Feature
Breath: The Gift of Life Peter McVerry SJ, well-known for his advocacy on the right to housing, presents a way of praying with the breath that can leads us into gratitude and confidence throughout our lives.
Focus Sit still, eyes closed and focus on your breath. Concentrate on the breath going in through your nostrils. Feel for a few moments the breath as it enters the nostrils and makes its way down into your abdomen. Focus on each breath, one after the other, as it passes through the entrance to your nostrils. Understand Your Fragility As you focus on your breath, understand your fragility. The breath that you are breathing in brings you life, it gives you your life, it is your life. Each breath is the difference between life and death. You are totally dependent on that breath that enters your nostrils. You think that you are powerful but that breath entering your nostrils is not yours to control. It comes of its own free will, and should it choose to stay away there is nothing you can do about it. You are at its mercy, your plans depend on it, your desires 52
are worthless without it. Oh, what you would give to possess that breath, to own it, to control it, as you seek to possess, to own and to control everything else! You, however, who can search the depths of the atom and the infinite horizons of the universe, do not have it in your power to possess that breath. You crave to possess the gift of life but you cannot. You want to overcome the fragility that comes with dependency but you cannot. Each breath is given to you only