Unfolding Light

             God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom,
             and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.
                                        —1 Corinthians 1.25

Those who seek to dominate,
who vaunt self-interest,
who exercise power and strength,
think us weak and foolish
to practice the way of the cross.
They think we live in a blank universe
we can shape by force,
and we’re missing our chance.
But the universe is not neutral.
It hums, it vibrates, it throbs
with the love of God, with grace and mercy.
In humility and compassion,
we empty ourselves of all self-interest
in love for the whole.
Even in our fiercest resistance to evil
we do not project force,
but make allowance for grace,
the negative charge of love,
toward which all energy flows.
Through the weakness of God
we join in the mending of the world.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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You are that tiny dark speck upon the shore.
The vast sky of ocean beneath, sea of clouds above.
You may feel anonymous, as wanderers often do,
standing beside the waves that speak
in a language all their own.
But the unknowing is only yours.
The sea cucumber, the narwhal,
the mantis shrimp angling across the sea floor,
the ocean knows them, knows
the humpback and its song, the skate’s grace, all
the crab knows of justice and the octopus of love.
The sea’s tentacles reach up every river,
drawing food into itself. It sees
the riverbanks, even the mountaintops.
It has been there. You can see for yourself.
The tree knows all its bugs and birds, its vast web
of roots and mycelia and all its neighbors, it knows.
And the earth you stand on, the stalks you bend,
they know you’re there.
Even every galaxy knows what it contains.

Dear tiny speck in the milky way of the sandy shore:
unseeing as you are, you are seen.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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Blessed are you who are vulnerable or undocumented,
        for you belong to God.

Blessed are you who are pepper-sprayed,
        for your eyes see most clearly.

Blessed are you who respond to brutality with kindness,
        for kindness alone will change the world.

Blessed are you who are neighborly amid terror,
        for you are at home with God.

Blessed are you who protest injustice,
        for this is God’s voice.

Blessed are you who shoot with cameras instead of guns,
        for so does God.

Blessed are you who are harassed and arrested,
        for you are most at peace, and most free.

Blessed are you who are shot or maimed,
        for so they treated the martyrs before you.
Blessed are you who are despised and deported,
        for so God’s beloved are always treated,
        yet you never leave God’s loving home.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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No thanks. We’re busy forgetting.
Forgetting it’s happening again in Palestine.
In Minnesota. Here. Now.
Forgetting our own capacity to justify cruelty.
Forgetting it starts with rounding up all “those” people.
Forgetting the thousands hauled off.
(Unmarked SUVs are better than cattle cars, no?)
Forgetting those starving in occupied lands,
or stowed in concentration camps —
well, let’s call them detention centers.
Forgetting there is a part of us that believes
there is a “they” who are ruining life for “us.”
Forgetting we are family, all of us.
Forgetting we are one.
Forgetting our way.
Lost, we are caught in our own death camp.

So then we start by remembering we are one,
and their pain is ours
and their hope is ours,
and then we begin to remember
the way out.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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            Jesus began to speak and taught them…
                       —Matthew 5.2

Blessed are you who have nothing to offer,
        for you are offered everything.

Blessed are you who are broken-hearted for the world,
        for God weeps with you, and will rejoice with you.

Blessed are you who do not seek to dominate,
        for love dominates your life.

Blessed are you who sacrifice for the sake of justice,
        for you will know victory.

Blessed are you who are gentle,
        for God’s gentleness enfolds you.

Blessed are you who seek only love,
        for God will be everywhere for you.

Blessed are you who remain peaceful in conflict,
        for so you reveal God.

Blessed are you who are treated harshly,
        for God treats you to the entire realm of God.
Blessed are you who are punished for your compassion,
        for this is the way of the cross.

[I recommend you meditate on the beatitudes and write them in your own words, often. Here are another ten versions, and some meditations on the beatitudes.]

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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When storms of evil assault our boat
we flee for refuge to Jesus,
asleep beneath a thwart
on a peaceful cushion,
and wake him: “Don’t you care
that we’re in danger?”

He wakes, and wakes us with him,
takes us with him,
gathers us in his arms,
his whole soaking church,
and climbs up into the storm
with us, faces the waves with us,
and breathes a different kind of wind
into us—us, for this storm is ours—
a breath by which we ourselves can cry out
in a voice that creates what it names,
“Peace! Be still.”

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “I will make you fishers of people.” —Matthew 4.19

Not mere recruiters we are,
but connectors, includers,
netted in the same love,
caught up in the one mystery,
with those hidden in murk
brought out into warmth,
something that was flashing in the deep
drawn up into light, dawn-scaled,
all of us fished up
out of some unseeable bottoms,
whole shoals of us gathered
and gathering, schooling our togetherness,
gladly in the haul of God.
What once we did (call it fishing)
for ourselves, or our desires,
we now do for people, for others,
for all of us,
for the One into whom
we are continually fished.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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             “Follow me,
             and I will make you fishers of people.”
                                  —Matthew 4.19

Follow: to accompany
           Jesus, I leave behind what I cling to
             to be close to you.

Follow: to go after or behind
           Beloved, wherever I go
             you have gone before me.

Follow: to accept, give authority or allegiance, to obey
           O Love, in all I do
             I follow your teaching.

Follow: to conform, to mirror, as to follow a conductor
           Lamb of God, I want to imitate you,
             to follow every gesture, every move.

Follow: to understand
           Rabbi, I confess I don’t always follow your thinking;
             help me understand.

Follow: to watch
           Jesus, I am watching you like a TV series,
             every episode, the whole story.

Follow: to pursue, to track
           Beloved, you are on the move.
             I want to stay on track, to keep up.
             You are the star I follow.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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                             On the death of a friend

A great tree has fallen in the forest.
We stand beside it, bathed
as if by evening light in awe and grief.
Its branches, that once spread toward other trees
now, toppled, reach for sky or earth alone.
We marvel at its height—look, greater than we knew!
Its roots, exposed, reveal how deeply it was fed.
In time the flesh of this old tree will sink
back into earth, and every bit of bark and fiber feed
the bugs and fungi who will do their sacred work
until this wood, now briefly held in death,
becomes again the stuff of life.
The fruit and shade and shelter
that it gave without complaint have fled,
as if a teeming flock of birds at once had left its limbs
and flown, with all their songs, into our hearts,
where now those gifts, like roots in winter,
live unseen, and pray, and wait, till we ourselves,
mysteriously nourished, bear new fruit.
Goodbye, dear friend. The space you leave
now opens up for others yet to grow.
Your deep, thriving green we miss so much
still somehow burgeons in these woods
and in our greening hearts that feel the wind
like spring-warmed leaves with joy and gratitude.

__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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God of Justice, God of love,
as you do, may we see all people as your beloved.
Move us with your love to act for dignity for all people,
to stand not in charity but solidarity
with those who are oppressed.
Save us from the temptation to wish but not to risk,
to hide behind our privilege, to let others sacrifice.
Sustain us with your hope, to trust your presence,
to rely on your grace in all things.
Fill us with the spirit of your peace,
to face violence and cruelty with gentle persistence.
Beloved, hold us in your arms, for the road is long,
and the struggle is hard—but the future is yours.

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