Chasing after Breath

Usually, when I walk my mind is in my senses. Balance and the interior perception of my body’s position keep me in motion, my ears survey the wondrous sphere of air and trees and snow and sky surrounding me, and my eyes are occasionally called upon to confirm and enjoy with sight the various things I hear. But today, my mind was in the distant hills of eastern Kentucky, focused on the small risings and fallings of my grandmother’s last few thousand breaths. My mom is by her side with the rest of her siblings, and I’ve been in limbo by my phone, waiting for a call, hoping it does and doesn’t come. Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. For dust you are, and to dust you shall return. I will go and will have these words spoken over me as a charcoal cross is scraped over my forehead. Though this year I need no reminder of mortality. Daily, I’ve watched deaths in America climb and fall. Last week, my wife’s grandmother died. And as we wait, we’re dreading that the funerals might fall on the same day. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

I pause where the trail loops back on itself and try to recall myself to these hills, these woods, and my breath. It’s bitterly cold, but the sun is up, and quiet enough to hear a squirrel peel the shell off of an acorn with its front teeth, fifteen feet up in a pine tree. Usually, lingering for a few moments is all it takes for the chickadees to get used to me and resume bouncing from bough to bough. Then I’ll hear the call of a nuthatch, my favorite bird. I think they remind me of me. They’re small and broad, blue and white. They work their way from tree to tree, searching up the trunk and out to the tips of the branches, looking for and prying at everything new. When I hear their call, it’s best to wait. They’re always on the move, hopping up the sides of trees. If I stand still, practice and patience makes them easy to spot. Often they come and find me. Usually. But today all I hear is the squirrel and all I see is the thin shadow cast by my exhaled breath onto the snow.

Exhaled breath is the central image of Ecclesiastes, though that’s often lost in translation. Exhaled breath, says the Teacher, all is exhaled breath is the more concrete image behind the traditional vanity of vanities. Breath, spirit, wind, all is exhaled out of the body, a word broader than our English conceptions. And while vanity of vanities and chasing after wind seem fatalistic, if not nihilistic, the bodily image rings true. Chasing after breath leaves us more winded then when we started. And so often the very act of chasing what we want in life deprives us of the life we want. Partying leaves us hungover. Indulgence makes us sick. Working to give financial security to our family keeps us from it. Chasing breath leaves us without it. Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent, a time seen as one of asceticism and self denial. Lent is this, but it is also a time to stop chasing after breath. More and more, I’ve been giving up things I’ve worked for years and years to achieve in the ordinary times of life. Last year, I gave up the career path I’d built for myself in the Navy’s civilian science. This year, I gave up the offer of being a tenure track professor. These are goals I’d been chasing all my life and achieving these goals would keep me from being satisfied, given my discomfort with the applications of my research and the 80-hour work weeks respectively. So I’m giving them up, and I’m still trying to give up my ambition to be widely known and respected. There is a literal cost to giving up these goals, but I’m not doing it for mere self denial. Instead of chasing after breath, I’ll pause, and in that way I’ll catch it. Instead of fighting self-defeating battles, I’ll wait. There is a time for everything, and the another time will come. It is the way of the world. Times will change. When they do, I’ll change with them, and until they do I’ll wait. Better is one handful of quiet than two handfuls of toil and chasing after breath.    

Now is a time for grief: for my Mamaw, for my wife’s Nana, and the many struggles of the past year. It’s a time of grief for the possible futures we hoped for but that never arrived. Grief for the pasts we thought were gone, but never truly past. This will not be my only season of grief. More will come. But there will also be a time for joy. I’m looking forward to those wonderful days. Until that time, I will wait for them, and hope for them, and long for them, and trust in them. I will hear His call, be still, and wait. For God alone my soul in silence waits. And it is His nature to come, to descend to us, to me. From Him comes my salvation. For Christ did not consider equality with God something to cling to, but gave it up, and came to us as a servant. And I will wait. There is no need to ascend. I will not build a tower to the heavens. I will not chase after things that leave me more exhausted than when I started: not pleasure, not riches, not even wisdom. For God alone my soul in silence waits. And I know He will descend. Truly my hope is in Him. 

And as I wait and catch my breath, I’ll make sure the things I do truly achieve what I want from life. And I’ll enjoy and be satisfied with good food and sunshine and enjoy life with the wife I love for all the days I breathe out my life. There will be things I do that I love and let me remember my Mamaw. Watching birds as they chatter on the feeder outside my window, just like my mom does, and my Mamaw still does for now. Flour, milk, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and butter will transform beneath my hands and in the oven into southern style biscuits, just as they did under my mom’s hands, and her mom’s hands. I’ll keep taking walks through the woods, and being surprised when a nuthatch flies right up to me without letting me know first. And in this time of grief, I will grieve, and pray for and wait for the times of joy to come.