Keep Breathing
Keep Breathing: 15 June 2022
Last week Spencer and I went to a yoga class. It was my first class in 27 months. In a nice symmetry, Spencer and I had gone to that class together, too. I’ve missed yoga so much, but I was a bit shy about returning to a class. I shouldn’t have worried. My body remembered. It remembered the alignment. It remembered how to breathe. Every time Liz would say to the class, “pay attention—how are you feeling?”, I was surprised to realize, I feel great! Even when the pose was challenging. Maybe especially when the pose was challenging.
Staying in a pose for three-five minutes gives my mind ample time to freak out, or wander, or rehearse its usual playlist of doubts, fears, anxieties, wounds, grudges. It’s a conscious decision (and therefore the whole point of the practice) not to get hooked. To breathe. I try to feel what’s below the doubt, the grudge, the fear. Fear is usually at the base of everything. I try to hold that gently, too.
Last month I wrote about a guided meditation and the monk saying “Enjoy the inhale. Enjoy the exhale.” During yoga, I noticed I was doing that with the name of God--YHWH. I’ve written about this before: making that ocean sound while breathing in Yah; back of the throat breathing out Weh.
A few years ago, I was doing a different guided meditation and that guide said to breathe out Yah and breathe in Weh. It was surprisingly (and distractingly) difficult to make the switch. Like trying to scramble eggs with my left hand. But last week, when I was holding a difficult pose, I did it. I was trying to stay present, not react, not fight the sensation, and I started exhaling Yah and inhaling Weh. I almost lost my balance when I realized this, because for the first time this breathing felt right.
It felt right that the beginning of the prayer was to release what I was clenching in fear. It felt right to breathe in the fresh reminder of God everywhere in all things. To make room to receive God. If I start the prayer with an inhale, there’s no room for new insight. My mind and body are too clenched, too cluttered, too tentative. Like opening my hand to receive a gift, I open my mind to receive whatever God is offering; trusting that it is good.
Pay attention—how are you feeling? I feel great!
The day after yoga I still felt great. I’d slept well, had a pleasant morning, was having a productive day at work. I thought I heard someone at the door. I was expecting an Amazon package, but when I came through the living room, I saw that a not-Amazon person had left a flyer on my door. I tried to hide, but she saw me and waved, so I reluctantly opened the door. And immediately regretted it.
She started by exclaiming,” Oh! Are you Catholic?” As I drew a puzzled breath to respond she rolled right over that with, “Cause I see you marked your door and we do that so I thought you must be Catholic. Are you Catholic?” She paused long enough for me to say, “No, I’m Presbyterian.” Her turn to be puzzled, but she plowed on to the task at hand.
She handed me a flyer for a political candidate running in the Republican primary. (I add that adjective for you dear readers who do not reside in South Carolina—otherwise you’d know that in most local races there are not enough people running on the Democratic ticket to warrant a primary.) Her candidate was challenging the incumbent House member, a Republican whom I respect and for whom I’ve voted. She emphatically assured me that the challenger was a good Christian and would stand up to the people trying to destroy our country.
When I could manage to get a word in, I said that as I Christian myself, I would be supporting the incumbent. She countered with a catalogue of social ills that the challenger would address, including not bending to the evil Who. Assuming she didn’t mean the English rock band, I said, “You mean the W.H.O.? You know it’s the W.H.O., right?” and she said, “Oh I know but I just call it Who, and they are wanting to weaken our democracy with a vaccine passport that will give them power over our sovereignty.” (It won’t.) “It’s not even a real vaccine!” (It is.) “And all this crazy gun control stuff, It’s scary!” (The gun stuff is scary, I’ll give her that.) “They want to take away our Second Amendment rights….”
I heard myself exhale an exasperated breath—it’s possible I exhaled Yah, but I think it was closer to an invocation of the second person of the Trinity—and I inhaled slowly before muscling into the verbal barrage. I said, “Wait. There is a wide spectrum of opinion on gun safety issues, and the majority of people actually do favor sensible laws like universal background checks and waiting periods.”
“Right! We need to enforce the laws we have! But not come take away people’s guns! What about an antique rifle that’s been in the family for generations…”
“Wait. There is a huge range between government taking people’s guns and enforcing universal background checks. I believe that if people could have civil conversations about many of these issues that we could find a fair amount of common ground.”
“That’s right! If we could just talk a lot of this wouldn’t happen. You know what’s really behind those shootings? Boys with no fathers. It’s not the guns! The breakdown of the family is just awful and getting worse and we need to be doing more about that and not taking guns away from people!”
“Matter of fact, I work for a fatherhood organization. We’ve been around for more than 20 years, and we work to help fathers be present and positive role models in their children’s lives.”
She did a double-take but barreled on, “There’s a book called The Boy Crisis and everyone should read it, it’s such a shame what this country is coming to..”
“Yes. That’s a really good book. And, people ARE doing things, right here in the Upstate, to address those concerns. You should go look at Upstate Fatherhood Coalition’s website and see what we’re doing…”
“That’s good. You should talk to churches.”
“Matter of fact, I just sent out a mailing to 1,000 churches in the Upstate. But unfortunately, sometimes churches don’t look at their mail…” at which point she interrupted with “oh, my priest reads the mail!”
“Great. Maybe your parish would want to support our work. I’d be happy to arrange for someone to come talk to your congregation or your priest….”
But she moved back to why mRNA isn’t actually a vaccine (it is) and how Critical Race Theory is ruining our schools (it isn’t) and why we needed….
“No. Wait. I’m willing to listen to your opinions, but things are not just black and white. I am a very political person, and I appreciate that you are taking time to come door to door to discuss issues and to engage in the political process. I really do. But I think we all have a responsibility to help shape the political conversation, and I think that the way you are talking adds to the current polarization. I don’t think that helps anybody. I think we all suffer.”
At that she finally looked a little flustered. She took a breath and a step back and said, “I’m sorry. I do get really fired up about these things, and I have really strong opinions, but I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Your opinions do not offend me. I have strong opinions, too. I am glad to hear your point of view. I’d like it if you listened more to mine. I know you have more houses to go to, but I hope you’ll try to change how you talk about these issues with people. It’s on all of us to create civil discourse.”
She headed up the street toward my next-door neighbor, a sweet grandmother with an unfortunate affinity toward Fox News, who once plied my children with cookies while encouraging them to fear the “Demoncrats”. I’m sure they had a very satisfying and fruitful conversation.
I closed the door, recycled the flyer, and went back to my desk. I was surprised at how not ruffled I was. Normally I wouldn’t have answered that door. Normally I wouldn’t have engaged someone who can’t listen. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered, and if I did, I would be emotionally exhausted, and probably angry, afterwards.
But this time I’d been practicing breathing. I’d breathed out what was no longer serving me. I’d breathed in the spirit of God—fresh and regenerative. I breathed in and was able to look at that woman with God’s eyes, to listen to that woman with God’s ears, and, I’d like to think, to speak to her with God’s mouth. I treated her as another beloved child of God. It felt like being true to who God was calling me to be in that moment.
I don’t know whether it made any impression on her. But it made an impression on me. And I’m going to keep practicing.
I hope you will, too. It really is up to each of us to combat the polarization, mistrust, and incivility that is strangling our civic climate. Breathe out. Breathe in. Do your part. The rest of us are counting on you.
(PS: If you’re looking for a great Father’s Day gift, (and let’s face it, who needs another tie?), let me encourage you to consider a gift to Upstate Fatherhood Coalition in honor or memory of the father or father figure who made a difference in your life. Thank you.)
