Yesterday it felt like the sky was trying to remember how to snow.
Specks of white floated down intermittently and forgetfully, obedient to gravity’s command. Looking out the window with recognition and surprise, I was struck by how much I miss the days when seeing snowflakes falling from the sky on a cold winter day was not so unusual, and evergreen branches weighed down with white were a more ordinary sight.
Yesterday felt like the sky was trying to remember how to snow.
It can be hard to do something when we’ve fallen out of the habit and practice of doing it. There was a string of summers when David, Grace, Ben and I, along with my sister and her boys, would regularly meet to play tennis together on a nearby outdoor court. Those first couple of times back on the court together, having not picked up rackets for months, were comedic and trying; many balls were hit over the fence or into the net. But after awhile, our noodle arms remembered what to do, along with the rest of our bodies, and we enjoyed the rhythm and sound of a tennis rally, the neon yellow ball flying back and forth across the net.
When you and I came into the world as infants, we knew how to breathe, how to really breathe. Have you ever watched a sleeping baby? How her whole belly rises and falls, fully, and not just her chest? How even her back fills up, too? How there is a nice and easy rhythm to the deepness and fullness of each breath, replenishing and nourishing her with each inhale? Releasing, cleansing, and letting go, with each exhale?
As an adult, I used to think I knew how to breathe … until I realized I didn’t. Somewhere along the way, I had forgotten how to breathe — how to really breathe — like I breathed when I was a baby. Like most of us in our modern western world, my breathing had become much more shallow, engaging mostly just my chest, and unconsciously, at that.
In the first chapter of the book of Genesis, God’s spirit, God’s breath – ruach in Hebrew – hovers over the deep at the beginning of creation. Our human breath — when engaged fully, deeply, mindfully, intentionally – is one of the most powerful tools we have to connect us to God’s spirit within us, bringing us “back to ourselves” when we are angry or anxious, fearful or stressed. We hear in John’s Gospel that the Spirit of truth guides us, leads us, to all truth. How might this connect with how our breath leads and guides us?
During this season of preparation, leading up to Christmas — when the world around us is ramping up, and the unrelenting conflicts and division in our city, nation and world weigh heavy on our hearts; when our lists are long and the days are short; when the pain of grief over the earthly absence of a loved one can come upon us with a holiday song or a memory — might we, from time to time (… in the checkout line … at the traffic light … at the dinner table … in bed, turning in at night …) remember how to breathe?
Love,
Cristina