Unfolding Light

            The elders said, “By what authority
            are you doing these things,
            and who gave you this authority?”
                         —Matthew 21.23

Where does the meadowlark get its song?
How dare the daffodil blossom
when snow is still on the ground?
What makes the bee think it can fly?
Who told the moon to tease us so,
to hide her face and then come back,
to pull at us like that?
And you, who said you can be as lovely as you are?

Hell’s deputies will accost you.
The ignorant, marionettes of their fear,
demand to know who’s pulling your strings.
No one.
Love flows from within,
a spring of water in the rock.

Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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The poor sun,
knowing only its own brightness,
has never seen shade,
never witnessed darkness,
knows nothing of night
and its gentle cloak,
doesn’t know how an object,
an apple, say, or a face,
curves into shadow
and how the shadow
makes it so lovely,
makes it deep and round,
blessed by the shape of its disappearing,
sweetened by loss,
inviting an arm around
its other side.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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In the market
they give you these goggles
you don’t even realize you’ve got.
They’re so you buy stuff and fit in.
They give you the opposite of x-ray vision.
They’re fogged up and chintzy,
so the surface of everything
is glitzed and shiny
but you can’t see beneath.
You can see how someone dresses
but not how they feel.
You can see something’s wrong with someone
but nothing else.
You can’t see the prophet
in the woman at the well.
You can’t see God sitting there, patiently,
with Joseph in Pharaoh’s prison.
You can’t see the water in the rock.
You can’t see the Messiah
distilled down into the lowly.
You can’t see what is, just what sparkles.
To the miraculous, people will say, “How dare you?”
To healers they’ll cry, “Who do you think you are?”
Ignore them. Take those foggy goggles off.
Someone is always slipping them on you again.
Every time you awaken, you have regained them.
Take them off again. Look beneath.
The water in the rock, the saint in the prison cell,
the luminous presence of God, are right here,
for those who have eyes to see.
Look beneath.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Worship is God’s art gallery.
She sets out a few beautiful things
to watch us come in our glory.
We look at the beautiful things
but God gazes at us.
We cover ourselves under the veil
of “I’m not good enough,”
or the shroud of “I’m not as bad as some,”
but God lifts them both alike from us,
and gazes at us as we truly are,
God’s works of art,
and delights.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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           God said, “I will make of you a great nation…
           so that you will be a blessing….
           To your offspring I will give this land.”
                       —Genesis 12.2, 7

Oh, we love the part about being great.
We forget the part about being a blessing.
And we fight about the land.

We want “great” to mean might. Dominance.
What if it meant extraordinary, like a great artist?
     We’d be a people who are remarkably wise and beautiful,
     who are uniquely faithful and loving
     amidst war and conflict.

We seize the promise of land,
and seize the land from others,
which can only lead to war.
What if we thought of whatever land we were on
as a gift from God—not ours to possess,
but God’s, to cherish?
     We’d be a people who know their belonging
     no matter where they are,
     who regard everything as gift, not entitlement.

What if we thought our purpose in life
is to be a blessing for others?
     We’d be a people whose one will is to bless,
     who trust that “the gentle will inherit the land,”
     and who therefore become truly great.

The promise is still possible.

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

Geese draw a lingering line above you,
in archaic script across the sky.
They are saying something.
You don’t need to know what it is
for it to give you hope.

Trees are holding hands beneath you,
conveying an ancient wisdom.
You don’t have to understand it
to trust it.

Creatures are singing in the dark of night.
You don’t need to know their tongue
to receive their prayers.

The angel of history reads a book,
a story of light and beauty.
You can’t read her lips, but the music
surrounds you, accompanies you, lifts you.

The word of God is near but always hidden,
maybe in that neighbor out the window right now,
walking her dog, a little fuzzy mutt
who watches her carefully in case there are treats.

You learn to listen in a language you don’t know
for a grace you do know.

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

           When they measured it with an omer,
           those who gathered much had nothing over,
           and those who gathered little had no shortage;
           they gathered as much as each of them needed.
                      —Exodus 16.18


           When those hired about five o’clock came,
           each of them received a denarius.
                       —Matthew 20.9

We think justice is that people get what they deserve.
But there’s no such thing.
There’s no accounting, no scale
by which “deserving” can be calculated.

Justice is that everybody has what they need,
no more, no less—regardless of one’s evil or virtue—
no payback, no wages, no quid pro quo.
There is only grace. Freely given. Infinite.

Which is harder:
to receive unmerited grace, and be grateful,
or to witness others receiving unmerited grace,
and be grateful?

To begin the work of repentance
in our judging of others,
our resentments of their undeserved fortune,
to repent of the arrogance of our entitlement,

we best begin by marveling at our own manna,
its grace, unearned, undeserved yet constant,
and trade in the smug, shallow satisfaction of a good deal
for the miracle of a pure gift.

Only then, with humility born of awe,
can we look upon our over-blessed neighbor,
even the least deserving one,
and rejoice in their manna.

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

O Intimate Mystery,
you are my home,
spacious, welcoming, and nourishing.
Give me grace to offer
welcoming spaciousness to others.

Trusting my belonging in you,
I offer others the same,
for we are siblings all,
here in your one house.

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

The latest scam is those emails
seemingly from a familiar friend
inviting you to some unnamed event.

If you’re tempted to open them
it may be because you’ve denied yourself
all the invitations the world sends.

Nothing happens encased in itself;
everything, every object, every moment,
offers itself, invites us to enter it.

The flower says, “Smell me! Gaze a while”
The door whispers, “Open me. Come look.”
The path says, “Want to see something?”

Every passing stranger cries, “Want to hear a story?”
The moment of silence says nothing,
but raises its eyebrows as if to say, “Come, deep…”

The offer is always there
to pass through the portal,
open ourselves to the invitation

where something in us is asked out—
that unexpected encounter,
that inevitable grace.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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To this one grief do not succumb at last—
unlike so many losses, all that tearing,
all the deaths of things that must be passed,
the vital griefs from which you learn by bearing.
Yes, when your child gets on that bus you weep,
trailing pages of your loose-leaf heart,
the rough handwritten story you can’t keep.
How small the steps with which your light departs!
But you grieve not for her–she will return–
but for that soul for whom all things are new,
that child who still can wonder, risk and learn,
the part that you don’t want to lose of you.
So do not let that grief, that death be true:
no, let the new adventurer be you.

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