As we age and when we are sick, a feeling of uselessness can grow on us. This can bring on a sense of depression. We used to be able to do so many things; now we find that we’ve been looking out the window for hours, doing nothing, getting nowhere. We can then feel guilty. ‘I have all this time on my hands, and yet I can’t pray. When I was younger I was very busy and gave hardly any time to prayer. But I used to ease my guilt by promising God that I’d give him plenty of time when I was older. Now I have endless empty hours on my hands, but where’s the prayer?’
Each of the previous chapters has concluded with a conversation with Jesus. I suggest that you pray that way when you can, following St Teresa’s idea of prayer as a loving conversation with God who totally loves us. St Ignatius takes the same line: ‘Imagine Christ Our Lord present before you upon the cross, and begin to speak with him…’ But we can’t be praying like that all the time, so how can we enrich the idle hours in which we seem to be able to do nothing?
The suggestion in this chapter is that we can link prayer to our breathing! Nothing could be simpler than this. Breathing can be seen as a holy action, and when you know this, it eases the struggle of trying to pray when you can’t focus and when you can’t stir your heart to loving attention.
Wrapped in Silence
Sit in your favourite place, your sacred space, where you have perhaps a little statue or an icon and a candle. Or if you’re confined to bed, think of your bed as a holy place. Recall the story of Jacob when he was on the run from his brother: he lay down, exhausted, put his head on a stone and fell asleep. He dreams of a ladder there, on which angels are ascending and descending. God comes and speaks comforting words of promise to him. When Jacob wakes up, he says: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it’ (Gn.28: 10-17). So God comes to your place also. God has your address and likes to visit!
Allow yourself to become still. Listen to any sounds around you. Let this listening grow deeper. You can hear sounds only because you are quiet. If you were talking, you wouldn’t notice them. Become more and more a still point in our turning and noisy world. The quieter you become, the more you hear. The Lord comes very quietly. ‘Have you not heard his silent steps, for he comes, comes, ever comes?’ (Tagore). Our Lady was wrapped in silence and listened to what was going on in her heart. Invite her to be with you: she will help you to become quieter when you ask her.
Now notice your breathing: gently inhale and exhale. Imagine the scene in Genesis where God breathes into your lifeless body and you begin to stir with life (Gn.2:7). God’s breath becomes the breath of your life! Your breath is indeed your own, but it is also God’s. Some day your breath will cease, so it is precious: it keeps you going. For the first time in your life, perhaps, make a silent prayer of gratitude to God for your breath.
YAHWEH
Here I want to develop an idea from the Franciscan writer, Richard Rohr. Think of the word YAHWEH! It is the most sacred word of a pious Hebrew; it is the name that God utters when asked by Moses who he was (see Gn.3:15). It is a word endlessly rich in meaning: it says that God, who is above all names, is solidly present to us, close to us, on our side. YAHWEH is the God who is full of tenderness and compassion, and this God is in our corner, fighting for us. Jesus would have learnt the word YAHWEH from his parents, and then breathed it with awe and reverence.
YAHWEH then is a beautiful word, full of hope and comfort. But more: it mysteriously matches the rhythm of your breathing! Notice the sound of the word Yah-Weh. If you gasp for a moment and listen to your breathing, you will notice that as you breathe out, you are making the sound Yah, and as you breathe in, you are making the sound Weh.
As you breathe, you breathe in and out the name of God, YAHWEH, the One whom you try to love above all else. So when you are conscious of your breathing, you can make it a prayer! But even when you’re not attending to your breathing, this little mantra is being sung in your body: it is like background music, and you can come back to it easily.
Instead of imagining that you are far from God when you can’t focus on him, now let your breathing do some holy work for you. Let your breath carry your prayer: it tells of the longing, the yearning of your being, which is for God. You just want God, and that is enough. Don’t worry that you can’t focus on God: you can’t focus on air either! God is beyond images and words. He is the desire of your heart. ‘O God, you are my God, for you I long: my body pines for you, like a dry, weary land without water’ (Ps.63:1, Grail version).
A Chinese tradition holds that we come into this world with the gift of a certain number of breaths. When they are used up we expire. Long life would then mean breathing gently and slowly, rather than hurriedly! Whatever about that, we can grow in our relationship with God by matching the sacred word YAH-WEH with the rhythm of our breathing.
On Stand-by
So you are in prayerful mode so long as you are breathing! In computer jargon, praying is your ‘default mode’, which simply means that if a computer isn’t involved in some specific activity, it reverts to a standby position. It is ticking over, ready for action. Likewise as your breathing goes on, you can tell God that you want it to be a prayer. Likewise when you work at something you offer it to God in your Morning Offering, and it becomes prayer. Often you are unconscious of your breath and of the sound it makes, which is the sound YAH-WEH. But every so often what is unconscious becomes conscious, and you articulate and re-affirm the prayer hidden in your breath. You will find it consoling to feel that you are in prayerful mode every moment of your day, even when asleep, or when you doze during a time of prayer.
You may have to overcome the idea that we pray only with our souls, and that the body is irrelevant. But it is not so: monks pray with their bodies when they stand and sit and sing the psalms for hours each day. They also believe that to work with the intention of serving God is also to pray. Ignatius of Loyola would enthusiastically agree. Augustine remarks that those who sing pray twice. And we bow our bodies in adoration. We join our hands and bless our bodies with them. We receive the host at communion and eat it. We go on pilgrimage, which is a bodily prayer. Truly the body prays, because it is as a human person, body and soul, and not as an angel, that you meet your God. You won’t hear God saying: ‘Now, when you pray, please leave your body behind you. I’m interested only in your soul!’
My mother had a stroke in her mid-seventies and died four years later. I was there that morning, with a friend, when her breathing began to grow more drawn out. She would breathe out, and then there would be an impossibly long pause before she breathed in again. Finally she breathed out, and we waited, transfixed, for her to breathe in again. Not daring to breathe ourselves, we waited five, ten, twenty, thirty seconds, a minute … But no breath came. She was gone. For those who love God, their final breath or sigh matches the prayer of Jesus when he says: ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’ (Lk.23:46). His Father had been the desire of his whole being throughout his life, even when he was busy or sleeping. The Father can be so also for us, even as concentration declines in our later years. There is a website named ‘Pray as you Go!’ The suggestion in this chapter is ‘Pray as you Breathe!’
Try it!