the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the vision of far off things seen for the silence they hold. It is the heart after years of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush. It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground.
There is a huge difference between learning about truth and experiencing truth. Touch the source. Your mind can take in endless pearls of wisdom and your mouth can repeat them, but until you have essential experience — you only have noise. Talk and even listening are nothing without understanding. We only truly understand what we experience. When people have understanding they tend to be more quiet and seek quietness. Consider the possibility that many of the things you hear and say are utter nonsense and meaningless repetitions of noise. Cut it all out. Quit getting your information second hand. Take any concept, lesson, story, book, quote or conversation and look for a way to touch its source of origin — which is always an experience.
“We are uncomfortable with intimacy and connection, which are among the greatest of our unmet needs today. To be truly seen and heard, to be truly known, is a deep human need. Our hunger for it is so omnipresent, so much a part of our life experience, that we no more know what it is missing than a fish knows it is wet. We need more intimacy than nearly anyone considers normal. Always hungry for it, we seek solace and sustenance in the closest available substitutes: television, shopping, pornography, conspicuous consumption — anything to ease the hurt, to feel connected, or to project an image by which we might be seen or known, or at least see and know ourselves.” – Charles Eisenstein
Its incredible how one’s needs can be so contrary from one moment to the next.
Or maybe vociferousness is not for me.
The day was warm and the park beckoned. I reached for the camera but then left it behind.
There was a need for silence. I did not want to capture an outward display of appreciation. Instead, I took it inward. I wanted it to implode within and drown me in its presence. To let it pool in the center of my being and then let it burgeon with the stillness of the woods. Tender, quiet, restful. A balm, a solace, a gathering of the wayward sinews of breath and then, a releasing.
An unraveling, a crumbling of the walls of the fortress. And then, a gentle rebuilding.
the madman running to see the moon in the window, the hawk I saw tracing the cliff edge above the river. I will be the man I have pursued all along and finally caught.
I will be all my intuitions and all my desires and then I will walk slowly down the steps as if dressed in white and wade into the water for a second baptism.
I will be like someone who cannot hide their love but my joy will become ordinary and everyday and like a lover I will find out exactly what it is like to be the happiest, the only one in creation to really understand how much, I’m just a hair’s breadth from dying.
You who live temperate zones, who haven’t lived through these months here of cold, shoveling snow, shoveling more snow, living in box canyons of snow, under worried roofs, dripping walls, chipping ice, walking stiff-kneed on ice, dressing complicatedly for every sojourn, the layers, the precautions, things matted, frozen shut, the dark skies, skies continually falling, dark, if you haven’t looked out windows trying to remember what a yard looks like, trying to guess where the ground is, longing for green, longing for smells, longing to walk across grass, to be outside and not hurt, longing for something to be easy—do you know this yearning for light, for warmth, for beauty, for release, do you know this ache?
I believe you know it with or without the metaphor in your yard. It’s the ache for the new world, for the old life to close its winter eye, the ice grave to crack wide open, for your true self to walk toward you out of the darkness. It’s the ache for freedom, the long, dark ache for Easter.
It’s not a bad thing to live in the longing, with even grace not merely laid at your feet yet, not of your doing, but purely gift. To know you are waiting, and what you are hungry for. And how deep is your longing. And that it is coming.
Today is the first day of spring. The forecast is for snow.
I am filled with hope. __________________ Steve Garnaas-Holmes Unfolding Light
bring me deeper: not to mere insight, but to presence; not to feelings, even feelings of your nearness, but deeper presence for you and for your stirrings in me, compassionate presence for my neighbor and for all the world.
By your presence in me, deeper presence.
By your grace… presence.
__________________ Steve Garnaas-Holmes Unfolding Light
God of love, be in me to embody your gentleness and grace, to love at my own cost, to enter the suffering of the world, to hold the wounded in my heart, to bear the monstrous without explanation, to absorb the pain without retaliation, to let there be a hell on earth without another, to trust that even the greatest evil cannot drive you out, and that love and forgiveness alone will change the world. Grant me faith to be willing to be overwhelmed and raised again. I do not ask for heroic strength but for you to bear the cross in me, that by your Spirit in me I may be Christ, crucified, and risen, no longer small, no longer threatened, no longer afraid.
__________________ Steve Garnaas-Holmes Unfolding Light
I sit with the ghost of ashes
on my forehead,
still raw and sore,
feeling the sting and exhaustion
that comes from vulnerability
in the face of possible rejection.
I feel unworthy,
even as I know I don’t need to.
I felt under dressed –
one of my hardest, most shame-filled, pettiest horrors in life.
I felt judged as less than,
even though I do not know for sure I was.
I feel broken,
crushed,
I sit in the ash heap of my past
reflected in the story I have to tell.
my truth –
it’s so ugly,
so jagged,
how can it ever be redeemed?
how can I possibly be arrogant enough to think that God will use me,
restore my life,
even bless me?
Because He already has.
Because the truth is, he is making beauty right in these ashes,
even this very moment.
If I have ever believed that for sure –
then this is the time to truly believe it.
No matter the judgement of anyone.
No matter the temptation which these feelings bring – yes, this is the wicked temptation –
to tempt me to feel
unworthy,
less than,
like I don’t belong,
like I can’t make new choices,
like my clothes matter more than my soul,
so I turn away and give up.
So I do not risk this feeling
by just not sharing my story.
So I forget, or ignore, the multitudes of miracles.
So I just take my life in my own hands and make something happen for myself, without God.
As I am tempted to do each moment.
I want to heap the ashes on my head,
sit in them,
rip my already hole-y sweat pants even more.
I want to wail –
instead of this civilized way of crying with tissues catching my overactive sinus production.
I want to run far away and have someone tell me I’m pretty,
I’m a victim,
Life’s unfair.
Yes, I am tasting ashes for lent.
Today, I am very aware of my inefficiencies.
I bow with humility.
I bow in gratitude.
I have nothing
Yet!
(there is hope!!!)
I am beloved!
thank God,
Easter is coming!!
AL 3/6/14
20 things you might consider giving up this Lent. And these are things to give up not just for Lent, but for the rest of your life.
• Guilt – I am loved by Jesus and he has forgiven my sins. Today is a new day and the past is behind.
• Fear – God is on my side. In him I am more than a conqueror. (see Romans 8)
• The need to please everyone – I can’t please everyone anyways. There is only one I need to strive to please.
• Envy – I am blessed. My value is not found in my possessions, but in my relationship with my Heavenly Father.
• Impatience – God’s timing is the perfect timing.
• Sense of entitlement – The world does not owe me anything. God does not owe me anything. I live in humility and grace.
• Bitterness and Resentment – The only person I am hurting by holding on to these is myself.
• Blame – I am not going to pass the buck. I will take responsibility for my actions.
• Gossip and Negativity – I will put the best construction on everything when it comes to other people. I will also minimize my contact with people who are negative and toxic bringing other people down.
• Comparison – I have my own unique contribution to make and there is no one else like me.
• Fear of failure – You don’t succeed without experiencing failure. Just make sure you fail forward.
• A spirit of poverty – Believe with God that there is always more than enough and never a lack
• Feelings of unworthiness – You are fearfully and wonderfully made by your creator. (see Psalm 139)
• Doubt – Believe God has a plan for you that is beyond anything you could imagine. The future is brighter than you could ever realize.
• Self-pity – God comforts us in our sorrow so that we can comfort others with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
• Retirement – As long as you are still breathing, you are here for a reason. You have a purpose to influence others for Christ. That does not come to an end until the day we die.
• Excuses – A wise man once said, if you need an excuse, any excuse will do.
• Lack of counsel – Wise decisions are rarely made in a vacuum.
• Pride – Blessed are the humble.
• Worry – God is in control and worrying will not help.
God has so much more in store for you. But so many of these things above are holding you back from walking in the full destiny he has laid out for you. Today is a new day.
So there you have it. What else might you add to the list?
Can I show you where we can go together? Can I dance with you, grab hold of your hand, my fingers clasped around your palm? You are graceful when you dance with me. You are free, your steps light and sure. You plant each foot firmly into soil. You know this ground, this earth. The floor is level and you respond, fully, to my subtle hints at what will be the next move to make.
You trust Me. You know Me. You want to be with Me. You know who you are and your burden is light and your smile is radiant and your eyes shine.
To go forth now
from all the entanglement
that is ours and yet not ours,
that, like the water in an old well,
reflects us in fragments, distorts what we are.
From all that clings like burrs and brambles—
to go forth
and see for once, close up, afresh,
what we had ceased to see—
so familiar it had become.
To glimpse how vast and how impersonal
is the suffering that filled your childhood.
Yes, to go forth, hand pulling away from hand.
Go forth to what? To uncertainty,
to a country with no connections to us
and indifferent to the dramas of our life.
What drives you to go forth? Impatience, instinct,
a dark need, the incapacity to understand.
To bow to all this.
To let go—
even if you have to die alone.
Is this the start of a new life?
Departure of the Prodigal Son by Rainer Maria Rilke
life: acoustic & amplified 