Between Breaths

Photo by Linda M. Patrick

“God is in the vowels.” he said.

Words are formed in a mash-up

between the hardness of consonants

and the airiness of vowels,

but it is the self of God who resides

in our own inspiration and expiration –

the very act of our breathing.

This truth is born out

in the Hebrews’ name for the divine:

four of the softest consonants –

Y-H-W-H – and a sacred refusal

to inscribe the vowels.

Maybe the vowels don’t need

writing or even pronouncing

because the self of God is so soft,

so tender, even in its consonants.

Then he said, “I read somewhere

that God is not just in ‘breath’

but is also in the pauses

between breaths (the psalmist’s selah)

which, the writer said,

is the most peaceful part

of breathing – the pause.”

Whenever I consider the pauses

between breaths, my heart always

replays my mother’s last day.

A frontal lobe brain tumor

was pushing life out of her body,

and we sat by, watching, waiting.

Near the end, her breaths

became more shallow,

less frequent, more desperate;

until they were startling gasps,

so far apart, I thought many

of them were her last.

And then, another one

would erupt into the silence.

Between the breaths,

I prayed conflicted prayers,

not sure my heart could take

the explosive agony

of another one, yet begging

for there to be just one more.

In that place and time,

I struggled for my own breath.

I don’t know what your breathing

is like or whether you’re wondering

if God is in it, or even in anything;

but I can tell you that,

twenty-nine years after I found

myself trapped between the breaths,

I still find grace between them,

even after them.  

Some days, I feel myself

breathing for you.

Other days, I know you

must be breathing for me,

because it’s the only way

I could have possibly made it.

I don’t always feel God

between the breaths

with my skin, but

my heart knows,

and when it gets darkest,

it sings to me.

My prayer for you is that,

when the lights go out,

you hear a heart’s song –

yours, mine, or someone else’s.

© 2015 Todd Jenkins