Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 Just ask the animals and they will teach you. Ask the birds in the sky and they will tell you. Speak to the earth and it will instruct you. Let the fish in the sea speak to you.

 To live in this world you must be able to  to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it  against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

 Birds mistook St. Francis for a tree. May I be so free  of nervous haste, ambition and regret so in the extirpation of thought innocence and improvisation may tell the dawn each day afresh that fresh is what it is. The nickname of God is NOW.  

 From a season of sparrows, grateful for seed, from a morning when watching their feeding is all the prayer I have in me. This is the tithing I offer- this moment, tiny as the millet seed one bird lifts in her perfect beak. I swear she looks straight at me as, in a gesture like my head  tilting back to take wine, she swallows. O God, never stop feeding me these moments. Keep tearing through the blue curtain of eternity to find me here, behind the kitchen window, drinking my coffee, doing time.

  I do not have to go To Sacred Places In far-off lands. The ground I stand on is Holy. Here in this little garden I tend My pilgrimage ends. The wild honeybees The hummingbirds, moths The fireflies at dusk Are a microcosm  Of the Universe. Each seed that grows Each spade of soil Is full of miracles. And I toil and sweat And watch and wonder And I am full of love Living in place -  In this place For truth and beauty Dwell here.

 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.

  Come. Come to the Christmas altar. Bring any and all that have or have not been invited. Come and come again. Guilt shows up. Guilt wants to come and be touched by the Light. It has give so many gifts over the years. Meet it with gratitude. Let it be the gift that is seen for all that it has brought to this moment. Any self judgement gets to come also. Grateful that its job has been very useful in bringing consciousness to this point. Let it now come to rest in this Light. May all be invited in and out of the darkness of denial. All showing up at the door. Open it widely. Knocking softly at times, and louder with joy when it enters. Who is knocking? Anyone you have left out and refused to embrace fully. Saying, "Open your heart to me. I am your Christmas gift to yourself." I SEE!! It is Christ being born. Christ is this hand, this body, this Blood. Let that be the gift that keeps on giving. The altar keeps growing. Heart opening and embracing. The True gifts of this Christm...

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was duty. I worked - and behold, duty was joy.

In the afternoon he chose the corner in the sun. Then he set his porch rocker facing the mimosa where gold wires of light tapped the leaves, and he, himself, by a simple act of seeing observed a miracle. If anything is, he said, them pods on this tree is the keys of the kingdom.

I would it were possible to state in so few words my errand in the world: quite simply forestalling all inquiry, the oak offers his leaves large handedly. And in winter his integral magnificent order decries, says solemnly who he is in the great thirsting limbs that are all finally one: a return, a permanent river and sea. So the rose is its own credential, a certain unattainable effortless form:wearing its' heart visibly, it gives us he art too: bud, fullness, and fall.

I was still standing on a northern corner. Moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves. Proof of your Existence? There is nothing but.

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body. Sometimes the way in is a song. But there are three ways in the world:      dangerous, wounding, and beauty. To enter stone, be water. To rise through hard earth, be plant desiring sunlight, believing in water. To enter fire, be dry. to enter life, be food.

This morning, at waterside, a sparrow flew to a water rock and landed, by error, on the back of an elder duck; lightly it fluttered off, amused. The duck, too, was not provoked, but, you might say, was laughing. This afternoon a gull sailing over our house was casually scratching its stomach of white feathers with one pink foot as it flew.  Oh Lord, how shining and festive is your gift to us,  if we only look, and see.

You only have to see the blazing sunset through the trees to be in that dazzling presence and catch a voice saying "take off your masks!" With a clatter they land all around, but you barely notice because the fire in your heart is bursting toward the bright glow on the horizon. And when its' last glimmering rays are gone- from human sight- you're left with a gateway that will open even in your dark hours.

Moon and clouds are the same; mountain and valley are different. All are blessed; all are blessed. Is this one? Is this two?

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous to be understood. How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rives and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising. How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken, How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem. Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers. Let me keep company with those who say "Look!" and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

I'm listening. But I don't know If what I hear is silence or God. I'm listening. But I can't tell If I hear the plane of emptiness echoing Or a keen consciousness That at the bounds of the universe Deciphers and watches me. I only know that I walk like someone Beheld, Beloved, and known. And because of this I put into every moment Solemnity and Risk.