Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 It's as if what is unbreakable - the very pulse of life- waits for everything else to be torn away, and then in the bareness that only silence and suffering and great love can expose, it dares to speak through us and to us. it seems to say, if you want to last, hold on to nothing. if you want to know love, let in everything. if you want to feel the presence of everything, stop counting the  things that break along the way.

 Nailed to the silent cross Of soul-breaking Empire- We stand amid the lost Angels, held back weeping No presence, comfort, power Displayed before those jeering But cries of trust, despair and blessing And love that is unmaimed The Father, stricken, waiting You see and hear from hell and Hell Each tortured empty heart That begs and yes: this Mercy

Nailed to the silent cross Of soul-breaking Empire- We stand amid the lost Angels, held back, weeping No presence, comfort, power Displayed before the jeering Now shouted whispers, prayer Of trusting and despair - The Father, stricken, waiting You see and hear from hell and Hell Each tortured empty heart That begs and Yes: this Mercy

In the long journey out of the self, There are many detours, washed- out interrupted raw places Where the shale slides dangerously And the back wheels hang almost over the edge At the sudden veering, the moment of turning. Better to hug close, wary of rubble and falling stones. The arroyo cracking the road, the wind-bitten buttes, the canyons, Creeks swollen in midsummer from the flash-flood roaring into the narrow valley. Reeds beaten flat by wind and rain Grey from the long winter, burnt at the base in late summer.      ---Or the path narrowing, Winding upward toward the stream with its sharp stones, Through the swamp alive with quicksand, The way blocked at last by a fallen fir tree, The thickets darkening, The ravines ugly.