Catching My Breath

Breathe....

Ask some folks who've worked with me over the years, and you'll find that instruction one I offer frequently when things get tense...when the pressure builds. I believe in breathing. I mean, obviously other than the physiological benefit of breathing deeply.

Wind, breath, spirit...Ruah.

It is here where we find ourselves...where we can come to center and be centered.

It is what a resurrected Christ does in an upper room to walled up disciples, crippled by fear. 

It is from this place that life comes...Life from above.
It's a word Nicodemus struggled with.

It's a word I know. It's a word I believe. It's a word I can ignore with ease when misdirected into thinking I'm more than I am...when I think whatever is to be, I have to make it so.

I'm not absent ego. I know there are some things I do well. I also know there are things I don't do well. I got over trying to be all things to all people a long time ago. Owning weaknesses is as important as claiming strengths. Wisdom comes in being vulnerable enough, loving your people enough to trust that they love you not because you don't have weaknesses, but precisely because you do.

Too much to do...too many things to fix...too many expectations...whether real, perceived or assumed doesn't matter.  When "too many" and "too much" pervade, breathing deeply stops, and the fragility of the spirit starts to succumb to the pressure like an underwater vessel that's plunged to depths far greater than its capacity to withstand.

Patience is required when breathing deeply. Can't breathe deeply when preoccupied with the next thing that has to be done. That's kinda where I am right now.
And the words of Wendell Berry ring in my ears--

"Well, you've put me in the place I’m always winding up in and…that is to say well we've acknowledged that the problems are big, now where’s the big solution? When you ask the question 'what is the big answer,' then you’re implying that we can impose the answer. But that’s the problem we’re in to start with, we’ve tried to impose the answers. The answers will come not from walking up to your farm and saying 'this is what I want and this is what I expect from you.' You walk up and you say 'what do you need?'  And you commit yourself to say 'all right, I’m not going to do any extensive damage here until I know what it is that you are asking of me.'  And this can’t be hurried. This is the dreadful situation that young people are in. I think of them and I say well, the situation you’re in now is a situation that’s going to call for a lot of patience. And to be patient in an emergency is a terrible trial."

 http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-wendell-berry-poet-prophet/  (Great interview, watch it)

I've been remarkably impatient this past month.  And when impatient, rest assured I'm not breathing deeply either.  That's a dangerous place to be.  God knows we've too many pastoral leaders with "Messiah complexes."  I don't want to be that...I do want to craft a life that lives in the way of the One who is Messiah.

Like I've done for so many others...grabbing a hand, or placing mine on a shoulder to look into the eyes of the distressed and speaking the word, "Breathe,"  I feel the presence of those I trust holding mine and telling me the same.

And for today, at least---
I am.  Thank God, I am.