Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 All is grace. Light and water, shelter and food, work and free time, children, parents and grandparents, birth and death- it is all given to us. Our very first vocation is to receive these gifts and say thanks-

 May the tide never tire of its tender toil how over and over it forgives the moon the daily exile and returns to turn mountains into sand as if to say, You too can have this homecoming you too possess this elemental power of turning the stone in the heart into golden dust

 O Thou, far off and here, whole and broken, Who in necessity and in bounty wait, Whose truth is both light and dark, mute though spoken, By thy wide Grace show me Thy narrow gate.

 This is how a human being can change: There's a worm addicted to eating grape leaves. Suddenly he wakes up, call it grace, whatever, something  wakes him, and he is no longer a worm. He's the entire vineyard and the orchard, too, the fruit, the trunks, a growing wisdom and joy that doesn't need to devour.

 As the plump squirrel scampers Across the roof of the corncrib, The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness, And I see that it is impossible to die. Each moment of time is a mountain. An eagle rejoices in the oak trees of heaven Crying THIS IS WHAT I WANTED

 Thanks and blessing be to the Sun & the Earth for this bread & this wine,          this fruit, this meat, this salt, this food; thanks be and blessing to them who prepare it, who serve it; thanks and blessing to them who share it (& also the absent & the dead). Thanks and blessing be to them who bring it (may they not want), to them who plant and tend it, harvest and gather it (may they not want), thanks and blessing to them who work & blessing to them who cannot; may they not want - for their hunger sours the wine & robs the salt of its taste. Thanks be for the sustenance & strength for our dance & the work of justice, of peace.

  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.

I have a small grain of hope- one small crystal that gleams clear colors out of transparency. I need more. I break off a fragment to send you. Please take this grain of a grain of hope so that mine won't shrink. Please share your fragment so that grass will grow. Only so, by division, will hope increase, like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source - clumsy and earth - covered - of grace.