exhale.
the exhale of the eucharist.
- - -
"That is the exhale of Bread and Wine." — Jenny Marrs
- - -
I’ve been holding my breath.
Not consciously. Not with anger. But holding nonetheless, gripping God like a child holds a balloon string, terrified that if I loosen my fingers even slightly, everything will float away and disappear into the sky where I cannot follow.
Breath.
Yahweh.
YH-WH.
The letters themselves are the sound of the air that passes in and out. If you listen closely, you can hear them in the silence. You can hear the name of God.
An inhale, a pause, an exhale.
To speak the name is to breathe out God. To let go.
But somewhere along the way, I have lost sight of this.
“God is with us” became “I will hold God here.” From with to grasp. And in that grasp, I’ve forgotten I need to breathe - maybe forgotten how to breathe.
- - -
There’s a moment when you’ve held your breath too long. When your chest tightens and your lungs beg you to let go. When holding on feels less like faithfulness and more like drowning.
I fear that if I exhale, I will lose my grip on God.
I fear that if I let go of what I’m holding, nothing will return to fill the space.
So I hold. And hold. And hold.
Until I can’t anymore.
Unwillingly, I exhale.
Thinking only of loss, missing the liturgy.
Missing the sacrament.
- - -
I am beginning to see that I am surrounded by people who are also learning to breathe, inhaling as I exhale, exhaling as I need to inhale. That here, in this place, in this rhythm, I can learn to let go of the God I’ve been holding on to out of fear.
I’m learning that the breath is being returned.
I’m learning and relearning the sacred practice of breaking and pouring out. My desire to hold on met by an equal desire to receive.
My tight fist slowly unclenched into an open hand.
- - -
Maybe this is also eucharist.
Not just the bread broken on a table, but the breath flowing between us. A sacrament of my very life, the Christ that flows within, poured out to all and asking them to receive.
An exhale as an act of trust that the breath I need will be returned. A moment by moment lesson that I am not meant to carry this breath alone. That my letting go becomes part of the rhythm of a people, both receiving and being received.
A eucharist of breath. Of the body. Of the flowing through of Christ.
Somewhere in the pause between inhale and exhale, God is with us.
With me. With you.
- - -
I’m learning (to slowly) how God’s presence is not in the holding.
It’s in the breath.
The breath of the land, the wind moving through berry bushes and vineyards, the holler alive with a holiness I cannot name but can only feel as I pass through.
The external and internal breath of the flowing Christ that removes death and brings life. A resurrection of sorts passed to the next person, and the next, and the next.
- - -
Still, I fight it.
In the stillness while I wait for the coffee to brew. In the pause as the shower water warms. In the thoughts that swirl as I carry the trash to the street, these between moments, where life somehow pauses and I’m left alone with the question:
What if God doesn’t return?
It’s here I fight to exhale.
It’s here I lose sight of resurrection.
It’s here where I want to hold on again.
- - -
But I am learning, sometimes the exhale must come first.
In letting go, as the power of life moves out, we find a God who returns. Who shows us, every single moment, that resurrection comes. That it fills. That its promise is here, now, at hand.
An act of exhale that is a practice of resurrection; a resurrection I too easily forgot is coming.
To empty is to be filled.
This is the promise of resurrection.
Again and again, until resurrection finally flows over the dry bones that can breathe no more.
- - -
This breath. This exhale. Our communal practice of every moment holy. Every moment a claim of resurrection in the kingdom that is here.
This is the restorative work of Christ.
At hand.
Near.
Here.
Come.
With us.
exhale.