
                                      —Luke 12.51

This is not the division of enmity
but of standing up for what you know
even if others will think ill of you,
even those you love.

When you are faithful to who you are,
what you truly think and feel,
it may displease some,
who want you to conform, or at least pretend.

We do it all the time.
We go along to get along.
Sometimes “just be yourself”
is an invitation to profound loneliness.

The Beloved knows.
Take courage to stand apart
and let others navigate their own anxiety.
You’re not alone.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Some days in my sore feet I find the dust
of your Judean hills; I feel its stones.

In my hunger, or my trembling,
your forty days in the desert.

I see in the mirror right there in my bald spot
the scars of your thorns.

There in my x-ray is your pierced side,
the holes in my hands and feet.

In my eyes, when I dare, your seeing
the invisible woman, the troubled man.

In my hands your power to heal,
in my bones your trust in our Abba.

Sometimes for a moment, a moment,
I disappear in you, and am whole.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             You must be ready, for the Truly Human One
             is coming at an hour you do not expect.
                                                —Luke 12.40

The Healer appears,
like that kid in the store
whose wondrous smile
pulled me back
from the edge of gloom.

The Multiplier of Loaves
comes, picking produce
for me and thousands,
without thanks.

The Crucified One is there
in the beggar I gave money to,
and the one to whom I didn’t.

The Teacher speaks
in the refugee who shows me
more than I want to know
about my own displacement.

The Wandering Rabbi appears
in the homeless who remind me
of how I belong, and do not belong.

The Messiah appears
in whoever evokes my love,
for in loving, and loving alone,
I am saved.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             Do not be afraid, little flock,
             for it is God’s good pleasure
             to give you the entire realm.
                                          —Luke 12.32

We ask for favors,
for this little victory, that little narrow escape,
and so often that’s not what we receive—
because God gives us something else,
something greater: the whole thing,
the entire realm of God’s grace.
We get this huge glorious planet,
the crashing seas and the rumbling mountains,
we get frogs and koalas and puffins,
and moon and stars and a sun that never forsakes us.
God gives us gravity that holds us, and color,
and food, and wind, and rivers.
We get the whole human family,
all our beauty and strangeness and woundedness,
our music and dancing and wild inventions.
We’re given forgiveness and belonging and hope,
a world mostly unrecognized where we are loved
and blessed and made whole, however broken we are.
We receive grace, hidden in every thing,
whether pleasant or painful.
We get God’s steady presence, closer than our own nerves,
breathing with us, hurting with us, rising with us.
It is God’s joy to give us the whole works.
Even in trying times, it’s OK. Do not be afraid.
We’ve been given more than we need.

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

             Where your treasure is,
             there your heart will be also.
                                     —Luke 12.34


What you give yourself to
gives you your self. Choose wisely.

             •

In love you turn yourself inside out.
What you care about lives inside you.

             •

Love the entire world, all of it,
and your heart will be whole.

             •

Love wasted
returns.

             •

             Where your treasure is,
             there your heart will be also.

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

Up comes the Sun,
spooning great gobs of yellow light
into the mouth of the morning,
that swallows it greedily.

Shadows stand up out of the dullness,
begin to draw themselves into their objects,
but in ho hurry.
Birds scatter a confetti of songs.

And what’s this? I rise
from the grave-clothes of my bed, alive,
the day pouring into me
like sun into the meadow.

I am the opening bars of a song
love is just now improvising,
spilling out of me, who will sing,
if I let it, all day long.

I will let it.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Pretend it’s distant. Blood in the rubble.
Clothing under chunks of cement. A toy. Half a toy.
Scattered shards of mirror, showing sky.

A people being turned to dust we try not to see.
Goodness like buildings collapsed, mile after mile.
In the broken mirror a mother, wordless, gazing.

Desolation that speaks of a desolation.
A child, dazed, starving,
loved. We think they can’t see us,

humanity wasting away. A famine of decency.
Remnants of righteousness, almost buried.
A winged figure sifts through our ruins.

We don’t dare pick up the mirror.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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As if prayer is something you go to
like a place or a meeting, and not
ruin, or
                  seed.

As if prayer is something you can be in
like a room or a mood, and not
poverty, or
                   love.

As if prayer is something you do,
like speaking, and not
what happens to you, like
                  sickness, or surprise.

As if prayer is something you get up from
like a chair or a chore, and not
sex or
                  a grave.

No, let my prayer storm into me,
or digest me, or dawn in me,
from which I rise risen,
                                      scathed.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Coastal marshes are gentle places,
nothing dramatic: soft sediment laid down,
tender grasses nodding in the breeze,
holding hands. Egrets wade,
turtles bask and fish lurk. It’s pretty quiet.
There are no stone bulwarks, but in a storm
the marsh protects the land
with an invisible strength.

Kindness is like that.

The apple tree by the roadside offers its gifts.
It asks nothing, makes no exchange,
fortifying whoever eats of its fruit.

Kindness is like that.

The scent of lilacs, that transgresses barbed wire,
the beauty of music you can hear even in riot gear,
an act of generosity defying all accounting,
a small seed that cracks sidewalks.
A little song that stays.

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