Good Friday 2009, Living Breath

Good Friday Evening

April 10, 2009

Living creatures breathe. This breathing is a gesture of expansion and contraction. It started with the sea—waves move in and out; tides flow, racing up the shore, and ebb, pulling away.  A plants grows, expands, blossoms, then its entire life contracts into the seed. Animals breathe in and out.

In our own lives we too experience these two basic gestures over time—from moment to moment in our own breathing; in the tides of our blood stream; in the growing and declining of the different phases of our lives; and ultimately in the waxing and waning of life itself.

Our real selves are gathered from the far reaches of the cosmos. We have breathed our actual, real selves into our bodies; we have compressed ourselves into the body until we feel ourselves as occupying a center point. Along with this compression of ourselves we suffer pain. With every in-breath we draw into our bodies just a bit; with every exhale we expand a bit. Every night in sleep our soul-spirits stream out to the stars; at daybreak they rush back into the body.  One day we will finally breathe our soul-spirits out again fully, so that they can expand to fill God’s heaven.

Christ started out as the greatest, most expanded being possible. He, the Logos, the Great Word that spoke all creation into existence, gradually contracted himself to become human-sized. This extreme form of compression, this final in-breathing of His spirit was completed on the last day of Jesus’ life. And such an extreme compression, down into the marrow of the bones, was itself painful in the extreme. Good Friday afternoon becomes that still point, that moment of quiet between in- breath and out-breath. His heart’s blood pours into the earth. With His last words, “Father, into your hands I commend My Spirit”— He exhales, expires, carrying His consciousness toward the Father.

How we human beings think about this gesture of expansion and contraction

makes a great deal of difference. Our intellect sees these gestures of expansion and contraction as polarities, contrasts. But we must add to the two a third element—that of time; in, out, and in again. It is a process, one that is cyclic and continually starts afresh.

The remnant of the pain and suffering we see hanging on the cross after His death, the body so lovingly taken down by his friends and wrapped in linen and spices, this remnant hides another invisible process taking place on an unseen level. For, in expiring, Christ begins the exhalation of his Spirit’s life back out into the cosmos. His heart’s love begins to expand further, sending His life and love outward toward all humanity, to the whole earth. He begins his journey of toward resurrection and ascension,. It was a new beginning, not only for him, but also for us; for He dies without ending. He ascends while maintaining his rootedness in the earth. We are all carried in His great heart; our souls are kept alive in His unceasing life. The earth, in its slow dance through the seasons, breathing between summer and winter, became His body.

We have nothing to fear from death, for since Christ, death is permeated with life.

The poet comments:

And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence

shall you indeed sing.

And when you have reached the mountain top,

then you shall begin to climb.

And when the earth shall claim your limbs,

then shall you truly dance.[1]

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[1] Kahlil Gibran, “Of Death” in The Prophet