Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 I know this happiness is provisional: the looming presences- great suffering, great fear- withdraw only into peripheral vision: but ineluctable this shimmering of wind in the blue leaves: this flood of stillness widening the lake of sky: this need to dance, this need to kneel: this mystery

 On my first retreat I brought a suitcase full   of books on silence And sat entranced by pages and pages on mindfulness, mysticism. ,  I didn't hear the fountain glisten or smell unfolding purple or notice cool bands of moving shadow. If  every creature is a Word of God This one was loud luminous, insistent. I don't know what she said but her feet were so small, her wings diaphanous with speed. The garden around me  within me  awakens.

 In times of doubt I forget That You are not a God Of thoughts, to be found In concepts or theories But are the source of  My life and the radiance That shines forth in all That is, and then I remember: Mine is the work of learning To see You as the radiance That shines forth in all that is,  Even in the dark. Even in me.

 The world is too dangerous and too beautiful for anything but love. May your eyes be so blessed that you see God in everyone. Your ears, so you hear the cry of the poor. May your hands be so blessed that everything you touch is a sacrament. Your lips, so you speak nothing but the truth with love. May your feet be so blessed you run to those who need you. And may your heart be so opened, so set on fire, that your love, your love, changes everything. Amen

 It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded spring is the one that sings.

Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there,  patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worth of rescue.