2020.09.20 Breathe!

I often suggest to people that they breathe, that is, stop a moment, take a deep breath, and give your racing mind and body a rest. This is great spiritual wisdom. I should try it myself sometime.

It is 2020. Our whole world right now is being forced—by an ugly and lethal traveling virus, political mayhem, and racial pain—to breathe, even if it is behind a mask.

I already have a respiratory illness and need medication to help me breathe. I also need yoga, exercise, and writing—nice and sedentary yet full of spiritual electricity. I believe this: there is nowhere God is not, no one in whom divine grace is absent, even if interrupted by death itself.  

Therefore, to give myself and my readers a break and a breath, I resurrect my 2005 rewrite of a dear old hymn: “Breathe On Me Breath of God”.

Breathe In Me Breath of God

Breathe in me, breath of God,
Healing my lungs’ disease
So that I may in purest love
Breathe in and breathe out with thee.  

Breathe in me breath of God,
For when my life is done
And my sweet lungs lose all their pow’r
My last breath and yours are one

I now sing it daily as a prayer. Sing with  me.


The composer of the hymn text on which I riffed, was Edwin Hatch (1835-1889), an Anglican theologian, student of languages, and Bishop of Manchester, noted for his independence and extreme study habits. He does look a bit harried.

Hatch, a graduate of Oxford, and his wife Evelyn, had one son and four daughters.  His hymn was published privately in 1878, not too long before he died at 54.  It reveals his deep faith and his spirituality of hope, and was published publicly in 1886. The hymn tune #508 in The Hymnal 1982 is Nova Vita, by Lister Peace who died in 1969. The first stanza gives us a clue to Hatch’s state of mind: “Breathe on me, breathe of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do.” He sought peace of mind, reassurance, and unity with the Divine.  He was running out of breath.  Some days it feels so, eh?

Breathe.