Shows / Unfolding Light
Unfolding Light
Unfolding Light is a daily reflection (weekdays) by Steve Garnaas-Holmes rooted in a contemplative, Creation-centered, justice-oriented spirituality.
Episodes
- Unfolding Light
Your ID
We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. —Romans 12.5The Empire has scanned you,posts, photos, browsing…
- Unfolding Light
Compathy
We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. —Romans 12.5We are members of one another.We are not just…
- Unfolding Light
New consciousness
Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by a new consciousness, so that you may discern what is the delight of God— what is good and acceptable and…
- Unfolding Light
Messiah now
The Messiah is a poor child in a poor townat the edge of the world.Despots want her dead, but her parents shield her.You know the tale.The Messiah is here…
- Unfolding Light
Jesus takes off his costume
Jesus comes in from the lights,takes off his crown.(You realize there was no halo:it was the backlighting.)Undoes all the pins and badges and medals:Son of…
- Unfolding Light
God is also not a rock
but a certain dancingcolor under the riverwhere the light and the waterand the flowing happenmovement minglinga murmur of curvesindefinitebut certainoutlines…
- Unfolding Light
The Bible’s model family
People who clamor that we should get back to the “Biblical family” don’t know what they’re talking about. Biblical families are sick. Cain murders…
- Unfolding Light
Defiled
It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles. —Matthew 15.11The most sinful bit about the…
- Unfolding Light
Flow
Holy One, light of life,you are my blood, my breath.I am the breathing of your Spirit,the movement of your grace.I am a spring, overflowing with you.Your grace…
- Unfolding Light
Artist
She is given the same colors as everyone:joy, fear, longing, rage, wonder, grief.She sits by your window finger-painting,moving those primary colors as she…
- Unfolding Light
Legacy
Walking in the woods, thinking of other things, so, not really in the woods, I traveled on a path that sooner or later will disappear, among trees that will…
- Unfolding Light
August 6 – Feast of the Transfiguration
Six days ago he said he would be crucified.We said “Impossible.” Our sense of decencyinsisted. It was unthinkable.Now it is August 6th, an ordinary day.8:15…
- Unfolding Light
Joseph
The saga of Joseph and his brothersis not just about an ancient family.They are us.The one we would dismiss,the one we would be done with,is our sibling.The…
- Unfolding Light
Deeper
Troubled seas. Arguments of waves.Wind screaming at you.Boat not doing well.Suddenly an apparition,possibly a ghost, more impossiblyChrist on the waters.How…
- Unfolding Light
Evil
There can be evil in this good worldbecause in the beginningwhen God said ”Let there be light”the world was born from wanting.Wanting can go many ways—divorced…
- Unfolding Light
Wrestling
Traveling between woundswe pause, make some space in time,allow the evening pall to be laid over us,darkness tucked up under our chin,a stillness purely…
- Unfolding Light
Darkness
It is said God dwells in thick darkness.We can’t imagine how thick.Sometimes the darkness is so thickit holds you up.Sometimes the mystery is so…
- Unfolding Light
Turmoil
When turmoil surrounds me I sometimes internalize it:it becomes inner turmoil. Then I get used to it.I get habituated. I get addictedto my own chaos and…
- Unfolding Light
Loaves and fishes
When they ask the elders “How did you do it?With so little, against so much, how did you do it?”the answer is always the same.With five loaves of love and two…
- Unfolding Light
There it was
One day there it was.Hope at the bird feeder.Gratitude murmuring amongthe pebbles in the brook.Kindness waiting for mebetween the sidewalk and the door.Beauty…
- Unfolding Light
You reveal
God, you reveal yourself so sparingly!—a fleeting suspicion, a rising tide in me,a wisp of interstellar dust, a scent,a half-emerging thought, a leaning…
- Unfolding Light
Turning the compost
It begins with the thrust of the fork,piercing the side of the pile,opening up the flesh of the earth, the scrapsof every sacred meal, the once savory…
- Unfolding Light
The field
You won’t find it in an exotic marketbehind a secret beaded curtain,not on the last hundred metersof the mountain finally conquered.You won’t…
- Unfolding Light
Treasure
Prayer is not fingering the pearl of great price,or turning over in your hand the secret treasure.It’s emptying your vault to afford the pearl.It’s…
- Unfolding Light
Unheld
When you fell and skinned your kneeand your mommy kissed it and made it betterit really did make it better.How much of your agony is not the hurtbut the need…
- Unfolding Light
Hope
In hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what one already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with…
- Unfolding Light
Boats
Little boats moored to buoys in the bay softly bump each other, cuddling like cats in the fog, that curls around the pilings of the pier, posts that appear…
- Unfolding Light
Wheat among my weeds
The ants I wish to banish from my houseare such encouragement of industry,teamwork and perseverance.Even as I mitigate, I bless.The knee that wakens me in…
- Unfolding Light
The doing of being
We’re invited to just be, without doing—but even simply being,a lot is being done.While I sit in stillness my body is working,lungs doing their…
- Unfolding Light
Ode to being laid up
I sink into the slowness of it,the mire: weak as a jellyfish,having to be and not do,dependent on others,more like an infantthan I would choose if I…
- Unfolding Light
Christian nation
Here comes the Fourth of July,when too many confuse God with America,is if God weren’t the God of every nation,every planet in every galaxy in the…
- Unfolding Light
The secret
You are doing nothing in particular,but very much so,gazing at the trickle in the gutter,or maybe watching someonelost in what they’re doing,a mother…
- Unfolding Light
Monsters
I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within…
- Unfolding Light
Sin
I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. It is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. Who…
- Unfolding Light
Come
What if in the end there is no law-giverdemanding obediencebut a life-giver offering life?What if there is no seerdispensing secret wisdombut a friend…
- Unfolding Light
Procession
While you are worrying about the state of the worldthey are walking, while you are doing the dishes,driving on the Interstate, unseen, hand in hand,generations…
- Unfolding Light
Cup of water
You can be a flower by the side of the road.You can be a fountain for whoever passes by.You can be a lighthouse where the coast is uncertain.You can be a…
- Unfolding Light
Hold the light
As evening fell, an earthquake struck,buildings toppled, and all through the citypeople were crushed and maimed.Into the streets came a medic,even as the light…
- Unfolding Light
Listening
God said, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there…
- Unfolding Light
Dark and light
I hear Dark and Light split up, went their separate ways.Apparently Light had a thing going with Godand Dark was insanely jealous. He said,“I thought God and I…
- Unfolding Light
Juneteenth
You are freer than you think.Some are less free than you, and you know it.Some are less free, and you don’t know.Someone sees how you are not as free as…
- Unfolding Light
A field of poppies
Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. —Matthew 10.39A girl surmounts her fear of shame and failureand…
- Unfolding Light
Sparrow
Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Abba God. And even the hairs of your head are all counted…
- Unfolding Light
Sword
I have not come to bring peace but a sword. —Matthew 10.34The blade is not violence, but discernment,separating truth from desire,refusing to “go along to get…
- Unfolding Light
Eden
Maybe the sin wasn’t tastingbut possessing.Adam had named everything, everythingin his own tongue. He hada handle on it.Except that one thing that…