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Good morning.

In my final reflection this week from Psalm 104, which sings of God’s good creation, we turn today to the breath of life that sustains and invigorates us:

You hide your face, they are dismayed;
you take away their breath, they die,
returning to the dust from which they came.
You send forth your spirit, and they are created,
and you renew the face of the earth.

One of the things that connects us most intimately to the rest of creation is our breath.  Every time we breathe in and breathe out, the barrier we might imagine to exist between us and the rest of the world dissolves. I lead a meditation group and mostly we just sit still and breathe. Of course, we don’t need to do anything special to breathe – our bodies have been doing it all by themselves from birth – but when we become aware of our breath, we can find a deeper peace and a simple delight in the very fact of being alive. Facing a pandemic which compromises our ability to breathe, the act of conscious, meditative breathing can be an act of compassion and prayer for those who struggle for breath.

The air that we breathe is not our possession; we share it with all living creatures. It surrounds us and invisibly sustains us all. To pray simply with our breath, then, is to immerse ourselves in the gift of life itself and to know ourselves to be interconnected with the vast diversity of God’s creation.

O God, whose Spirit breathes life into all things,
teach us so to treasure the air that we breathe
that we may grow in compassion
and find peace with all that you have created.  Amen.