Arrival: Exchange
The Tree of Life, New Orleans, LA
By Andrea Lingle
Breathing is a never ending task. The average human breathes between twelve and twenty-two times per minute—reading, watching a movie, sleeping, doing a puzzle, painting, fixing a car, or planting a garden. Twelve to twenty-two times per minute, the diaphragm will induce the atmosphere to trickle or rush down the the trachea and into the lungs. Twelve to twenty-two times per minute, the thread-like capillaries surrounding the smallest recesses of the lungs, flowing with carbon dioxide-laden blood, will perform a do-si-do, exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen. Every minute. Every day. For as long as the body lives.
On the pathway of pilgrimage, there is an anticipated moment of arrival. It gets people out the door and onto the road. Arrival is the point of exchange with the Divine Mystery. It is why pilgrims set aside days, weeks, or months of time to constrain their feet to the pathway of pilgrimage, and it is terrifyingly slippery. Pilgrimage is a journey with holy intent, but it is one that must be held with the softest of grasps. It is cupping a whisper in a baby-bonnet. It is waiting with gentle expectation.
For this thing we call arrival, the experience of coming to the destination of communion with the Divine, cannot be coerced, earned, or demanded. Showing up at the end of the sidewalk does not entitle you to experience the ineffable. You can walk on your knees through a desert, eating only locusts and honey, and you will not be entitled to arrival. Arrival is a gift. It is grace.
Blood flowing through the capillaries surrounding the lungs does not force oxygen to switch places with carbon dioxide, but it does. It does because it is the nature of oxygen and carbon dioxide to seek balance. Too much of carbon dioxide in the blood will create a potential for it to flow out of the blood into the lungs, and an excess of oxygen in the lungs will cause it to flow into the, relatively, oxygen-poor blood. The tidal action of breathing makes space for oxygen and carbon dioxide to act according to their nature.
Pilgrimage is an act of loving trust which invites the Divine Mystery to act according to their loving nature. It is an expectation not an entitlement to anticipate that you will experience a moment or moments of arrival on pilgrimage. Pilgrimage creates a space wherein one hopes to be met at the place of arrival. And when the pilgrim is met, there, on the road of pilgrimage, the pilgrim recognizes that that to which he or she has arrived is achingly, wistfully, familiar. The Divine Holy Mystery of pilgrimage is present in and through the whole of life, all of creation.
Like breathing.
The Practice:
For thought:
What is are you opening yourself to?
What are you expecting?
Where am I looking?
For doing:
Find your pulse
Breath in for four beats of your heart
Hold your breath for four beats
Breathe out for four beats
Hold your breath for four beats
Repeat for 3-5 minutes
For reflection:
Pay attention to the breath holds. Which hold feels more urgent, the inspiratory or expiratory hold?