One of my favorite parts of meditation is that moment when the guide says “now focus on your breath”. There is something so safe and protected about centering into that quiet, constant life-giving action of our lungs and heart. The breath is ours and ours alone, so private, personal and protected in the center of our being. And it is constant, it does not stop or forget or fail. In the past, this simple focus on the breath was frustrating to me. It’s just air, after all. It’s not song or prayer or poetry or love. It felt almost too light and airy. Too much like breathing.

But when I really focus now on this sensation. When I consider, like a light, that life-giving-action of my breath, breathing in and breathing out, giving simply and constantly, I realize that it is a soft and permanent expression of the love of God, a physical expression that we carry with us always but so often don’t even notice or perhaps even appreciate. The breathe requires nothing of us per se, but we receive so much more when we turn with awareness and appreciation to its’ constant presence and flow in our life.

It is this focus on the breath that I love the most. A moment in time where all else fades away, replaced with a deep, abiding peace and security.

So let’s take a moment today, and every day, to breathe…..in and out…..in and out…..in…..and…..out…..in…..and…..out…..