Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

We travellers, walking toward the sun can't see Ahead, but looking back the very light That blinded us shows us the way we came, Along which blessings now appear, risen As if from sightlessness to sight, and we, By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward That blessed light that yet to us is dark.

Remind me again - together we trace our strange journey, find each other, come on laughing. Some time we'll cross where life ends. We'll both look back as far as forever, that first day. I'll touch you - a new world then. Stars will move a different way. We'll both end. We'll both begin. Remind me again.

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.

The leaves believe such letting go is love such love is faith such faith is grace such grace is God I agree with the leaves

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.

I am not I. I am this one Walking beside me whom I do not see, Whom at times I manage to visit, And whom at other times I forget; The one who remains silent when I talk, The one who forgives,sweet, when I hate, The one who takes a walk when I am not, The one who remains standing when I die.

Old Spirit, in and beyond me, keep and extend me. Amid strangers, friends, great trees and big seas breaking, let love move me. Let me hear the whole music, see clear, reach deep. Open me to find due words, that I may shape them to the plowshares of my own making. After such luck, however late, give me to give to the oldest dance....Then to good sleep, and - if it happens - glad waking.

What are we to gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from Ourselves?

Whereas the world is a house on fire, Whereas the nations are filled with shouting, Whereas hope seems small, sometimes    a single bird on a wire    left by migration behind. Whereas kindness is seldom in the news    and peace an abstraction   while war is real; Whereas words are all I have, Whereas my life is short, Whereas I am afraid; Whereas I am free- despite all    fire and anger and fear; Be it therefore resolved a song    shall be my calling - a song    not yet made shall be vocation    and peaceful words the work    of my remaining days.

Sit in an alpine meadow or by the side of a dying friend. Taste the wind Her letting go breath Imagine a glacier scouring the valley Her first inhale A butterfly alights on your hand: become a flower, nourishment for its' life. Her gaze, turning toward eternity finds you: become a bridge for her prayer You will not rush the butterfly or your friends' last glimpses of this life. So: why rush this ?

If to say it once And once only, then still To say:Yes. And say it complete, Say it as if the word Filled the whole moment With its' absolute saying. Later for "but," Later for "If." Now Only the single syllable That is the beloved, That is the world.

Want the change. Be inspirired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears. The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much as the curve of the body as it turns away. What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be grey and numb? What turns hard becomes rigid and is easily shattered. Pour yourself out like a fountain. Flow in the knowledge that what you are seeking finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins. Every happiness if the child of a separation it did not think it could survive. And Daphne, becoming a laurel, dares you to become the wind.

Out there in the orchard they have come To prune the overgrowth, cut back and free The crisscrossed branches of apple and plum, Shaping the formless back into symmetry. They do not work for beauty's sake But to improve the harvest come next year. Each tough lopsided branch they choose to break Is broken toward fruit more crisp and rare.  I watch them, full of wonder and dismay, Feeling the need to shape my life, be calm, Like the untroubled pruners who, all day, Cut back, are ruthless. without a qualm. While I, beleaguered, always conscience-torn, Have let the thickets stifle peaceful growth, Spontaneous flow stopped, stillborn, Imagined duties, pebbles in my mouth. Muse, pour strength into my pruning wrist That I may cut away toward open space, A timeless orchard, poetry-possessed, There without guilt to contemplate your face.

I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big success. I am for those tiny, invisible, loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of the water, which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride.

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 my every movement Solemnity and Risk.

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 woods 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.

To be of the Earth is to know the restlessness of being a seed the darkness of being planted the struggle toward the light the pain of growth into the light the joy of bursting and bearing fruit the love of being food for someone the scattering of your seeds the decay of the seasons the mystery of death and the miracle of birth.

Barn burned down-    Now I can see the moon

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.

Sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East. And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead. And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, that he forgot.