Deep Breaths So much. All at once. All the time. Sometimes it’s hard to catch your breath. When we commit to do the hard work of staying present to all that is happening around us it’s a lot! No small wonder that we need to stop and ground ourselves. I’ve started using an app to remind me to breathe deeply as a regular practice to settle my soul and remain focused in unsettling times. Breathing has long been a practice for mindfulness and meditation. In fact, breath has always been foundational to God’s story with humanity — quite literally from day one! In the very beginning, God sent a blast of wind a.k.a. “the breath of life” into Adam and “the human became a living being” (Genesis 2:7). When God changed Abram and Sarai’s names, theologians note that not only did the name change reflect God’s promises, but the change also added the sound of breath to their names: Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 17:5,15). It was a great wind that parted the Red Sea so that Moses could lead the captive Israelites to the promised land (Exodus14:21), and a blast of wind that brought the Holy Spirit to the disciples at Pentecost: “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven came a sound like the rush of a violent wind and it filled the entire house where they were staying” (Acts 2:1). At Pentecost, God’s Spirit fills the disciples with a breath of power, after which they were curiously able to speak in ways that defied logic, and their number grew from 120 to over 3,000! We, too, are invited to breathe deeply of the power of the Spirit and with a collective breath speak in ways that are generative and life-giving to those around us. Interestingly, the word “conspire” comes from the Latin word conspiarare, which means “to breathe together.” It originally referred to the act of musicians playing or singing in harmony, but I’m not sure the sentiment is all that different: we, too, desire to lift our voices as a chorus of justice in a conspiracy of hope! May the Spirit who empowered the disciples still work in curious ways through God’s people. — Rev. Andrea Saccoccio, Director of Congregational Engagement and Outreach, Sojourners |
No comments:
Post a Comment