| This hymn seeks
to be majestic and meditative and was written with funerals
in mind. The words have depth and simplicity. Addressing God
directly as ‘you’ helps to create a sense of closeness
at a time of loss and grief. The God who is ‘breath closer
than breathing’ loves our bodies and recreates them strong
and whole. The final lines are full of hope for what is to
come in God’s great ‘economy’ of relationships.
Breath closer
than breathing is dedicated to two family friends, Clare
and John O’Hagan, of Christchurch. John (1931-2001)
was a medical innovator and thoracic surgeon and was described
in obituaries as a ‘consummate physician’. Clare
is a leading physiotherapist. The tune is ‘WINTON’,
the town in Southland where Clare brought up their young
children and where John started general practice. Clare
and John’s love of art is reflected in the affirmation
at the end of the final verse: ‘you see us as finished
artworks; each is holy, each unique; each is holy, each
unique’, based on Eph 2.10a.
Peter Low’s
harmonies in the organ or piano accompaniment evoke a sense
of longing, response and resolution. The verses may be sung
by a soloist or by a choir in four parts. At the end of
each verse the congregation repeats the fourth line in a
very simple antiphon.
Breath is important
in many different religious traditions throughout the world.
Especially within the mystical strands in both the east
and west, breath and prayer become one. We may use a single
word or phrase to help eliminate distractions, empty the
mind of images and attain an inner stillness. In eastern
orthodoxy, the 4thC Hesychasts were admonished to ‘breathe
God’. This has parallels in some of the simplest ancient
Indian yoga practices and to the dhikr of Sufism.
The Hesychasts also used the ‘Jesus prayer’, a
‘monologic’ prayer. Similar devotional practices
were passed from Coptic and Syrian Christians in the 7thC
& 8thC to the Sufis.
Some of these
practices and understandings of the human person are very
much in tune with late 20thC findings in the field of psychology,
that our bodies are not something that we have but are something
that we are. Awareness of how we can glorify God in our
bodies can bring us into encounter face to face with the
living person of Jesus. In such prayer the ‘movement
of the breath through the nostrils, down the lungs and into
the heart, is an effective symbol, a sacramental sign, of
our inner journey from dispersal and fragmentation to simplicity
and primal singleness in God.’*
©
Jane Simpson (2002)
* Kallistos of Diokleia, 'Praying with the body: the hesychast method and non-Christian parallels', Sobornost, vol.14 no.2 (1993), p.20.
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