Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 If you are one who has practice meeting the pain of the world, we need you. Right now we need you to teach us it is possible to swallow what is weighty and still be able to rise. We need you to remind us we can be furious and scared and near feral over injustice and still thrill at the taste of a strawberry, ripe and sweet, can still meet a stranger and shake their hand, believing in their humanness. We need you to show us how we, too, can fall into the darkest, unplumbed pit and learn there a courage and beauty we could never learn from the light. If you have drowned in sorrow and still have somehow found a way to breathe, please, lead us. You are the one with the crumbs we need, the ones we will use to find our way back to the home of our hearts.

 O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken, Who in necessity and in bounty wait, Whose truth is both light and dark, mute though spoken, By thy wide Grace show me Thy narrow gate.

 Acquire the Spirit of Peace and  a thousand around you are saved.

Here is all the politics we need: My blue sky pervades each atom of your body. Your blue sky pervades each atom of my body. Where you are, I am. Where I am, you are. All our troubles lie in the veil of a single thought: "I am not you." Love is letting this thought dissolve.

 The things you do not have to say make you rich. Saying the things you do not have to say weakens your talk.  Hearing things you do not have to hear dulls your hearing, And things you know before you hear them - those are you, Those are why you are in the world.

It can feel foolish to marvel at the stars when the world is burning or to find the world beautiful  when you've known it to betray you. But wonder is a liberation practice a reminder that we contain more than tragedy. Beauty is our origin and our anchor.