Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

The temple bell stops but the sound keeps coming out of the flowers 

 This, then, is salvation: When we marvel at the beauty of created things and praise their beautiful Creator.

 Whatever it is, I cannot understand it,  although gratitude stubbornly overcomes me until I am reduced to tears.

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.

 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

 In a time of hate, Love is an act of resistance. In a time of fear, Faith is an act of resistance.  In a time of misinformation,  Education is an act of resistance. In a time of poor leadership, Community is an act of resistance. In a time like this, Joy is an act of resistance. Resist. Resist. Resist.

Consider the lilies, how they use their precious blooming to share beauty with this world. You, too, were born to open in the light. You, too, are given life to cultivate your gifts and let them lift you out of fear and doubt. A vast garden of love is all around you now if you can see beyond the tangled weeds to the mystery and  radiance beneath.

 Between our two lives there is also the life of the cherry blossom

 At the stop sign in the city on a dingy block, there grew a giant clump  of purple morning glories- falling with abandon over a run-down fence.  In the midst of trash, a gray sky, peeling paint, this splash of color appeared. Appeared to be laughing, despite it all. Heart-shaped leaves and wide-open purple throats singing some kind of song to this dilapidated corner. Some hero planted them.  Morning glories are not wildflowers. Someone who wanted to cultivate beauty.  Someone who believed in this little patch of ground. Someone who had  a sort of faith. The falling down fence baptized, blessed, forgiven, resurrected.

 Above, above all birds in air Below, below all earth's flowers     Inland, inland all forest trees Seaward, seaward all ocean fish Sing out and say again the refrain: Behold this lovely world

 Our hands imbibe like roots, and I place them on what is beautiful in this world. And I fold them in prayer and they draw from the heavens light.

 Speechless before these budding green spring leaves in blazing sunlight.

 How Did the rose Ever open its heart And give to this world All its Beauty? It felt the encouragement of light Against its Being. Otherwise, We all remain Too Frightened.

 Whatever it is, I cannot understand it, although gratitude stubbornly overcomes me until I am reduced to tears.

May beauty break open my heart with Light. May tenderness gather those pieces And compassion place them upon the altar that is this world May wisdom place a cup upon that altar May Spirit pour that gathered light back into our even-now brokenness So we know each fragment  As infinitely precious Whole  Inescapably One

,  It's not magic; it isn't a trick. Every breath is a resurrection. And when we hear the poem Which is the world, when our eyes Gaze at the beloved's body, We're reborn in all the sacred parts Of our own bodies: The heart Contracts, the brain Releases its shower Of sparks And the tear Embarks on its pilgrimage Down the cheek to meet The smiling mouth.

  All's in this flower- Times, seasons, losses, all the fruits of woe, Beauty's fragility and death's bare gain, Plucked in passing by, five minutes ago. All's in this flower, the war of life and death, God's character and purpose written down, The force of love, the proof and power of faith. All's here, and all unknown.

 The bud stands for all things, even for those things that don't flower, for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing, though sometimes it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness to put a hand on its brow of the flower and retell it in words and touch it is lovely until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.