When he stated fact in church on Sunday, I remembered it took 42 minutes.
I know this because when I walked through the screen shoulder & heart heavy, I looked at the steady green numbers & stood quiet before stepping leaden from the kitchen sink to the oven to the refrigerator until finally I surrendered to a slump. Into an orange jewel painted chair, like a bird, I thought, to remind me of feathers & wings & soaring great heights.
He said 70% of human waste is expelled through the lungs, through breathing. Through something we take for granted, I thought.
I remembered how I looked out onto the winter worn yard filled with twigs and branches strewn by weeks of storms. To walk across it barefoot would be ridiculous, but the mud and wet leaves would feel like cool silk to my toes and soles weary. But I didn’t move. I sat.
He said he thought that our bodies ridded ourselves by other means. People laughed in that pitch that showed their wonder at where exactly he was going with this.
I don’t know when I realized how sharp my breath felt moving in and out but the shallow jagged motion gathered my attention. Tiny shards of glass like frost, I thought. I imagined the tiny molecules snowflake shaped and spinning moving into and throughout lungs hardened by the sheer force of the heart center also hardened.
But what if it was simple? What if this slightly chilled air coming through a door that pushed itself open was like the mud and leaves? What if it was silky & smooth to breathe in and out?
And I followed the trail of air into my lungs, each aorli opening like blossom sending tiny puffs of dander and dust out with each exhale. I saw in my mind’s eye the jerking pump of muscle plateau out as if the climb was over for a moment. I felt the freshness feed veins and arteries down through arms to fingers, legs to toes and swirl in the dance of ribbons here messy below navel where I can see the pulse of all.
He gave the direction that today was the day to fill with God. To breathe Him in and exhale the disappointments, the morning, the week. To breathe in God and know Him.
It’s His name, isn’t it? Hebrew, unrecognizable even there. Something I learned in college after a walk across frozen grass to the basement classroom. Then I relearned in my late twenties. Then fought to learn in my thirties. And here again.
And his face brightened as if in sun and the eyes rimmed red in awe and I wanted to touch my friend’s arm gentle because I was relearning, remembering it again. It was brought to my mind too, days earlier. That to know Him is like breathing in and out with intention.
This is when on Friday I looked at the clock. This is what I have carried with me.
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