Breath of Life

I am fascinated with human breath. Not whether it is pleasantly good or disdainfully bad (by the way don't catch me before the morning brushing... it ain't pretty), but by the fact that we breathe at all. Breath, until it is gone, is highly under-rated and overlooked.

From the moment we draw our first breath, we will continue to do so with staggering regularity until we draw our last. There is an amazing sense of finality in breath even from the moment of our first inhalation. We are much too young to appreciate it at the time, but from our first inhalation we begin to draw our last. Considered by some a morbid thought, each breath we breathe is one closer to our final exhalation. Breathe in, breathe out... breathe in, breathe out... an amazing cycle of which we are often not even consciously aware. However, the number is constantly counting down... raising disturbing manic tendencies if we dwell too long on the point. The sobriety of the thought is healthy, dwelling excessively on it is not! In fact, excessive attention to the point could send one into hyperventilation! Does anyone have a paper bag?

I remember the first time I ever had the breath "knocked out" of me. On the football field as a junior high school student I was returning from running a pass pattern and an inadvertently kicked ball headed straight for my gut, hitting me squarely in the abdomen. I never even saw it coming and had no opportunity to react. I merely hit the ground as if I'd been hit by a truck!

I remember lying there on the ground thinking... "Okay, time to breathe..." and nothing happened. All I could manage at best were little tiny short bursts of air. Not having previous experience with it, I thought I might die right there! A coach ran over, kept me on my back and pulled my waistband away from my abdomen. He then coached me through increasingly deeper breaths until my normal breathing pattern returned. I was running pass patterns again minutes later none the worse for wear, but much more appreciative of normal breath! Fascinating.

As kids, we often played a competitive breath holding game to see who could go longest without breathing. Sometimes the stakes were raised as we'd play at the bottom of the deep end of the pool but it was the same premise nonetheless. Who can hold their breath the longest? Being a woodwind musician at the time, I had comparatively good lung capacity and won my share of games. Isn't it fascinating that we can hold our breath, but we will only pass out before we can take our own life this way? Amazing. I wonder if, in a sense, we find ourselves "holding our breath" from a spiritual point of view?

The last song of the psalter exhorts in its closing line, "Let everything that has breath praise the Lord." The psalmist reminds the reader that breath is something all living creatures have in common. We all breathe. We all, in our own unique sense, have been created as living creatures before the One who made us. And as precious as breath is to life, I wonder how many breaths I have wasted in things less than praiseworthy efforts? How many have been given to praise? How many breaths have I effectively withheld from praise?

I've been thinking lately what it would be like for "every" breath to be devoted in praise. Of course, to be conscious of every breath would require an intensity of meditation few could maintain and even then would be an incredibly demanding discipline. But what if a few segments of each day were devoted to the praise of God through the human breath? Would those breaths take on a richness transcending all others? Would the practice bring us into a deeper appreciation for the breaths we take so easily for granted? Perhaps so.

Conscious breathing has been part of my meditations for some time. But to move closer to every breath being praise is a new discipline for me. Would you be willing to try it? I wonder what your experience will bring to your awareness of the breath of life?

Please share...