Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 We must not portray you in king's robes, You drifting mist that brought forth the morning, Once again from the old paintbox we take the same gold for scepter and crown That has disguised you through the ages. Piously we produce our images of you Til they stand around you like a thousand walls. And when our hearts would simply open, Our fervent hands hide you.

My eyes already touch the sunny hill going far ahead of the road I have begun. So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp; it has its' inner light, even from a distance- and changes us, even if we do not reach it, into something else, which, hardly sensing it, we already are; a gesture waves us on, answering our own wave... but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

You,darkness, of whom I was born- I love you more than the flame that limits the world to the circle it illumines and excludes all the rest. But the dark embraces everything: shapes and shadows, creatures and me, people, nations - just as they are. It lets me imagine a great presence stirring beside me. I believe in the night.

Listen my heart, as only saints have listened: until some enormous call lifted them off the ground; yet still they knelt, those impossible people, undisturbed by the sound, intent on listening. Not that you would induce the voice of God, far from it. But hear  what is whispering, the endless message forming itself from silence.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us, then walks with us silently out of the night. These are the words we dimly hear: You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. Flare up like flame, and make big shadows I can move in. Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. Don’t let yourself lose me. Nearby is the country they call life. You will know it by its seriousness. Give me your hand.