Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 The more I am hollowed by the fire, the more my ribs spread like the tree of life. The more I am washed by the tears of others, the more my heart rounds like an ocean shell. The more stories I tell of how one picks up another, the more my hands open like scoops for grain. To be what others drink, to be what others stand on, to reach what they love- we should be so lucky to be worn to this,

 Do not be daunted by the  enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. You are not obliged to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

 I've broken through to longing Now, filled with grief I have  felt before, but never like this. The center leads to love. Soul opens the creations' core. Hold on to your particular pain. That too can take you to God,

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.

Sitting legs open wide on the black ground, she cradles the burned llama against the fullness of her body. An officer with a shotgun approaches from the lower left, to perform the final, brutal mercy. She waits. Her eyes are lowered. I imagine she is rocking, crooning.

to love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills that lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.