I went canoeing with my mom and children this summer in the Huron River. Swans passed by us, crickets chirped and Andrew tried to fish off the side (didn't catch anything.)  After we returned home, my daughter Lizzie said to me, "Mom, when we were in the canoe I was afraid a snapping turtle was going to jump up from under the river and bite me." I responded to her, "Oh Liz, I didn't even know you were going through that." And she said, "Mom...I just breathed."

Yesterday my son scraped (more like gouged) his knee on the asphalt playground. There is a chunk of skin missing right below his knee. Last night, he had to do the thing we all hate to do to a wound (inside and out)...scrub it. So he got in the shower, picked up his washcloth and started. Midway through I asked him, "Andrew, how are you doing in there?" He answered, "It hurts Mom, but I am breathing through it."

Earlier in the week, I sat with a mom on the playground who is a tough one. She says it like it is, no bones about it. Or all bones about it really. She is not afraid to speak her mind. Her toughness (which has a deep tenderness underneath of course) intimidates me sometimes. Maybe I fear being told the truth. But anyway, I asked her (because I thought she would be the perfect person to ask as she would tell me straight up how it is) what do think of the breath? Or do you ever think about it? And she looked at me first with her forehead crinkled up with that look of "What the heck are you talking about?" But then she said, "Yeah I focus on my breath...when I am stressed." She went on, "When I feel like I am about to lose it with my kid, I breath." And I asked, "Why? What would make you think to breath?" And she said, "Because it calms me."

We take the breath for granted. Psyche...spiritus...ruah...pneuma..all words for spirit and all words for breath. Heaven really is on earth. It is in the breath...the breath of life we are given every day. And it is so easily missed as the greatest resource of our lives.