Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

  I have a religion; It's called Love. I have a church; It's called Earth. I have a scripture; It's called Heart. I have a prayer; it's called Compassion.

 To leave the world a bit better whether by healthy child a garden patch or redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you live- that is to have succeeded

 It is my Lent  to break my Lent, To eat when I would fast, To know when slender strength is spent, Take shelter from the blast When I would run with wind and rain, To sleep when I would watch.  It is my lent to smile at pain But not ignore its touch. It is my Lent to listen well When I would be alone, To talk when I would rather dwell In silence, turn from none Who call on me, to try to see That what is truly meant Is not my choice. If Christ's I'd be It's thus I'll keep my Lent.

 Faith is the firm foundation of my house, Diligence forms the high walls, Meditation makes the huge bricks, And Wisdom is the great corner-stone, With these four things I build my castle, And it will last as long as truth eternal!

A quiet night behind my grass hut. Alone, I play a stringless lute. Its melody drifts to the wind-blown clouds and fades. Its sound deepens with the running stream, expanding till it fills a deep ravine, and echoes through the vast woods. Who, other than a deaf person, can hear this faint song?  

 Gratitude Is a language. Even this barren maple Outside my window Knows it, Her whispering musical And exquisite. Slowly I learn Her song.

 There is no controlling life. Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado. Dam a stream and it will create a new channel. Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet. Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground, The only  safety lies in letting it all in- the wild and the weak; fear, fantasies, failures and success. When loss rips off the doors of the heart, or sadness veils your  vision with despair, practice becomes simply bearing the truth. In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.

  As swimmers dare to lie face to the sky and water bears them, as hawks rest upon air and air sustains them, so would I learn to attain free fall, and float into Creator Spirit's deep embrace, knowing no effort earns that all-surrounding grace.

Help me, love poem, rise up from the broken glass,    The time to sing has come. Help me, love poem, to reestablish integrity,    And to sing again about pain. The world isn't free of war, it's true,    It isn't washed of the blood, hate still exists,    It's true. But it's also certain that we're closer to a truth.    Violence sees itself in the mirror of the world    And it's face is not even attractive to itself. And I continue believing in the possibility of love.    I'm certain of that understanding among    Human beings, achieved over pain,    Over the broken glass.

  Sometimes, when it all is, finally,  too much, I climb into my car, roll the windows up, and somewhere between backing out of the driveway and rounding the first corner, I let out a yell that would topple Manhattan. How do you pray?

   In the sitting, a slow settling gathers up my far-flung thoughts, like the potter's hands pressing pieces of clay back into center. The deepening holds me new. No longer matters the shape or design -                                                    only the constant press of the potter's hands.

A man crosses the street in the rain, stepping gently, looking two times north and south, because his son is asleep on his shoulder. No car must splash him. No car drive too near to his shadow. This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo but he's not marked. Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE. His ear fills with breathing. he hears the hum of a boy's dream deep inside him. We're not going to be able to live in this world if we're not willing to do what he's doing with one another. The road will only be wide. The rain will never stop falling.

The breezes at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep! You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep! People are moving back and forth across the door sill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don't go back to sleep!

Clouds appear free of care And carefree drift away. But the carefree mind is not to be 'found'-- To find it, first stop looking around.

In the dark pre-dawn mornings, I listen to the trees. Sometimes I hear nothing. Sometimes words sail into my head, like the goldfinches landing on my birdfeeder. Today they told me: Ground! Ground deeply. You will know people who get ill. You may know some who will die. You could even be one of them. Your task today is to ground and be a solid presence on this patch of earth. Watch us and follow suit.

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 didn't stay for the closing hymns and prayers. I felt out of sorts, so I left. Someone was before me at the door: a child, gazing at a spot on her wrist. She said, "Can you help me?" "What is it?" "A lady bug," she said. So I opened the door, and she said "It jumped off." We stood looking around. "It'll be alright," I said. She went back in, and I left taking care where I stepped.

I would it were possible to state in so few words my errand in the world: quite simply forestalling all inquiry, the oak offers his leaves large handedly. And in winter his integral magnificent order decries, says solemnly who he is in the great thirsting limbs that are all finally one: a return, a permanent river and sea. So the rose is its own credential, a certain unattainable effortless form:wearing its' heart visibly, it gives us he art too: bud, fullness, and fall.

May the blessing of light be on you, light without and light within. May the blessed sunshine shine on you and warm your heart til it glows like a great peat fire, so that the stranger may come and warm himself at it, and also a friend.

But the silence in the mind is when we live best, within listening distance of the silence we call God. This is the deep calling to deep of the psalm - writer, the bottomless ocean we launch the armada of our thoughts on, never arriving. It is a presence, then, whose margins are our margins, that calls us out over our fathoms. What to do but draw a little nearer to such ubiquity by remaining still?