A gardener friend who lives with Parkinson's emailed recently musing a bit on the challenges he faces in his spring garden: the struggle not to fall over, the struggle to keep moving despite the paralysis of his legs, the struggle of telling his brain to move his foot into a step. He wrote that despite all this he would continue his focus and intensify his prayer.
I wrote back that I didn't think praying in the garden should entail still more struggle and that he might consider and value the prayer of sighing. St. Therese of Lisieux wrote: "My slightest sighs, my greatest sufferings, my sorrows and my joys, my little sacrifices, my flowers, Jesus for you." And in another place: "I assure you that God is much better than you believe. He is content with a glance, a sigh of love."
The psalmist refers frequently to sighs, but always as a negative, surrounded as he is by enemies who seek his un-doing. Even the well-loved prayer, Hail Holy Queen, sees sighing negatively. "To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears."
In truth, some people are sighing experts who burden others with their unspoken groans of dissatisfaction and complaint. But I have in mind those spontaneous sighs which are genuine expressions of wordless and deeply felt surprise, joy, delight, awe, gratitude. There are also the sighs which accompany compassion or the powerlessness of pain, loss or frustration. We can trust the prayer of sighing.
- I see a Blackburnian Warbler high in a tree - a bird I've never known before - and I sigh.
- The sun breaks through the clouds; I feel its warmth on my skin - and I sigh.
- A light breeze comes through the garden carrying the scent of flowering fruit trees - and I sigh.
- My arthritic thumbs, my cranky back are slowing me up - and I sigh.
- I carry the morning news with me, of sixty Palestinians dead, including children and thousands wounded along the Gaza-Israel border - and I sigh.
- This glass of water - and I sigh.
- My mind travels back in time to a youthful mistake - forgiven - and I sigh.
- A thought: I survived intact that terrible time from long ago - and I sigh.
- Am I the first person ever to touch this patch of ground - this soil, these rocks - and I sigh.
- I consider with awe the seed packet gently shaken into my open hand - and I sigh.
