Getting the driveway done

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


Perfect snow piles up on the branches,
perches on every post and wire,
puts big hats on everything.
The morning sun stands like a wizard
behind the big tree at the end of the driveway,
making little sparkles of light fall from it.
Gold and silver, amber, with a touch of blue.

I need to shovel the driveway before the snow
gets heavy, before we need to drive out.
I grab the shovel, and as I pass Buddha,
sitting on his little bench in the garden
by the corner of the garage, smiling,
he says, “I'll help you, if you help me first.”

I look at the driveway, five inches deep and
a hundred and fifty feet long. Buddha is
a nice guy, but he's made of cement
and is not likely to handle a shovel real well.
I look at him, his serene smile, his hands
resting on his knees like he's got all the time
in the world. I say, “OK.”

So I stand there with him and stare at the tree,
the light falling from it into the driveway,
the magic sparkles leaping off of everything,
white and silver and gold, transfiguring the air,
for a long time, until he is good and satisfied,
a long, quiet time beneath the passing sky.

Then we get to the driveway: even and patient,
stooping and throwing in a sublime rhythm,
scraaape and shuffle, scraaape and shuffle,
a rhythm from the old monastery, the temple drums,
the rhythm of presence, attentive rhythm,
content with our labor, heaving light into the air.
Short and stubby as he is, he's amazing with a shovel.





Deep Blessings,

Pastor Steve



_______________________________

Copyright © 2010
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight@hotmail.com

Paper boat

How amazing that you have chosen
the thin paper boat of my life
in which to cross this sea,

a little sheet folded in certain shape
to make a cupped-hands dish,
the printing running this way and that.

Somehow over the wind-raked expanse
and through the stomping surf
this weightless little scrap arrives

and you step out and smile and say,
“Thank you. I’m so glad to be here.”
and I look around the gentle shore and wonder:

how the heck do you do that?

__________________
Copyright (c) Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight(at)hotmail.com

Violin

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.



A brute picks up a Stradivarius and makes awful sounds.
A maestro takes a cheap fiddle in skilled, loving hands
and creates sublime music.
Who is surprised?

Who is it who plays the instrument of your life?
Who gets hold of you: your anger? Your fear?
The people you long to appease?
What will it sound like when the Beloved
lays her hands on you, tunes your strings,
draws the bow of love across them?

Today, you choose who may only look,
and who takes you up, who gets to play you,
either in the parlor, or in the street.
You do not matter. Only who plays you.



Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve


_______________________________
Copyright (c) 2010
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight(at)hotmail.com

The constant angel

Stars shine their patent leather shoes,
light their little silver lanterns.
Angels put on their robes,
go over that tricky part one more time.
Mary sits on the donkey,
the donkey plods along, Joseph beside her.
Neither one tries the impossibility of words.
Wayside inn fills up, people
coming from a long way to fill it up.
A manger lies ready, open,
flies buzzing though its empty spaces,
while the dusty light settles.
The suns sets. The night begins to hush.
Shepherds, of course, are just out in their field,
nothing different, same as always.

You never get to see the gathering angels,
the light swelling just before it bursts forth.
You never know which manger will receive,
which night will shine, which moment
will give way to glory. If you did,
you’d miss all the rest.
Anyway, the one magnificent chorus
is not what changes you, but the gentle light
that seeps through everything, the quiet voice
humming as you sweep the floor,
check the oven, light the candle, open the door.





_______________________________
Copyright © 2009
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight@hotmail.com

Invocation

.
.
She lives a beckoning.
Her hands beseech
in drawing water, pounding grain.

An invitation dwells within
the practiced grace of tending to the elders,
the invocations and priestly gestures
of washing pots, of cooking soup,
the welcome of a small dirt floor made clean.

She lays her eyes like hands on things
and consecrates them: cups and stones,
and children, and their tears;
her noticing, her calling to the holy.
She knows no saintliness beyond the plain
embrace of all that is, the feel of walking,
the sacredness of how we’re given, pure,
so confidently to each other here.

She does not question the roughness of her life,
but uses it to scrub her wisdom’s tabletop;
and yet with every breath she begs a question.
Her undemanding silence is a bidding,
her simply being, her vocation here:
to make intimate spaces for eternity to dwell.

The great round pot sits, washed and empty.
And there, beside the broom, as yet unseen,
dear Gabriel smiles at her and draws a breath.



_______________________________
Copyright © 2009
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight(at)hotmail.com