Re-membering to Breathe

According to some faith traditions, the essential human problem is forgetfulness. We forget who we are. We forget Whose we are. Healing and wholeness come through remembering or, more literally, re-membering. All the broken pieces of life, all the members, are brought back together. They are remembered or recollected.

Interestingly, remembering is a present experience, not past nostalgia. Allowing the anxious mind to rest by focusing on the breath is one route to remembering. We remember now or not at all. Re-membering is a non-dual awakening to the wholeness and fullness of life. The following poem arose within me through an experience of remembering:

Re-membering to Breathe

Sometimes I forget

That life is beautiful

That red flowers blossom in spring

And the diaper clad child

Plays joyfully after naptime

Sometimes I forget

About rivers flowing effortlessly

So I push the river in fear that it will not flow

Because

Sometimes I forget

Sometimes I forget

That love brought us into being,

That we live and move and have our being

In a love that

Will not let go

Sometimes I forget

To breathe

But breathing continues

Even in the forgetfulness

Of my broken heart

Sometimes I forget

To breathe

Until reminded by a friend

One breath at a time

To re-member life, to re-member wholeness

Now I remember

I remember to re-collect

The colored broken glass

So that joyous light, shining through,

May awaken my memory of beauty, so

I remember

That life is beautiful

That red flowers blossom in spring

And the diaper clad child

Plays joyfully after naptime

I remember that rivers

Flow effortlessly

Without needing my push

To make them flow

I remember

I remember because

Sometimes I forget

And in the beauty that is life

Forgetting allows gracious friends

To remind me to re-member

*The idea of not needing "to push the river" is from Father Richard Rohr.