To Breathe

It seems like there's more air lately.  Even with the heavy humidity, the fulminous cloud cover, the salt hanging in the skies, it seems like I breathe more than I used to.  It probably has to do with the running I do, the first regular exercise routine of my life.  But I like to imagine that it's more than just the health of my lungs that has changed.  Perhaps its the health of my soul too.

Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe.

I've never had to have medical assitance to breathe, but it seems these last three years that I've had spiritual asthma.  Long periods of normalcy punctuated by frantic, panicked, terrifying moments of loss - as if my soul was suffering from hypoxia.  And many of you have been the hands that soothed me, the soft voice of calm that reminded me to be at peace, the blessed puff of metaphysical medicine that opened up the swollen branches of my spirit and let life course through me again.

Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe.

It's hard to laugh when you don't have enough air.   You can do it - and I did - but you don't laugh as hard or as long or as freely when laughing seems to cost you in the end.   And these last few years, my laughter hasn't been as hard, or long or as free as it used to be.  But now?  I'm a cackling hyena, a hooting kookaburra, a grinning ape who breathes in and raucoulsly expels laughter like a gale-force wind.  There's air again.  There's laughter again.  I can breathe.

Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe.

When God created the earth, Genesis tells us that it was by Holy Breath.  And in the hebrew and greek, the word that is used to describe God's Spirit is Ruah or Pneuma - Breath.   I think a lot about God's breathing here at the edge of land and sea, where waves crash ceaselessly as if powered by the eternal breath of the divine.  God breathes here and I breathe here and I mourn how little air I've had in the last three years.  Why didn't I breathe deeply?  Why did I think that life required me to limit myself to short gasps, to desperate fits of coughing, clawing the air with my outstreched hands?  Why didn't I listen as God breathed peace and grace all around me?  Why didn't I pause and take in the Holy Breath that was desperate to invade me and heal me?

Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe.

There isn't truly more air than there used to be.  But I am finally aware of it, attuned to the swelling winds and the whispered currents and the rustling of leaves and the banging of shutters.  I hear it and smile, feel it and it seems as if God holds me close in the brief moments where air brushes through my hair like a lover's hand.  Paper flutters by me and birds soar through the clouds and mosquitos race across my skin like a skipping stone, and I'm so aware of the air.  That I stand within an invisible maelstrom of life and possibility and I can finally take it all in, lungs and spirit once again open to recieve and expel and live.  

Breathe.  Breathe.  Breathe.

I breathe more than I used to.  Or, maybe it's not that.  Maybe I just breathe deeply now.  Slowly, deliberately, delightedly.

I breathe.

I breathe.

I breathe.

Stand with me my friends, within the whirlwind that our lives can be, and breathe.