February 7, 2006

Breath

If you call up best-selling author, Joan Borysenko and get her voice mail, this is what you’ll hear: “This is not a telephone answering machine, but a questioning machine.  Who are you, and what do you want? If you think these are trivial questions, be aware that most people come into this world and leave it without answering either one.”

I can’t imagine why, but my friend Janet sent me this, thinking I might like it. I not only like it, I’m thinking seriously of using it. Furthermore, it showed up on the same morning the Psalm in the Daily Office closed with this harsh reminder for asthmatics: “For (God) remembered that they were but flesh, a breath that goes forth and does not return” (Ps 78.39).

This asking Who I am and What I want together with speculating on all these irretrievable breaths is not only challenging for a cornet player, but for a sometime loose and evil liver, as well. That these issues also arrived as I’m bamming into my ninth decade doesn’t either help matters any.

It doesn’t take a lot of breath to ask these questions, but it sure takes a lot to answer them.

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