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The Need to Breathe
I wrote this poem as I prayed for a friend who was, literally, having trouble breathing. I love the image of Mary as our ‘atmosphere’ (from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem, The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air we Breathe), and pictured sort of a glowing, easy-to-breathe-in sphere of oxygen-rich air around Grace as I prayed.
So many times, in my own life, I have found it ‘hard to breathe’. Whether I feel overwhelmed – drowning in a flood of demands and trials – or find myself in thin air – straining up the sides of some lonely mountain of anxiety, or mental struggle – I ask Mary, “Help me breathe!” And she always does help.
I’m reminded that the actual atmosphere of earth does push down upon us, making possible free movement under its mantle. The deep sea pushes too much, and outer space, not enough – so perfectly fit is man’s place in the world for us. There is a feeling I have within Mary’s ‘atmosphere’ of effortlessly absorbing her fullness-of-grace. The Love of God so permeates my being, and seems to do for my soul what oxygen would do for the body.
There is a therapy known as hyperbaric – in which the patient is placed in a chamber ‘heavy’ with oxygen. It apparently is tremendously effective for wound-healing and other physical ills. This came to mind as I made the connection between love and oxygen. ‘Hyperbaric Mercy’ links this healing chamber to the Ocean of Divine Mercy – ‘heavy’ with the love that cost Jesus so much pain.
Of course, no image of Mother lacks allusion to Womb – another sense in which we are embraced in a perfect vessel so that God may mediate to us what is necessary for life. Since I was praying for a friend who helped with the 50 Million Names Project, it was fitting that this poem came full-circle to the child-in-water-drop image that is the 50MNP logo. Painful as it is to think of the unborn children, denied the maternal atmosphere, this poem expresses my hope that each one now lives with God – perhaps even in Mary’s embrace – able to take in the breath of love, for all his smallness. It’s my hope that, as we name each of these children, new grace, new life, will be breathed into our world for the healing of his relatives and abortionist. Thus, this poem debuted at the launch party for the names project. We now have almost 6,000 names and so are offering prayer for upwards of 60,000 souls in honor of these lost children.
When we experience emotional pain, we sometimes find it hard to breath. As our breathing becomes more and more shallow, it can compromise our energy level, work, and health. This project seems to me to be helping us start breathing again in the face of those millions of deaths. We who care deeply about these little ones may have begun holding out against the pain of their deaths without realizing it. Giving a name not only recognizes their humanity, but helps us to begin breathing again as we speak those names into the world through prayer and active gestures.
I love this poem, as it carries so many layers of meaning for me!
The Need to Breathe
I know a child who cannot breathe.
I beg for her Your Mother’s fond embrace.
Mary – an atmosphere
of permeating love,
Spirit-soaked,
soft,
and still.
Where oxygen would fuel life’s fire,
Let Love itself suffice,
suffuse in, effortlessly,
quickening each cell’s tiny flame.
O, Super-saturating Love!
O, Hyperbaric Mercy –
chambered here, enwombed,
beneath a Mother’s beating heart –
breathe Life in
through this child.
All the poems are now in one volume, and I’d love for you to have a copy! Click on the cover to buy it, and click here for the recordings of all the poems.
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