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In recent months, I’ve been fascinated (and helped) by the practice of mindfulness. One text in particular that has been very good is Mindfulness: A practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world.1 There’s an unexpectedly profound moment on track four of the audio of guided meditations that accompanies the book. During the meditation, Mark Williams, the Oxford professor who pioneered Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, says, ‘Each in-breath a new beginning; each out-breath a letting go, a letting be.’
As mindfulness has become an important practice for me, I’ve become interested in how it might integrate into Christian spiritual practices … perhaps even beginning to think about it theologically. Others have done some work on this, and the practice is very similar and compatible with a long tradition of such Christian devotional contemplative practices as centring prayer.
But this line, ‘Each in-breath a new beginning; each out-breath a letting go, a letting be,’ led me off on quite a thought journey (slightly ironic when the primary intent of mindfulness is to stay in the present moment…).
My thinking about it revolves around the question: could we consider breathing as a kind of sacrament?
[Interlude] At the top of the hill, an old pā site, the wind storms in off the Pacific Ocean. Rushing over nautical miles, skimming the sea, harassing the tops of breakers, turning foam into sea mist, climbing the side of the headland in a terrific updraught, raking through mānuka and gorse, turning their silence to noise, pinning me back as I lean forward holding the trig station as an anchor. The wind enters my mouth as I gulp lungfuls of air, too big for my body to contain. Tihei mauri ora!
You speak, I’ll listen.2
Sacraments and the Sacramental
In Christianity, the sacraments are practices that embody key spiritual truths and allow us to interact with those truths. In Protestant Christianity, there are two main sacraments – Communion (Eucharist / the Lord’s Supper) and Baptism. In Catholic Christianity, these two are joined by a further five – Confirmation, Reconciliation (Confession), Anointing of the Sick, Holy Orders (Ordination) and Matrimony (Marriage). In Communion, concepts about Christ’s death are embodied in the consumption of the bread and wine, which are emblems of Christ’s body and blood. In Baptism, concepts about dying, cleansing and new life are embodied in the application of or immersion in water, followed by a re-emergence.
As an extension of the sacramental aspect of Christianity, there is a theological approach that looks for the embodiment of spiritual concepts in all kinds of ways within life – spreading and applying the idea of the sacramental more widely. In its active form, this can be described as ‘sacramental spirituality’.
One definition of sacramental reads, ‘an observance analogous to but not reckoned among the sacraments, such as the use of holy water or the sign of the cross’.3 The important point is the embodied actioning of spiritual concepts – embodied (or ‘incarnational’) spirituality – and the recognition of those concepts in the human and natural world around us. This can be taken even further, in fact, beyond mere ‘spiritual concepts’ into the embodiment of the presence of God [Him]self. In fact theologically, this approach takes its primary cue from the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ – God enfleshed. In that framework, the sacramental is the recognition of God, either metaphorically (symbolically) or in actual fact, in the stuff of everyday human existence.
Nothing is quite so everyday, embodied and, I think, divinely profound as breathing, and so it captures the imagination with regard to the sacramental. In a way that bears some similarities to how we receive Christ in the Communion, we could be seen to receive the Spirit in the breath.
Literal and Metaphorical
There’s an old theological debate about the emblems of Communion. In the Catholic tradition, the body and blood of Christ are literally present from the moment the priest blesses the emblems (transubstantiation). In Protestantism, the emblems though special are a symbol (a metaphor) of the body and blood. In basic terms, the conflict in interpretation is between ‘literal’ and ‘metaphorical’, and this can be reduced to an either/or dichotomy. But, for the sake of a thought-experiment, let’s hold the two interpretations equally together for a moment and form a paradox – i.e., in some way, the emblems are both literal and metaphorical.4 That might seem a bit tenuous, but in the case of the breath, holding the paradox of the emblem being both literal and metaphorical, is really interesting and, I think, more easily done than with bread and wine.
In the sacrament of breathing, if the breath is seen as metaphorical then the physical air that is inhaled (i.e. that substance which is chemically described as 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen etc) is a symbol for the Spirit of God and the life that God breathes into us. It’s a good and beautiful metaphor and very full in and of itself. Through the breath, we are reminded of our reliance on God for life and sustenance, and reminded of the first impartation of life – reminded that we are formed dirt (or stardust, the base elements of the universe) animated by the breath of God.
But what say we literally inhale God when we breath? What say God is literally present in the air around us? While addressing the philosophers in Athens, Paul quotes the Greek poet Aratus, ‘in him [God] we live and move and have our being’5 – meaning that in some way we exist within God. Dallas Willard (in The Divine Conspiracy6) argues that the term ‘Heavenly Father’ denotes that God is right up close in the air around us. In Hebrew cosmology (he says) the first ‘heaven’ is the lower atmosphere of earth. God is denoted as being the God inhabiting the heavens – including this one – the air next to your skin. In this way God can be described as being in close proximity and utterly immanent.
Linguistically, a connection between the Spirit (of God) and air can be made through the Greek word pneuma, which is translated throughout the New Testament as spirit, including in reference to the Holy Spirit, and literally means breath, the wind or a movement of air. Similarly, in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word ruach can be variously translated as breath, wind and spirit, including in relation to the Spirit of God.7
Another interesting linguistic connection is with regard to the name of God, YHWH. The aspirate nature of the h sounds in the word have led to the observation that YHWH is in essence a transcription of the in-take of breath (the first syllable) followed by an exhalation (the second syllable).8 In the overall context of the sacrament of breathing, these linguistic connections emphasise the spirituality of breath (pun intended – the pneumality of the pneuma).
The God-breath dynamic is profound whether it is viewed as literal or metaphorical, but I think we can have both. In the sacrament of breathing – when we breathe mindfully and meaningfully (either during a dedicated period of prayer, contemplation, meditation or devotion, or in the course of everyday life) – we can hold the paradox – the idea that we are breathing God and life both metaphorically and literally.
[Interlude] Face down in water, I do the impossible. I breathe. The breath at first comes short and rapid – my brain’s survival instinct in confusion, the shock of a body plunged into an alien atmosphere. Then, when trust at last settles in, my connection to the surface and what I need above me reassured, things resolve into quietness, releasing myself, the mechanism of breathing dissolves from consciousness unhindered; enveloped now, I kick forward.
A Wander Through the Sacrament
Without seeking to establish a definitive liturgy or interpretation, I think the phrase said by Williams, ‘Each in-breath a new beginning; each out-breath a letting go, a letting be,’ can be utilised (appropriated) to guide us through a sacrament of breathing.
A New Beginning
The first phrase, ‘Each in-breath a new beginning…’ is immediately meaningful. Inherent in Christianity is the concept of new beginnings – being born again (and again, and again). The rhythm of it. Emerging and re-emerging. The tomb becomes a womb. Resurrection is an integral, and indispensable, concept of our faith. The thought that resurrection is part of our basic life system (breathing) is deeply compelling. Every breath is a new beginning – it focuses us on the importance of the present moment as a moment of God’s sustaining, reinvigoration and potential, and brings us alive to the grace of God – the gift of a new start with every in-breath that provides the oxygen we need.
Each in-breath is a re-enactment of our very first breath in this world, and a celebration of the gift of life itself. It is also a re-enactment of that primal first breath, when God breathed into ‘mud and stardust’ to create humankind. These moments of ‘in-spiration’ (in-breathing) continue to ripple outwards in acts of creativity.
A Letting Go, A Letting Be
The two parts of the next phrase are related – ‘each out-breath a letting go, a letting be’. Letting go is the process of surrendering to God – it’s a kind of resignation but without fatalism (more on that below). It is also a response to the invitation of Jesus to ‘Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest’9 and to ‘cast all your anxieties on him [God]’.10 The process of letting go can be a difficult one – a loosening of our white-knuckle grip – but it’s about acknowledging that we can’t keep trying to make everything happen by ourselves, and finding peace on the other side of that acknowledgement.
‘Letting be’, I think, is a compelling statement of faith.
The Paradox of Faith
In the book Fear and Trembling, philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (under the pseudonym ‘Johannes de silentio’) writes extensively about faith, primarily by engaging with the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. In Kierkegaard’s exploration, Abraham expresses ‘infinite resignation’ in being prepared to follow God’s request to sacrifice Isaac (or in Jesus’ words, ‘Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.’11). But although this resignation is the vital first step, faith doesn’t stop there. While Abraham was utterly prepared to sacrifice Isaac, he also had complete belief that God would not ultimately require him to carry out the action. As Kierkegaard writes, ‘But what did Abraham? He arrived neither too early nor too late. He … rode slowly on his way. And all the while he had faith, believing that God would not demand Isaac of him, though ready all the while to sacrifice him, should it be demanded of him…’12
Kierkegaard is a complex writer, and I’m not sure it’s likely to ever feel as if you have what he’s saying completely nailed, but after engaging with these passages in Fear and Trembling (with a little of my own fear and trembling thrown in for good measure, and probably steering a course somewhat tangentially to Kierkegaard’s main thesis), I jotted down a possible definition of faith that I’ve liked ever since:
Faith is the complete acceptance of the way things are, and the total belief that things can be different.
This beautiful paradox finds its function in being grounded in the concept of the possibility and potentiality of an ultimately omnipotent and loving God. That grounding keeps the first half of the paradox from being or becoming fatalistic, creates forward movement into the second half of the paradox and is the springboard of hope. God is in the midst of the present moment, and we are held within the flow. It’s not a static state of being, it’s resting there, and discovering movement in that space.13 Meanwhile future moments are open to hyper-potential, the trans-rational and the transcendent. In a sense, the two parts of the paradox could be seen to mirror God as Still Point and Silence on the one hand, and Prime Mover and Speaker on the other.14
Another way of framing the resignation side of the paradox is through the New Testament concept of contentment, gratitude, trust and being at peace in the present moment and the current situation – being content, as Paul says, in all circumstances.15 All this while being open to intervention and a shift in circumstances – creation, incarnation, redemption, resurrection, restoration. As mentioned earlier, the second half of the paradox has to do with hope. So the faith paradox might be stated as:
Faith is contentment and hope, grounded in love.
The words ‘letting be’ from the exercise of our sacrament of breathing can be used as a frame for the paradox – especially when expressed in the form ‘let it be’. The words have a double meaning that encapsulates both sides of the concept. With eyes on the present, ‘let it be’ denotes a condition – even a sigh – of resignation, gelassenheit,16 contentment, being (rather than doing) and rest (mindfulness, by the way, is great for learning this state of being); while with eyes on the future or the transcendent, ‘let it be’ denotes a belief in the possibility of ‘that which is not, becoming what is’. In the Christian faith, ‘let it be’ is often provided as the definition of the word amen. Allowing for the double meaning, we can say that ultimately the sacrament of breathing, and an embrace of the faith paradox, can be about living life in an amen state of being.
This state of being, I think, will often be evidenced by a lightness of touch and gentleness – not to mention love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness and self-control (the other fruit of the Pneuma). In a wonderful passage in Fear and Trembling, Kierkegaard paints a picture of a character he calls ‘the knight of faith’. He describes how such a man might appear strolling through 19th century Danish life (Kierkegaard’s own context). This character is unassuming and almost happy-go-lucky in appearance – high on hope but utterly content. The descriptive passage ends with the following words (slightly edited and with the appropriation acknowledged): ‘this man has performed, and is performing every moment, the movement of infinity … He has resigned everything absolutely, and then again seized hold of it all…’
This feels like something akin to an idea expressed by Frederick Buechner: ‘Go where your best prayers take you. Unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy. Breathe deep of the glad air and live one day at a time.’17
A Sacrament of Being
Each in-breath a new beginning; each out-breath a letting go, a letting be. The sacrament of breathing.
If nothing else, this winding and wandering discussion serves to show how the everyday, even the apparently mundane stuff of life, can explode with meaning when viewed sacramentally. The Spirit – the Pneuma, the Ruach, the Breath – is woven through, and is inseparable from, life. If there can be a sacrament of breathing, then there can also be a sacrament of eating, a sacrament of sleeping, a sacrament of resting, a sacrament of swimming, a sacrament of playing, a sacrament of working; a sacrament of being…
[Postcript, an ending, a beginning]
The clock comes round to 7.27 and the inevitable rising of the sun.
A liminal slipping into consciousness,
my fragile agile mind,
a starting cough and then an awareness of the breath,
the room lightening in a cross-fade from the night;
a commonplace, mundane resurrection.
‘Our father in the heavens…’
I begin.
Breathing in and into the trinity, breathing in faith, hope and love;
peace, patience and kindness;
grace, mercy and forgiveness;
healing, contentment and joy.
Shifting stiffened limbs, testing their usefulness for the day.
I pray in tongues until there’s nothing left to say.
‘I trust the breath; I am loved; I am held; I’m in the flow,’ I say silently.
I pray for you.
Breathing in and out the everyday subsistence, the substance of life.
I shift again, and hope for the best,
and hope the best means flourishing.
And so I find, the day begins,
with the surprising but inevitable rising of the son.
Notes
1. Williams, Mark & Penman, Danny, Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Piatkus Books, 2011.
2. ‘Tihei mauri ora’: (noun) sneeze of life, call to claim the right to speak. maoridictionary.co.nz
Other poetic expressions of wind and body:
Weather-beaten heart
the wind must blow
right through my body
– Bashō (1644-1694), translated by David Young in Moon Woke Me Up Nine Times, Knopf, 2013, p.24.
WALKING INTO THE WIND
The wind is howling
against my eardrums
I walk through it
as if through water
I feel the power
of the breath of God
gusting across my face
my senses are overcome
with this roaring
it wipes out almost
every other sound
until all I can hear
is the keening of heaven.
– Mark Laurent, Perhaps, 1995, p.55.
4. This is actually similar to the view of Eucharist held by Martin Luther. He believed that the body, blood, bread and wine are all truly and substantially present in a sacramental union.
5. Acts 17:28, ESV.
Poetic expression of some of the concepts discussed in this paragraph:
Birds afloat in air’s current,
sacred breath? No, not breath of God,
it seems, but God
the air enveloping the whole
globe of being.
It’s we who breathe, in, out, in, the sacred,
leaves astir, our wings
rising, ruffled…
[…]
But storm or still,
numb or poised in attention,
we inhale, exhale, inhale,
encompassed, encompassed.
– Denis Levertov, ‘In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being’, Selected Poems, New Directions, 2002, p.194.
My soul breathes only in they infinite soul;
I breathe, I think, I love, I live but thee.
Oh breathe, oh think, – O Love, live into me…
– George MacDonald, 5 January, Diary of an Old Soul.
6. Willard, Dallas, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life In God, HarperOne, 1998.
7. The Hebrew also has other words for breath, such as neshamah – e.g. Genesis 2:7, ESV, ‘then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life’. This is an excellent example of the breath originating from God.
8. As I recall, I read about this in one of Richard Rohr’s books – probably The Divine Dance.
12. Kierkegaard, Søren, Hollander, Lee M. (trans), Selections from the writings of Kierkegaard, Kindle, 2013.
13. While this idea of surrender contains a sense of ‘stopping’, stillness and resting, even by itself (without the forward movement discussed with regard to the faith paradox in the paragraphs which follow) it doesn’t necessarily need to be conceived of as a static state of being (although it can be that too – there’s a season for everything). Further, Evelyn Underhill points out that this surrender is ‘not limp but deliberate, a trustful self-donation, a “living faith”.’ (Underhill, Evelyn, Practical Mysticism: A Little Book for Normal People, Kindle, first published 1915). Andrew Murray also addresses this. It is the act of surrender which enables forward momentum by relying on God’s omnipotence and giving God space to work. (Murray, Andrew, Absolute Surrender, first published 1895, http://www.ccel.org).
And Thomas Merton: ‘the truth is found by complete consent and acceptance. Not at all by defeat, by mere passive resignation, by mere inert acceptance of evil and falsity … but by “creative” consent, in my deepest self, to the will of God, which is expressed in my own self and my own life.’ (Dairies, July 31, 1961, IV.146, in A Year with Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo (ed), SPCK, 2005. p218.)
14. A related poetic expression:
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
– T.S. Eliot, ‘East Coker’, Four Quartets
Another observation about the faith paradox is that it could be seen to hold within the same existential space or continuum the spiritual pathways of the Via Negativa (subtraction, suffering, lack, darkness, unknowing) and the Via Positiva (addition, comfort, abundance, light, knowing), meaning that the two paths/experiences are not either/or but rather woven together.
Further, the two halves and forward movement or trajectory of the paradox (which I refer to as ‘the springboard of hope’) are a compelling pattern that I’ve since noticed in other theological statements. For example, this quote from Jürgen Moltmann, with notes inserted by me in square brackets:
‘For eschatological faith, the trinitarian God-event on the cross becomes the history of God which is open to the future and which opens up the future. Its present is called reconciliation with grief in love [a notion reminiscent of the position of acceptance of the first half of the faith paradox] and its eschaton [ie future] the filling of all mortal flesh with spirit and all that is dead with this love [reminiscent of the statement of possibility]. It is a transformation into the fullest degree of life.’ (The Crucified God, SCM Press, 2015, pp.263-264.)
The totality of this formulation, according to Moltmann, brings existential meaning to the human condition. The same, or similar, pattern is also found in Walter Brueggemann’s work on The Prophetic Imagination (Fortress Press, 2001), in which truth-telling and lament (analogous to the first half of the paradox) are partnered with a hope-filled word from elsewhere – a word from outside the current paradigm (again signalling possibility and potentiality, as per the second half of the paradox).
Or Thomas Merton (in a diary entry that follows on from the quote in the previous note, square brackets added): ‘Gradually I will come more and more to transcend the limitations of the world and of the society to which I belong [second half of the paradox / eschaton] – while fully accepting my own little moment in history, such as it is [first half of the paradox].’ (Dairies, July 31, 1961, IV.146, in A Year with Thomas Merton, Jonathan Montaldo (ed), SPCK, 2005. p218.)
16. The idea of surrender and resignation has long been a central concept in the Christian mystical tradition. The German word gelassenheit comes from one stream of this tradition (it was used, for example, by Meister Ekhart). Silas C. Krabbe, in his book A Beautiful Bricolage: Theopoetics as God-Talk for Our Time (Wipf and Stock, 2016) points out that this term was later picked up by the philosopher Martin Heidegger, and defines the word as, ‘to let something be or offer another thing space’. Elsewhere it is variously translated as ‘tranquil submission’, ‘equanimity’ (in psychological terms), ‘releasement’, ‘yieldedness’, ‘submission to the will of God’ and, in modern German, ‘tranquillity’ and ‘serenity’ – all meaningful definitions in our context.
Krabbe goes on to note a couple of other observations, by way of two quotes from American philosopher John Caputo, about gelassenheit which I think have interesting threads to (and extending out from) our discussion. In the first quote, Caputo says that ‘in religion [gelassenheit] is called grace’. This puts me in mind of Paul’s triple prayer for the ‘thorn in his flesh’ to be removed. The response he receives from God is, ‘My grace is sufficient for you…’ (2 Corinthians 12:7-9), which effectively leaves Paul in a state of ‘infinite resignation’ (to go back to Keirkegaard’s term). In the second quote, Caputo says, ‘Gelassenheit is a certain transgression of the ruling power plays which dominate our world.’ It is, as Krabbe elucidates, ‘by no means an impotent idea/disposition’. If we consider gelassenheit / infinite resignation to be in some sense a state of rest, then this puts me in mind of Walter Brueggemann’s ideas about the ‘Sabbath as resistance’ to the ruling ‘totalism’ (see Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, Westminster John Knox Press, 2014).
17. Buechner, Frederick, Telling Secrets, HarperOne, 1991, p.92.