be the manger
My Word is made flesh.
This is how I live.
I am born not once long ago,
but each moment, always.
Will you be my flesh?
Having none of my own,
can I put you on and wear you
into the world?
Will you be born for me?
Walk in the woods for me, will you?
Touch what you can touch for me,
touch with gentle fingers.
Listen for me. Hear so that I may hear.
Smell pine and sage, babies and cities.
Smell for me.
Look with my eyes.
See what I long to see,
one thing at a time.
Be with the lonely for me, will you?
Stay close to the suffering,
dance with the joyful, dance
as only a body can dance.
Let your heart be broken,
as only a beating one can.
Reach out to the despised,
notice the beauty.
Dare to be a child in a rough world.
This is how I come.
You are my flesh now, dear one.
Bear me into this world
and I will always be in you
and in all you meet.
Have an eye for those who don’t know this;
see it in them even when they can’t.
Let me discover
what it is to come to myself
in my own Creation.
Look— even now
I am coming close,
seeking the manger.
Even now I enter.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
On the streets of anywhere lives a man.
The same man.
Homeless and alone in the world.
The tears that fill his eyes go by silent, and unnoticed.
Tears that cry out for a simple glimpse of the certainty that he’s a brother to us all.
That he belongs.
But you and I dare not look. Lest we catch such a glimpse.
A glimpse that might show us the frailty of our own humanity.
A glimpse that might admit that we are, and always have been, more than brothers.
– Nic Askew
life: acoustic & amplified 