Breathe....

I go to Body Pump three mornings a week.  Body Pump is group weight lifting set to high energy music.  

Since I've been really lazy about pushing myself when it comes to strength training, it's been very helpful to have a class to challenge me.  What I can I say--I thrive on structure.

NOT ME

ME

At some point during the class, the instructor will yell out, "Don't forget to breathe!"    Now you would think when you are grunting and sweating and struggling to lift a big old weight off your chest that the last thing you need to be reminded of is to breathe.  But invariably I discover that I've been holding my breath from the exertion.  So I let go, take in deep breath, and as the needed oxygen floods my body, the weight doesn't seem nearly so heavy.

I find the same thing true in my spiritual life. It is no accident that in the Bible the Greek and Hebrew words for Spirit are the same as the words of breath.  In Hebrew, the word is ruah--so Genesis 1:2 tells us that at the dawn of creation the breath of God moved across the face of the waters of chaos.  The Greek word is pneuma.


God's Spirit is our life breath, but often in the midst of difficulties I just put my head down, grunt and sweat and struggle along all by myself.  I get too busy to pray in more than perfunctory snatches.   I go around all knotted up with anxiety and tension.  But if I take just a few minutes and BREATHE....literally.  My favorite form of meditative prayer is centering prayer, which includes deep, reflective, intentional breathing.  When I pray this way, when I take the time to center and rest myself in the One who is the Breath of Life, suddenly things don't seem so overwhelming.

That's why an intentional daily practice of prayer is so important.  This came home to me earlier this week.  Lent is always harried, but between losing our associate pastor and getting ready for my big walk (plus a few other things) this Lenten season has seems especially demanding.  Luckily, our Lenten study, The Open Door by the always wise Joyce Rupp, requires an intentional daily practice of meditation and prayer.  


On Tuesday I plunged into the required meditation time with some irritation.  One more thing to check off my to do list before I could get on to the "important" things that required my attention.  I was knotted and harried and grouchy.  But after a few moments of silence, of deep, contemplative breathing, I found my body suffused with life-giving oxygen and my spirit suffused with God's life-giving ruah.  God's breath, God's ruah moved across the waters of chaos that was my life at that moment and created peace.  My body unknotted, my spirit quieted.  The do list was as long as ever, but the knots of anxiety in both body and spirit had been replaced with a feeling of calm.

Just as I need my Body Pump instructor to call out reminders to "Breath!"  so an intentional daily practice of prayer and meditation calls us to us to breathe in the Breath of Life.

 The words of one of my favorite hymns speak to me in new ways:

Come and find the quiet center
In the crowded life we lead,
find the room for hope to enter,
find the frame where we are freed:
clear the chaos and the clutter,
clear our eyes so we can see
all the things that really matter,
be at peace and simply be.


I suppose that is one of the major hopes I take with my to El Camino. To clear away the chaos and the clutter, to re-discover all the things that really matter, to simply be.  And to have time to breathe...