Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

  Best of any song is bird song in the quiet, but first you have the quiet.

 Earth teach me stillness as the grasses are stilled with light. Earth teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory. Earth teach me humility as blossoms are humble with beginning. Earth teach me caring as the mother who succors her young. Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands alone. Earth teach me limitation as the ant which crawls on the ground. Earth teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring. Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life. Earth teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep with rain.

 They lie under stars in a field.  They lie under rain in a field. Under sun. Some people are like this as well- like a painting  hidden beneath another painting. An unexpected weight the sign of their ripeness.

 I go to the mountain side of the house to cut saplings, and clear a view to snow on the mountain. But when I look up, saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in the uppermost branches. I don't cut that one. I don't cut the others either. Suddenly, in every tree, an unseen nest where a mountain would be.

only this matters: this ecstatic baptism this standing on stick- thin legs where the singing creek pools at the lip of the waterfall only this ruby-feathered  chest diving to meet its reflection  this beak piercing again and again that quivering surface, these wings half- unfolding, a ruffle of joy guiding rivers of light a tumble  of droplets dressed in rainbows along your hidden spine shattering all decorum beneath blue branches in quiet assent...  

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.

How surely gravity's law, strong as an ocean's current, takes hold of even the strongest thing and pulls it towards the heart of the world. Each thing - each stone, blossom, child - is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrendered to earth's intelligence we could rise up rooted, like trees. Instead we entangle ourselves in knots of our own making and struggle, lonely and confused. So, like children, we begin again to learn from the things, because they are in God's heart; they have never left him. This is what things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.

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.

I go to the mountain side of the house to cut saplings, a clear view to snow on the mountains. But when I look up, saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in the uppermost branches. I don't cut that one. I don't cut the others either. Suddenly, in every tree, an unseen nest where a mountain would be.

I go to the mountain side of the house to cut saplings, to clear a view to snow on the mountain. But when I look up, saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in the uppermost branches. I don't cut that one. I don't cut the others either. Suddenly, in every tree, an unseen nest where a mountain would be.

Sometimes the mountains are hidden from me in veils of cloud, sometimes I am hidden from the mountain in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue, when I forget or refuse to go down to the shore or a few yards up the road, on a clear day, to reconfirm that witnessing presence.

Fortunate is the hour when you stumbled and fell down into this. Never stand again. On your knees remain where the earth is, where the fire is ever-ready and the air ever-clear, water, and the stones of God. For the Woods of Error are the words of the real, chosen for us as the color of your soul. Lie where forgiveness lies, make love to that. For there is nothing else but gratitude, which is what all your longing was for.

I know this happiness is provisional: the looming presences - great suffering, great fear - withdrawing only into peripheral vision: but ineluctable this shimmering of wind in the blue leaves: this flood of stillness widening the lake of sky: This need to dance, This need to kneel: This mystery

To be alive! not just the carcass     but the spark. That's crudely put, but.... If we're not supposed to dance, Why all this music?

Ten thousand flowers in spring,       the moon in autumn, a cool breeze in summer,       snow in winter. If your mind isn't clouded       by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

The god of dirt came up to me many times and said so many wise and delectable things. I lay     on the grass listening     to his dog voice,     crow voice,     frog voice now     he said, and now and never once mentioned forever.     

Sometimes the mountain is hidden from me in veils of cloud, sometimes I am hidden from the mountain in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue, when I forget or refuse to go down to the shore or a few yards up the road, on a clear day, to reconfirm that witnessing presence.

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.

That each step may be a shedding. That you will let yourself become lost. That when it looks like you're going backwards, you may be making progress. That progress is not the goal anyway, but presence to the feel of the path on your skin, the way it reshapes you in each place it makes contact, to the way you cannot see it until the moment you have stepped out.

I didn't stay for the closing hymns and prayers. I felt out of sorts, so I left. Someone was before me at the door: a child, gazing at a spot on her wrist. She said, "Can you help me?" "What is it?" "A lady bug," she said. So I opened the door, and she said, "It jumped off." We stood looking around. "It'll be all right," I said. She went back in, and I left, taking care where I stepped.