For what happens to the children of man and what happens to the beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts, for all is vanity.
-Ecclesiastes 3:19
Between the ages of four and seven, I was profoundly asthmatic to the extent that my mother administered shots three times a week to keep the fearsome gasping for each breath at bay. Often, I would sit up at night in the darkness of my bedroom, afraid to sleep, because I didn’t know how I would breathe if I fell asleep. I would awaken in the morning with a start, wondering who had breathed for me. This was the beginning of a frightened little boy’s notion of a God who did things I could not do for myself.
Accordingly, the metaphor of breath as life, by faith, is one that was carved into my story in childhood. Moreover, the notion of breath as more than a simple autonomic requirement for living, is part of that story. Breath is a gasp for forgiveness or relief between sobs when life seems out-of-control. Breath is prayerfully held, detaining fear when we are threatened. Breath exhales guilt and shame, with relief, when we become aware that Christ stands within, assuring us of His forgiveness.
It is on puffs breath that we release laughter, and on breath we declare the emphatic “Ahhmen” of prayer. It is on the wings of a final breath that God’s Love we know as the Soul takes flight, on the journey back to our Maker.
Breath is the currency of Creation, of life, of struggle, and of Christian yearning: “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God.”
So much breath breathed — in splendid isolation. Surely, we can bind together a collective breath. How would that work?
People of the Navaho Nation have a foundational, spiritual understanding of the relationship of their people to Creation. They tell a story of the slot canyons of Utah, formed over 190-million years ago. In events of sadness and adversity the people have taken deep breaths and have exhaled the pain, anger, shame, and sorrow onto the land. Over the enormity of time, the breath of adversity cut the slot canyons into the land, revealing cathedrals of bewildering beauty where Mother Earth absorbed the pain of Her people. How counter-intuitive it seems to the Western ethos that so much travail turned over to God can create such ineffable beauty.
I wonder what beauty God would create from our caustic reactions to life if we were to breathe them out to God, instead of hurling them at one another with self-righteous disregard for the collective.
Musical Reflection
God of Light and Breath; teach me to own my pain and then, by Faith, release it to you alone; for the confection of a beauty only you can foresee. Ahhmen!
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