The Slow Way: Compelled by One Breath
We who believe in the one Breath can either spend our lives demanding it show up where we’d like for it to show up, or we can stand in the open air and let it blow when it pleases.
"I would have prayed to all the gods who ever were or ever would be except I know somehow deep in my heart that there is one Breath, one Imagination, one Coherent Mercy, as a friend of mine says, and that everything that is came from and returns to That which we cannot explain or understand, but can only try to perceive the spoor, clues, evidence, effect, the music in and through and under all things."
- Brian Doyle, “A Prayer for You and Yours,” One Long River of Song
Ace is trying to speak. His new speech therapist specializes in PROMPT. It’s a form of speech therapy in which the therapist uses their hands to shape the client’s mouth and breath, literally showing his body how to turn the voice on, how to form those sounds into words. Ace giggled his way through a song we sang a couple of weeks ago, his therapist’s hands on his chest and back, “Ha ha ha ha, ho ho ho ho”! He has carried that moment with him this week, looking out his window in the car, “ha ha ha ha,” he says to himself.
This morning he walked into the kitchen. “Hi Ace!” my husband shouted. “Ha,” Ace said in return. He has been saying “ha” for hi for at least a week now. He’s on a roll.
My son’s beautiful mind owns a complicated concoction of neurons that don’t always sync up with the the ease of most human brains. People with speech apraxia may try to open their mouths for an “oh” sound while their muscles respond by closing the mouth instead. The brain and the muscles of the mouth just keep missing each other. Add to that autism and the low facial tone that comes with Down syndrome, and his speech challenges can feel like a never-ending cafeteria line of difficulties. Which will we focus on today?
But then, there’s something else at work. The sparkle. The gleam. The part of my son that longs to speak, that wants to be known. He has learned over the past month to say “ha” for “hi” and he is willing to do the work to get more sounds. This week we shaped his mouth to say, “mmmmm,” “eeeeee.”
Me, me, me, me, me.
I’ve spent the past few months slowly reading Brian Doyle’s essays in One Long River of Song. I’ve talked about his essays around here before, and I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to them the way I do my most loved books. This collection, published in 2019, after Doyle’s death in 2017 from brain cancer, is profound and simple and poignant. This week I made it to “A Prayer for You and Yours,” his meditation on prayer and parenting.
His first prayer as a father came in the form of a sob, after he and his wife were told they’d never be able to have children.
“My first prayers as a parent,” he writes, “those tears.”
I’ve prayed endless prayers for this child of mine, even as my sense of his awareness and ability have changed over time. I wept in the early years when I prayed for him. Please, God, let him say something, anything. I have felt endless amount of jealousy and hurt, when the parents of other kids with Down syndrome share their delight at the darn things their kids say.
But, eight and half years into his life, I am less likely to compare or resent, though the grief catches up to me from time to time.
Now, I feel myself compelled by his sparkle, his longing. I am on a mission to find a way for him to say who he is.
I have become convinced of his intelligence, which is often held hostage by a struggle with motor planning. I said this to his teacher this past week, when there was a suggestion that we focus more on life skills than academics. Yes, fine. He needs to be able to put his shoes on and off. But also, he has a universe in his mind, and we’re going to find a way in, for his sake. Maybe for now at school he will focus less on math and more on demonstrating his ability to recognize shapes and follow simple directions. That’s okay. But soon, we’re going to discover the map of his universe, and we will be amazed at what he’s been thinking and planning and knowing all this time.
That feeling of being convinced? I recognize it in me. As Brian Doyle writes: "I would have prayed to all the gods who ever were or ever would be except I know somehow deep in my heart that there is one Breath, one Imagination, one Coherent Mercy…”
The knowing. The revelation we carry inside us that “everything that is came from and returns to That which we cannot explain or understand.” Our sense of experiencing, discovering ourselves carried along by that ancient Mystery, is something we usually only see on the periphery of our lives, noticed but rarely proven. As Doyle writes, we can “only try to perceive the spoor, clues, evidence, effect, the music in and through and under all things.”
Is it weird to say I feel the same way about Ace’s abilities as I do about God’s presence? The spoor, the clues, the evidence, “the music in and through and under all things”?
There are signs of magic all around me. Beyond the violence humans use against one another, beyond the ways we misunderstand one another’s motives and longings. Under all of it, every one of us is saying, like Brad Montague reminds us with his illustrated stickers, “I am just a human being who wants to be loved.”
What is it in us that holds the music in and through and under things? What secret space holds the brilliance that our body’s challenges often cover over? What hums underneath how we present ourselves to the world? What in us longs for love, for connection, for the gift of knowing each other so deeply that we are held and our value seen?
I am just a human being who wants to be loved. Buoyed by “one Breath, one Imagination, one Coherent Mercy.”
Often in religion we take this knowing and we try to erect it into pillars of rational prescriptions. If you believe the one Breath you must explain how it moves in and out and prove where its One Lung exists.
Ace is my reminder that magic flows. Its existence is not found in a place, cannot be pinned down by a theological explanation. And it will always refuse to detach itself from Love, its source.
We who believe in the one Breath can either spend our lives demanding it show up where we’d like for it to show up, or we can stand in the open air and let it blow when it pleases.
Metaphors always fail don’t they? But what I’m trying to say is I won’t stop believing in the music humming through my son’s soul, the truth of his intelligence and desire to name the world around him, just as God invited the first human to do in the old story.
And what if faith is simply that? We won’t stop listening for the music in and through and under things. We will listen to the spark in us that says, Yes, there is one Breath and one Imagination. And to live with hope is to seek after that Oneness.
Faith is being sure of what we hope for, the old poet said in Hebrews. Certain of what we do not see. Continually placing ourselves in the direction of the breath of the world, that “coherent Mercy,” that we might be carriers of the hope of everything.
A Slow Practice
How are your drawing skills going? We’ve been drawing a lot around here, haven’t we? Let’s try again today.
Give yourself some time to be alone, maybe sit outside if the weather allows it. You know I’m going to tell you to use your journal, right? Or, because this exercise requires a lot of labeling, you may want a big sheet of butcher paper. Feel free to do what works for you.
Take a few deep breaths and invite the Spirit of God to be here with you.
Breathe in: Spirit, sit with me here.
Breathe out: Spirit, make yourself known to me.
Draw a picture of yourself, small enough so you can label the space around it.
Now, label yourself, starting with the mind: What is this human thinking about? What questions are swooshing around in that brain? What challenges are there, what ideas?
Up above the illustrated person’s mind, draw a circle you call “Imagination.” In that circle write all the beauty you see in the world, all the hope you carry, and what comes to mind when you consider your dreams.
Move to the shoulders and neck: What burdens is that person carrying? What is weighing them down? If you don’t carry your burden in your shoulders but you do carry it in your lower back, or hips, by all means label the right spots on your illustration!
Arms: What are their arms full of? What do you wish their arms were full of?
Chest / Heart / Soul: This is the big one! What are the dreams this person is carrying around. What is inside their universe that most of the world never gets to see? Ask God to reveal what is most true about your dreams. Write down what comes to mind.
Hips/Legs: What keeps this person running? Thomas Merton called it our “personal salvation projects.” What are yours? What are you striving after, longing for, pursuing with all your might?
Now put your hand on your drawing and end with this prayer: “I am just a human being who wants to be loved.”
Commit that human being to the presence of God.
Spend some time in silence.
I am a huge fan of your work! I thought of myself in the first few paragraphs. I thought of my middle son in the next few. He was born with the cord around his neck twice and blue as a berry. He did not talk, we started speech therapy at 22 months. We fought the whole insurance industry for what they considered a “pre-existing” condition and lost. We did it on our dime until school started and took it over. The marriage broke up. I was left holding the bag. Then I fought the public school system for years. Turns out he was too high functioning to get what he needed. The labels, the energy were exhausting. He dropped out in 8th grade. Fast forward and he is almost 40 yo, has made a great beautiful life for himself and his wife and his soon to be son. It wasn’t traditional but he is in high demand because he can use tools and build things and do the hard work. And he loves it! I understand my situation is, was different from yours but the grit is the same. For your son!
I recently watched a great movie-peanut butter falcon. It might shock you or not.
All I am trying to say is do not ever, ever, ever, give up. It’s hard, it sucks, but All the blood, sweat and tears are worth every single bit of it!!!❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️🥹🥹🥹
Go, Ace, go! ❤️