Ruah Bull - Spiritual Director

 We are stars wrapped in skin. The light you are seeking has always been within.

 Rumi the poet was a scholar also. But Shams, his friend, was an angel. By which I don't mean anything patient or sweet. When I read how he took Rumi's books and threw them into the duck pond, I shouted for joy. Time to live now, Shams meant. I see him, turning away casually toward the road, Rumi following, the books floating and sinking among the screeching ducks, oh, beautiful book-eating pond!

 The temple hanging over the water is anchored on pillars that nameless workers placed in the mud long ago. So never forget that the mud and the hands of those workers are part of the temple, too. What frames the sacred is just as sacred. The dirt that packs the plant is the beginning of beauty. And those who haul the piano on stage are the beginning of music. And those who are stuck, though they dream of soaring, are the ancestors of our wings.

 That each step may be a shedding. That you will  let yourself become lost, That when it looks like you are 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.

 It begins to appear this is not what prayer is about. It is the annihilation of difference, the consciousness of myself in you, of you in me...I begin to recognize you anew, God of form and number. There are questions we are the solution to, others whose echoes we must expand to contain. Circular is our way in. It leads not backward to the snake-haunted garden, but onward to the tall city of glass that is the laboratory of the spirit.

 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) 

 I took a long time getting here, much of it wasted on wrong turns, back roads riddled by ruts. I had adventures I never would have known if I proceeded as the crow flies. Super highways are so sure  of where they are going: they arrive too soon. A straight line isn't always  the shortest distance  between two people. Sometimes I act as though I'm heading somewhere else while, imperceptibly, I narrow the gate between you and me. I'm not sure I'll ever know the right way, but I don't mind getting lost now and then. Maps don't know everything.

 Don't surrender your loneliness So quickly Let it cut more deep Let it ferment and season you As few human Or even divine ingredients can Something missing in my heart tonight has made my eyes so soft, My voice So tender My need of God So absolutely Clear

 When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.

 To get to you, I travelled light years Through cosmic storms and dust, Only to find you sleeping on your simple cot. Stepping back, I folded, Quietly, My gray ragged wings. I could see why he chose you,  The glow of your pure breath.... I didn't mean to frighten you, Just wanted to keep looking.... I wanted to breathe in your innocent air, look at your soft, Surrendered hands.... Another second.... Before I told you the news,

 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 wood 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.

 There is no controlling life. Try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado. Dam a stream and it will create a new channel. Resist, and the tide will sweep you off your feet. Allow, and grace will carry you to higher ground, The only  safety lies in letting it all in- the wild and the weak; fear, fantasies, failures and success. When loss rips off the doors of the heart, or sadness veils your  vision with despair, practice becomes simply bearing the truth. In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.

What if I could make a list the purpose of which was not the willful joy of crossing things off? What if I made a list of noticings, say: flowering blue sage my husbands work-rough hands the turned off radio red tail on a telephone pole loneliness What if every list,  or some, broke this pencil and released the scent of clean grey lead

 Though the air is full of singing my head is loud with the labor of words. Though the season is rich with fruit, my tongue hungers for the sweet of speech. Though the beech is golden I cannot stand beside it mute, but must say "It is golden," while the leaves stir and fall with a sound that is not a name. It is in the silence that my help is, my aim. A song whose line I cannot make or sing sounds men's silence like a root. Let me say and not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there.

 Let my edges that cut be stroked by sand and salt let my slick surface coarsen til it's crushed to bits let my colors soften as they scrape the bottom let the waves love me in their rough way let me be changed by that love let me not forget I held another yet fully inhabit my particularity let me be smooth enough to be rubbed by small fingers and slipped inside a pocket or bowl let me prove that beauty is born when something breaks.

  What if we enter each day so silently, so seamlessly the birds don't sound alarms and dart away, our minds so well released from fits of thought we are kin to all that breathes, like grazing deer  hidden in dapples of green. O how we would walk then light hoofed and elfin eyed, even on crowded days, each trembling leaf a welcome Silky beating wings would cool our errant fevers of mind would keep us filled with awe and kind

What we want and what we're given often serve two different Gods. How we respond to their meeting determines our path.

    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 ploughshares 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 - good waking.                  

  Day ends, and before sleep when the sky dies down, consider your altered state: has this day changed you? Are the corners sharper or rounded off? Did you live with death? Make decisions that quieted? Find one clear word that fit? At the sun's midpoint did you notice a pitch of absence, bewilderment that invites the possible? What did you learn from things you dropped and picked up and dropped again? Did you set a straw parallel to the river, let the flow carry you downstream?

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.