This is a self-spoken script, deliberately separated to slow the reading of the text so that it becomes a personal meditation. Take pauses, let the words settle before moving on. Breathe through the meditation and play the attached video before or after.
Here is the script and a few questions to ponder.
In Salesian schools RUAH has become a standout acronym for
Respect, Understanding, Affection and Humour.
These four letters dwarf the short-term importance of thousands of educational acronyms that can often make educators unintelligible to those of us in normal family life.
But RUAH also applies to family life and the patterns and values of school and family can be linked into a consistent experience for young people.
AT home and in school young people can live RUAH in a way that calms, challenges, inspires, warms and lightens the experience of life. It is a bridge between school and home.
Ruah stands out because it is a word in itself, naming a core experience of being human.
Ruah names the personal sacred relational space which is at the heart of all education.
Ruah means breath in Hebrew. It sounds like what it is. (pronounce RUAH slowly) In Arabic the word is Ruh, in Egyptian religions Ka and the Sanskrit word Prana captures a similar meaning in the Hindu religion.
Whatever our spiritual background, RUAH reminds us to breathe, to stay in touch with that inner life force that breath gives.
So, are you holding your breath? Breathing fast? Gasping for air? Is your breathing shallow? Or Relaxed? How are you breathing right now?
Ruah takes you into a quick scan of your inner life and your journey through a busy and often noisy day. You don’t need to change your breathing, just notice it. Ruah and your breath is your daily heart monitor as you work, relate and rest.
Ruah tells us when joy and peace are at home inside us. It tracks the way that anxiety or anger have filled us up and squeezed life out of us. It tells how optimism and pessimism are balanced within and when our energy needs topping up.
Ruah connects us to life, to creation, to people and to ourselves. We breathe our connections with nature, with friends and with our duties.
To be really alive we need to breathe in and then let go of that air. We do that 20,000 times a day and 20% of that breath energy goes to our brain.
Ruah reminds us that we have to receive and give in life. We cannot give what we have not got. We cannot breathe out unless we also breathe in. Our whole life, 20,000 times a day is a rhythm of receiving and giving, it’s a flow of air and a flow of energy.
Just as a slot machine cannot pay out what it has not received so we cannot give constantly to others without becoming bankrupt. Ruah reminds us that we must also receive, not just breath but also energy, affirmation, correction, kindness, and recognition.
Our school communities and our families are also breathing, giving, and receiving life. They have their own ruah: a life-giving pattern of selfless sharing of learning and care multiplied millions of times every day.
That collective ruah is sometimes described as a school ethos, charism or a family spirit. Its elusive, inspiring, and usually communicated in the ordinary exchanges of daily life.
At the school level and in families, ruah reminds us of our interdependence. Who I am and how I am is breathed in by others during the day. We share more than the same air, we exchange emotions, pick up tensions. We spread optimism or disappointment, kindness or coldness in complex patterns through a normal day. Ruah reminds us to make those exchanges honest and life-giving for all.
Ruah helps us to take respect, understanding, affection and humour into our daily work so that we can breathe life into family and school relationships. But it also reminds us to draw on those qualities in others, to be dependent as well, in order to live in that mysterious flow of life that Christians call The Spirit.
All religious traditions honour this flow of life as breath, something that is part of us but never fully grasped or understood.
The Holy Koran describes the evening as the earth breathing out and the dawn as breathing in. (Surah At – Takwir 17 -18) St Paul describes this mystery as something in which we live and move and have our being. (Acts 17 28)
This ruah awareness is pre-religious but it needs the language and tradition of religion in order to keep it in focus in a family and school community. It binds generations of family and friendships together over time.
Ruah needs simple practices and symbols that are shared in the family and the school in a way that points to this deep personal experience of being alive. It highlights the process of self-sacrifice and being brought to life in each of those 20,000 breaths. It echoes the daily process of dying and rising at the heart of the Gospel story.
So, when we talk about RUAH as an acronym of respect understanding, affection and humour we are saying that those are the outward signs of a deep inner reality moving between people in the school community.
These four words are almost sacramental, opening up the deeper mystery unfolding in the depth of ordinary lives. They point to the ways in which our school can be on the road to holiness before ever a prayer is said or a mass celebrated.
Some follow up questions.
How have you experienced the spirit of your family or school? What stories could you tell about that personal experience?
Which people breathe life into you as an adult? How do they do that?
Where or with whom do you find space to express your own dependence in your role in family or in school? Who guides, corrects, supports, affirms and challenges you?
Where, in an ordinary busy day, do you find room to breathe?
Have you ever tried to speak to your inner self or be still enough to let that ruah spirit speak within you?
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