Breath prayers are very useful in times of distress, in times of heartache, in times of grief. In those times, it’s often all you can do to muster any energy at all, and the thought of praying might be difficult, especially if something you desperately, earnestly prayed for did not happen, or when the dense darkness seems like it might never ebb.

In those times you might still want to believe in the faith you formerly had, but something shifted. The assurance you had might feel wobbly, uncertain. You have enough experience to know that faith doesn’t always run hot, and there are seasons of dryness that don’t last forever even though they feel that way. A breath prayer is a way of joining back into that larger choir of faith and trusting that its voice is large enough to carry the song.

Then someone commits a heinous act. And it hits even harder because it’s someone who espouses a belief in that same faith, as it did last week in Atlanta.

I want to disassociate from that faith collective. The last four years have already given so many reasons to argue about the state of the church in society, the upside down way the American church has come to be represented and/or co-opted. And now a white man buys a gun and that same day goes to two separate locations and shoots eight people, six of whom are of Asian descent. I know we’re holding off on labelling anything and the situation might be complex…but it seems like there’s something there to label.

Everything in you cries out in pain, in outrage. Why do people engage in these acts of violence against one another?

There are so many layers to this atrocity. It’s disheartening to see people get caught up in arguing whether it was one kind of crime or another. One thing we should be able to agree on is that when disparaging language is used against a people group from leaders in high positions, those words influence people, inspiring them to higher goals or unleashing latent bigotry. Those words matter.

And now there’s news of a terrible mass shooting in Colorado. I’m afraid to find out more.

A breath prayer seems like a very meager offering, but in the face of such a culmination of hatefulness, it’s a fine, golden thread of connection to something bigger.

This blackout poem from Rumi says…

To say more of your names: you are the one who was with us at the beginning, telling secrets in the first house. / We were afraid, but then we found your flame. / That city, with friends, friendship. The standing apart, or right in the middle, resembling both. / You are those stories. / You bring dawn to the end of the night. / Beauty that originates. Praise and the light-connecting ligaments that hold this earth.

That’s what a breath prayer is right now in this dark time. It is a way of remembering there is a dawn at the end of night. It is a trust in the light-connecting ligaments that holds this earth.

For right now, that’s got to be enough, because on the surface there doesn’t appear to by a lot of anything else to hold on to.

These breath prayers were inspired by Osheta Moore. She has provided most of them, and I have supplemented a few of my own when I missed her. You can read the introduction here.