Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 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

 I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight  of racism and war that the daylight of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that  unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

 If you are one who has practice meeting the pain of the world, we need you. Right now we need you to teach us it is possible to swallow what is weighty and still be able to rise. We need you to remind us we can be furious and scared and near feral over injustice and still thrill at the taste of a strawberry, ripe and sweet, can still meet a stranger and shake their hand, believing in their humanness. We need you to show us how we, too, can fall into the darkest, unplumbed pit and learn there a courage and beauty we could never learn from the light. If you have drowned in sorrow and still have somehow found a way to breathe, please, lead us. You are the one with the crumbs we need, the ones we will use to find our way back to the home of our hearts.

 At the center of every crisis     is an inner space so deep, so beckoning, so suddenly and daringly vast, that it feels like a universe, feels like God. When the unthinkable happens,  and does not relent, we fall through our hubris toward an inner flow, an abiding and rebirthing darkness that feels like home.     

 Have compassion for everyone you meet even if they don't want it. What seems conceit, bad manners or cynicism is always a sign of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen. You do not know what wars are going on down there where the spirit meets the bone.

 And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.

We are the women at the well; We who draw up the sacred water under a red sun as a child pulls at our skirts. We gather, share stories,  spill our laments onto the ground where they seep to the underworld. Weathered hands raise and  lower the bucket endlessly refreshing dry vessels, and, at times, hope. We are courageous who dare to work the bucket into the earth's dark places. We labor to raise earth's vein of tears, Where we have hidden our sorrows. And by doing so, Both honor and purify the darkness; This I know: we do the holy work.

 When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.

 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.

  Holy are you, O Lord, holy, blessed and One. Holy are you, and generous for you have flooded my heart with the light of your way, and you have raised up in me the Tree of Life. You have shown me a new heaven upon the earth. You have shown me a secret Garden, unseen within the seen. Now I am joined soul and spirit present in your Presence- your Presence that has waited long in me, your Presence, the true Tree of Life, planted in whatever the earth is, planted in whatever it is that men are, planted, and rooted in the heart your Presence all at once revealing your Paradise alive with every good green thing: grasses and trees and the fruiting bounty, a world of flowers! sweet-scented lilies! Each little flower speaks a truth: Humility and joy, peace, oh peace! kindness, compassion, the turning of the soul, and the flood of tears and the strange ecstasy of those bathed in your light.

 When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and the princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart. 

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.

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.

From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the spring. The place where we are right is hard and trampled like a yard. But doubts and loves dig up the world like a mole, a plow and a whisper will be heard in the place where the ruined house once stood.

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.