Written in December 2o2o and edited in January 2021.
It’s seventh grade science, is all it is. My breath vapor, steaming from its journey through my lungs and esophagus, rises and freezes on my exposed eyelashes. The digital thermometer reported an outdoor temperature of 15° Fahrenheit this morning, and still there was no question in my mind of if I should still take my walk.
My mother’s surgery is today. She’ll be cut open, her pancreas will be exposed, and the preeminent surgeon in his field is certain he can remove the entire tumor. The recovery time for this procedure is measured in months, and the list of potential complications seems endless. Nevertheless, it is our best hope for more time with her, and so we wait, and we trust the surgeon, and I walk in the frigid air.
I walk,
and I ponder seventh grade science,
and I listen to Taylor Swift’s second surprise pandemic album,
and I strain my neck and face against the gaiter I’ve put on to protect me from heat loss.
I walk, and I notice that a fresh wave of tears, warm with my body heat, is creeping up into my sightline. I exhale, and suddenly the three states of water coexist and are dancing for a fleeting instant in my eyelashes.
* * *
The echoes start.
“The triple point…a combination of just the right air pressure and just the right air temperature…water exists in its three states simultaneously…a beautiful—though not perfect—illustration of the Trinity…”
Once these echoes would have derailed me for the rest of the day. Now they whisper themselves into the ether, and I let them depart in peace.
I keep walking.
* * *
One echo returns from the ether.
Pneuma, she whispers, and is gone.
* * *
“Pneuma (πνεῦμα, Lat. spiritus) is connected etymologically with πνέω, breathe or blow, and has a basic meaning of ‘air in motion’, or ‘breath’ as something necessary to life. In Greek tragedy it is used of the ‘breath of life’ and it is the ‘Spirit’ of the New Testament.” (Vallance, J.T. 2016. Oxford Classical Dictionary. March 07. Accessed Jan. 1, 2021. )
* * *
My mother’s pneuma flows and ebbs from her sedated lungs, even as mine does from my own heaving ones. Does a greater Breath sustain us, hold us in and then exhale?
I have spent so many years defending my mind’s right to think, and this defense has been altogether fitting and proper. But this moment reminds me that my mind is not the total sum of me.
Body—breath—mind—heart.
Each of these can be cataloged to some degree as long as we define our terms just right. And perhaps it’s merely the Kierkegaardian influence on my philosophy speaking now, but I think the pneuma of the Christian New Testament will not be cataloged, centuries of systematic theology notwithstanding. I might not be the only one who thinks so, either: “The wind [spiritus, pneuma] blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (John 3:8, ESV)
At the very least, I know that my own pneuma will tolerate no restraint, a quality that used to anguish me to my core. I used to think my spirit was rebellious and evil because she loved to laugh even when solemnity was demanded and because she danced even when I was forbidden to do so. But that was then. Now, in my peaceful moments, I love to sit and watch her make waves in the long grassy plains of my soul. In my pain-filled moments, she howls across the charred canyon of grief in my heart; and thankfully, most days now she hums melodies of love and joy up and down my mountain slopes. I have learned to welcome her comings and goings, for my fruitless attempts at control have shown that no chains can bind her to me. Besides, I’ve grown tired of such restraints altogether in the meantime.
* * *
I blow out on the next exhale, and my breath is made manifest in another layer of ice on my eyelashes.
* * *
This moment in which I fear for my mother’s life is temporary, and yet it occludes all other thoughts and feelings. This moment is fear-filled, and heartrending, and most of all lonely. I am alone on this walk in the freezing morning cold. I am alone, and my mind (which is supposed to be free from such shackles) now spins a thousand horrible possible scenarios before me, each a smorgasbord of intense pain. I fight back the tears. I fight back against my mind. I fight back against the fear of everlasting loneliness.
And then I stop fighting, and I accept it.
I sit with it.
I make peace with it.
* * *
I am eternally alone, unknowable by any other soul. I am at peace with this knowledge.
* * *
Then
I inhale.
The breath I take fills my lungs with air, my blood with oxygen.
And suddenly
Pneuma fills my heart with peace of an entirely different quality. Not the peace of a sleeping infant, or of a monk in ecstasy, but more like that of a seasoned sailor staring down a hurricane. I may be swallowed up, or I may yet survive. Perhaps it is even with me as an ancient prophet once told his own people:
“When you pass through the waters, I will be with you…” (Isaiah 43:2a, ESV)
I know I might be a fool, and an arrogant one at that, to believe that these words from a despised prophet speaking as God’s messenger to his own people in their own temporal, religious, and regional context could somehow have meaning for me across the millennia and the miles.
But perhaps that is the point of this world’s written riches: the prophet Isaiah in his own time and in his own faith tradition and in his own regional context speaks his heart, speaks his God’s truth—and I, in my time, in my context, suddenly feel that my heart and my pneuma—
—are not alone.
I am not alone.
* * *
I keep walking.
My eyelashes begin to freeze shut whenever I blink, so I use the soft side of my glove to clear the ice. Even as the ice melt trickles into my sightline, though, new icicles are forming with every exhale. My personal triple point is born again with every breath I take and vaporizes almost as quickly, mimicking my spirituality through the years.
I used to read scriptures daily, and pray fervently, and preach as much as a woman was allowed to preach. Now I can barely muster up a prayer for my mother’s life, and yet I am still surrounded by reminders of Divinity. I acknowledge them with gratitude and let them come and go as they please. I cannot control my own pneuma; how could I once have believed that I needed to contain the Divine Pneuma in my being? Neither can be fenced in, and any attempts to do so display a foolishness akin to “striving after the wind.” (Ecclesiastes 1:14, KJV)
I walk,
and I ponder my spirit,
and I find a sort of kindred spirit in several of Taylor Swift’s storytellers,
and I wipe the water—in its frozen, liquid, and vapor forms—from my face.
Tonight, the preeminent surgeon in his field will call my father and report that he was able to resect the whole tumor, and that my mother is recuperating well. She will come home two days before Christmas and despite the twin crises of pandemic and pancreatic cancer, we will all draw together and cherish each other’s company in our familial atmosphere.
Until I have heard this good news, though, I will find peace in the rise and fall of my chest, in the soft puffs as I exhale and the muffled sniffs as I draw in air through my gaiter.
I will trust myself and my Pneuma to sustain me until this hurricane has passed.
I will keep walking.
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