Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 I love you, gentlest of Ways, who ripened us as we wrestled with you. You, the great homesickness we could never shake off, you, the forest that always surrounded us, you, the song we sang in every silence, your dark net threading through us, on the day you made us you created yourself, and we grew sturdy in your sunlight.... Let your hand rest on the rim of Heaven now and mutely bear the darkness we bring over you. 

 It was still easy for her in the beginning, only when climbing she would be aware of her heavy womb, - and then she stood, breathing, on the Jewish mountains. But not the land spread about her, but her fullness; and while walking she knew: nowhere was there such fullness as hers. And she felt compelled to feel with her hand the womb of hers who was further along. Toward each other they swayingly stepped and caressed the dress and hair. Each woman was filled with sacred life and safe and at ease with the relative. And though the savior was hardly in bloom, the Baptist in the cousin's womb already jumped for joy,

    Want the change. Be inspired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears. The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much as the curve of the body as it turns away.  What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be grey and numb? What turns hard becomes rigid and is easily shattered. Pour yourself out like a fountain. Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins. Every happiness is the child of a separation it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel, dares you to become the wind.               

How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean's current, takes hold of even the strongest thing and pulls it towards the heart of the world. Each thing - each stone, blossom, child - is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused. So, like children, we begin again to learn from the things, because they are in God's heart; they have never left him. This is what things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

I thank you, deep power That works me more ever more lightly In ways I can't make out. The days labor grows simple now, And like a holy face Held in my dark hands.

Want the change. Be inspirired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears. The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much as the curve of the body as it turns away. What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be grey and numb? What turns hard becomes rigid and is easily shattered. Pour yourself out like a fountain. Flow in the knowledge that what you are seeking finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins. Every happiness if the child of a separation it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel, dares you to become the wind.

Ah, not to be cut off, not through the slightest partition shut out from the law of the stars. The inner - what is it? if not intensified sky, hurled through with birds and deep with the winds of homecoming.