Take
a Deep Breath
“Now
take another breath. If you have studied earth science, then you know that our
gorgeous blue-green planet is wrapped in a protective veil we call the
atmosphere, which separates the air we breathe from the cold vacuum of outer
space. Beneath this space is all the air that ever was.”
Barbara
Brown Taylor (Home By Another Way, p. 143-144; Rowman & Litttlefield Publishers,
1999)
This
passage is from a sermon Barbara Brown Taylor wrote for Pentecost. It’s about the
movement of the holy spirit in the form of breath. As she reminds us, the word “conspire”
means “to breath together,” or to share the same breath. My dog, Liza and I are
conspiring right now. In the Bible, breath plays a large role from the very beginning.
From God’s breathing on the waters of the deep and causing creation to come
about, to the disciples speaking in “tongues” at Pentecost, breath matters.
The
point that BBT made in the quote above is that no air escapes this planet’s
atmosphere—the air we breathe is the same air cave dwellers or the first marine
mammals who came ashore breathed. The air that Plato or Tolstoy or Virginia Woolf
breathed is the same air I breathe. As Barbara Brown Taylor states, “We take
it in, we use it to live, and when we breathe out it carries some of us with it
to the next person, or tree, or blue-tailed skink, who uses it to live.”
Knowing
how important breath is makes me think about what happens when I breathe. I
wonder, who am I breathing in today? To whom will I give life today? Perhaps
that’s why so many meditation exercises emphasize breathing. I think especially
of Ton-glen meditation, in which you breathe in the suffering of someone else,
transform it inside you, and breathe it out again as healing energy. It sounds
strange, but that is what happens naturally in breathing—we take in nitrogen
and oxygen (which we require for life), and we breathe out carbon dioxide (which
trees and other plants need for life).
The bottom line is, we
require one another to live. Our planet’s atmosphere is in balance and that
allows us and all other living things to survive. Take some deep breaths today
and send your healing energy to someone who needs it.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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