Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 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.

 Did you know that birds do not land because they are tired? They know and have always known that their liberation depends on their ability to recall the ground.

 We give thanks for another day on this earth. We give thanks for this day to enjoy the compassionate goodness  of You, our Creator. We acknowledge with one mind our respect and gratefulness to all the sacred circles of life. Bind us together in the circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and one another.

 Some keep the Sabbath going to church - I keep it, staying at Home - With a Bobolink for a Chorister - And an Orchard, for a Dome -  Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice - I just wear my Wings -  And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton - sings.  God preaches, a noted Clergyman -  And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last -  I'm going, all along.

 O sweet spontaneous earth how often have  the doting fingers of prurient philosophers pinched and poked  thee, has the naughty thumb of science pridded thy beauty   how often have religions taken thee upon their scraggy knees squeezing and buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods (but true to the incomparable couch of death thy rhythmic lover thou answerest them only with spring) 

 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 didn't read the news. I raked a rainbow of pungent autumn leaves, played abroad with happy dogs, held my granddaughter in my arms, and sat beneath an amiable maple, attentive to current events.

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house. Even in this one lifetime you will have to choose. That great calm being this clutter of soaps and books- Already that first branch-- tips brush at the windows- Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

  All's in this flower- Times, seasons, losses, all the fruits of woe, Beauty's fragility and death's bare gain, Plucked in passing by, five minutes ago. All's in this flower, the war of life and death, God's character and purpose written down, The force of love, the proof and power of faith. All's here, and all unknown.

 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.

Not a single soul lacks a pathway to you. There's no stone, no flower- not a single piece of straw- lacking your existence. In every particle of the world, the moon of your love causes the heart  of each atom to glow.

  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.

  When each day is sacred When each hour is sacred When each instant is sacred Earth and you Space and you Bearing the sacred through time You'll reach the fields of Light

Days pass when I forget the mystery. Problems insoluble and problems offering their own ignored solutions jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing their colored clothes: caps and bells. And then once more the quiet mystery is present to me, the throng's clamor recedes: the mystery that there is anything, anything at all, let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything, rather than void: and that, O Lord, Creator, Hallowed One, You still, hour by hour sustain it.

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 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 alright," I said. She went back in, and I left taking care where I stepped.

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.

Let's remake the world with words. Not frivolously, now To hide from what we fear, But with a purpose. Let's, As Wordsworth said, remove "The dust of custom" so things Shine again, and each object arrayed In its robe of original light. And then we'll see the world As if for the first time. As once we gazed at the beloved Who was gazing at us.