Wake Up to Wonder: 22 Invitations to Amazement in the Everyday a 5-Day Reading Plan by Karen Wright MarshExemplo

Day One: Wake Up—Follow Your Breath

Scripture: Genesis 1:1-2, Psalm 51:10-12, John 6:63

You and I inhabit a universe of extraordinary marvels both massive and miniature. So why the sense that we live our lives with divided hearts, passing over the commonplace gifts that appear along our paths? Presence is what we are all hungering for, aren’t we? Real presence! Could it be that you and I have simply never learned to be present with quality to God, to others, to ourselves, and to all created things? With open curiosity, we will glimpse faithful men and women of presence, who awoke to God’s Spirit around them. I ask you to look within and without and you also may encounter God in a new way, beside you in the world, and in the glory over everything. Pay attention. You stand on holy ground.

Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was once a despairing, faithless university student who’d been converted—much to his own surprise—to a wholehearted Christianity. He authored sixty books, and readers followed his insights on current politics, culture, poetry, justice, and, most of all, the spiritual life. Merton’s message was simple: each and every one of us is invited to encounter a God who loves, chooses, and visits us. Contemplation of the sacred is not reserved for intensely religious people but is available to all. God is as near as our next breath.

In his advice to those longing to experience God, Merton begins with the scriptural admonition to “pray without ceasing.” What does this mean? “It is really quite simple,” Merton explains. “It is just as if Our Lord told us, ‘You must keep on breathing, or else you will die.’ The only difference is this: breathing is instinctive, prayer is not.” Yet prayer is as vital for the life of the soul as breathing is for the life of the body. That is why Merton gives this encouragement from Luke’s Gospel: we “should always pray and not give up” (18:1).

Merton’s descriptions of prayer are embodied as well, evoking ruach, the ancient Hebrew word for spirit, breath, wind: the very breath of God that creates and sustains all things. Since the beginning of humanity, we who breathe with the ruach of God are blessed to participate with Him who is the Life Giver and Sustainer. God’s Spirit blew the breath of life into the first human—a living soul—made in His very image (Genesis 2:7).

Awareness breathing is foundational to our spiritual, mental, and emotional well-being. Slow down, take some deep breaths, and exhale slowly. Repeat five times, thanking God for His nearness.