Unfolding Light

A child, I stood by a still lakeat night and gazed as the watermirrored the sky, the stars spreadover the night and down into the lake,and, I imagined, into me,and like the lake my receiving their lightstretched up into the night andI extended to the end of the universeand for a moment I was infinite.As I grew up I learned that the stars I sawmay have died eons ago,having gone on happily without me,and how foolish I was.Now that I am old I seeI’ve never known anything truer. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

          If you love me,          you will keep my commandments.                       —John 14.15God of love,I want to keep your commandments,not to be right, or to be rewarded,but only because I love you,as I honor marriage vowsnot because I mustbut because I love my spouse.Help me keep your commandmentsby forgetting your commandmentsand remembering your love.Let my love flourishand my obedience blossom from it.And when my love falters,grant me the gift of obedience,that it might reawaken my love. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

Let me be like this tree,open faced to the gallery of sky,to the many-fingered wind,to the creatures who take advantage of it.Its roots deepen their belonging in the dark mystery,persevering, insistent without insisting.Let me be like this river,receiving and letting go,flowing with all it’s given,happily generous.Let me be like this rock,mountain-born, glacier-borne,that one day will be sea sand,but now stands, solid,a thing of simple beauty.Let my joy and my calling be that.Let me be like this day,open and readyfor what is next. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

There’s a great listening going on.If you listen you can hear it.Animals hear things we can’t, or won’t.The trees guard their silenceto hear the soil, hear the wind,hear every word, especially the unspoken.When you’re buried earth listens so carefully to you,to the soft tissues, and everything else.Orbiting planets aren’t just caught in math,they’re listening, sun and earth hearing and responding.The universe holds its ear to your heart.And there is a great listening among us, us jabbery people,to the tales and the songs and the cries and the lies.The sounds settle down in uswhere only our bones can hear, but they do.Beneath the roar and rattle you can hear this porous worldtaking it all in, in the desert, yes, the ocean depths,and even in the city, even in the deaf.We can stop our ears with earbuds of noise,or dismiss the jangle, open ourselves,and join the great listening. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

The rain that rained last night is past,though it’s not gone, but hidden here beneath us,purling, pooling down below our feet,seeping into every green, patient thing.The peepers now are singing, each to each.The beeches, young and old, do not beseechbut simply reach for light. They’re always right.The morning light lies calmly on the limbs.It’s in no hurry. It is resting.The leaves nod calmly and receive.The brook will never doubt the spring,but opens up its throat and sings.I would stay longer here, in heaven’s little taste,but it’s no waste to take this blessing with me,and know it in the streets and living rooms and offices,and learn this trust: that everything is given, all is graced.The ants are working hard and yet, by mercythat’s not theirs they find their food; the wrenamong the grit and sand and bits of trash we dropis given seeds, takes wing, and pausing, gladly sings._________________Weather ReportJoy,borne on winds beyond our control,falling like rainthroughout the nightbefore we were aware.Chance of flooded hearts. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

           “I am the way and the truth and the life.”                       —John 14.6Some people gather around a monument,like a statue of a rock star they love,or a president they would have voted for.But it’s Jesus. They get points, I guess, for coming there.They admire the statue, read about it from a little book,some even kneel and pray, or toss a coin or something.Then they go back to whatever they were doing.If you look at it just right the statue seems to gesture,as if to invite the viewer onto a path behind it.Some people take the path. For them that’s Jesus.But for me there’s no statue, not evenone pointing the way. Not even a path.There’s just the one I walk with.He is the path.Whenever I make him into a statue he vanishes.As soon as he becomes a laid-out path he leaves it.But if I keep walking with him he stays with me.It’s the walking-with.The moment-by-moment choosing, serving,being loved and loving,harmonizing in a two-part jazz improvisation.If I forget, if I somehow lose my way,I can always go back to the statue and look. When I doI hear singing, a sweet tune that needs a little harmony.When I start down the old familiar pathI hear a voice behind me say. “Wait. Let’s go this way.”… __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

           “Do not let your hearts be troubled.           Believe in God; believe also in me.”                       —John 14.1People have little glittery knick knacks and postersthat say “Believe”… often accompanied by unicorns.Every Christmas the movies want you to “believe!”In what? Santa Claus? Unicorns?We’re ruining that word.What Jesus means is to trust,not just to think the spindly rope bridge will hold,but to walk across it.          +Beloved, beyond opinions about you,we entrust ourselves to your grace.We trust your loving presence, and we follow.Every day, though the bridge is sometimes shaky,we are learning to trust you.Breath prayer:                           Trust . . . love __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

By the mystery of grace,the imperishable power of love,death rolls over in its grave,sighs,and lets go.               •No one could hold onto Jesus—the soldiers at the tomb,Mary in the garden,the disciples at Emmaus.Every time he slips through our fingersand into our hearts.                •Resurrection is such a mystery;it’s hard to graspletting go,being held. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

When you are asleepyou hang in God’s closet.Every morning God gets upand stands there wondering,“What shall I wear today?”God chooses you and puts you on.That’s when you wake up. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

          Beloved, you are my shepherd.          You lead me in good paths          for your name’s sake.                       —Psalm 23.1, 3Resurrection is not just comfort,it’s courage. It’s a signpost.It points to the victoryof love and nonviolenceover evil, death and injustice.It indicates the good pathwhere our good shepherd leads us,through the shadowed valley of suffering,to bring to the table of graceeven our enemies.For, dying, love endures.Failing, love wins.So we follow good pathswith courage to live gently,to serve humbly, to forgive freely,to risk boldly for the sake of the vulnerable.Such is the path to lifethat can’t be taken from us, even by death,an abundantly fruiting tree,rooted in the eternal heart of God.So nourished in this peculiar green pastureof dying and rising,and so gently ledby our dying and rising shepherd,with love and courage we go. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

You lean gently toward me,stethoscope placed to hearwhat I can’t hear.Your rich silenceis itself a word.Every time I speakI interrupt your listening.What is within,hearing itself heard,is changed. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

           The shepherd           calls their own sheep by name           and leads them out….           The sheep follow the shepherd           because they know that voice.                       —John 10. 3, 4There is no sound.It’s not a word.It’s the name rain has for earth,the name a mother hasfor the child inside herbefore it is born.It is the name you become,the voice that speaks you into being,spoken only as the tonguespeaks flavor to the mind,as a spring speaks the river.A name that is not spoken in love,a voice that knows an algorithmbut not your soul,you safely ignore.You listen for the voice that knows you,that wakens you into life;and that voice you follow,like roots for water,like leaves to sun.You followso that life, deep and flourishing,is yours. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

In the mist rises something like a tree,arms outstretched, as a yoke,in its branches fruit, and blood,planted by a stream all of life drinks from.It’s missing an apple.A lynching tree, maybe,in midday sun,where the birds of the airmake nests in its branches,whose leaves are forthe healing of the nations.A fruitless tree not cut down,but dug around with manure.Something like a serpent in it, lifted up,a tree of good and evil,a child climbing there,the root of Jesse,a woman beneath it, weeping.Something like a vineof which we are branches,embracing everything,the root and seed and leaf,the cutting down of the treeand the new tree all one thing,a tree coming up in springout of a seed that has died,out of stone, out of a grave,blossoming in the dead of winter,in the dead of all of us,holding up the sky as night fallsand falls and falls.Something like a tree,on which is hung our salvation. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

       Then their eyes were opened,       and they recognized him,       and he vanished from their sight. — Luke 24.31Searching among the ruins of your failures,the gravestones marking your losses,preserving your sins,you will not find your Beloved.Among the sad stories carved in stoneof what you should have been,you will not find the Holy One.Trying to understand, you won’t be able to grasp.Even in your brightest moments,as with a falling star,the light cannot be held.Your Redeemer is not entombed in the past.but here, in this beating moment.And then not.Not waiting for you to notice,the One Who Is With Youis no longer in that moment just past,but has gone into the next.How we have to keep awakeningand awakening. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

          You have delivered my soul from death,                   my eyes from tears,                   my feet from stumbling.                       —Psalm 116. 8There were actually three discipleson the way to Emmaus, but one stopped offat a nearby village to visit her sisterso she never met the risen Jesus.Had to hear about it afterwards.At a church picnic once I watchedas a softball, a long foul ball,traced its fateful arc right towardthe head of a three-year old who never sawher dad reach out and casually catch it.Our granddaughter, two months old,is cared for through all kinds of weatherand infections and sleepless nights,and will likely never hear of it.I have been saved so many times,delivered from death or at least stumbling,and of most of them I am unaware.Even without full knowledge I am learninggratitude and wonder.Some days my soul is like a three-year oldat a picnic being greeted with inexplicable joyas if the subject of an amazing story. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

      We had hoped that he was the one      to redeem Israel.                          — Luke 24.21But that wasn’t hope. It was wishing.It was too small, too maybe-maybe-not.Married to peace but flirting with despair,fooling around with wait and see.Listen. God’s quiet presence is absolute.Your sins can’t budge it. Death can’t touch it.Beware the illusion that the Beloved has gone,that you are alone, or doomed.Even in tragedy, the collapse of everything,the Beloved walks with you, toward grace.Don’t be afraid to go into your sadness,to walk that long dusty road of your shame.Jesus took your despair with him to the grave,the finality of disaster, the last possible dawn.Now the stone has been rolled from the tomb.Longing has been raised as true hope,trust in the One who can’t be kept away from you.Behold: both of you, eternally, are alive. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

O Risen and Always Rising One,when we walk in grief and despairyou walk with us.When we question our faith,you open our eyes to know more deeply.When we seek nourishment and rest and familyyou join us.When we are bewildered,when we don’t know what to do with our lives,you take them, bless them, break them, and give themto us, and to the world, in love.Have not our hearts burned within usas you have accompanied us all along? __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording:

Resurrection is not so much a changeas a revealing, an undressing,the clothes of this world stripped awayfrom the pure light that was always there,and is there now, in you, walking aroundwith the Big Bang hidden inside you.Trusting now what you’ll only see in the end,you love wildly, forgive boldly,stand courageously with the endangered,and risk all for the sake of healing,knowing even great sufferingis only a passing fashion.Beneath, you are pure glory. __________________Steve Garnaas-HolmesUnfolding Lightwww.unfoldinglight.netListen to the audio recording: