Breathless prayer

Somehow reading studies about the neurological foundation of religious experience reminded me of this. If nothing else, this might be good for a laugh. In June and July of 1986, I had a form of prayer that involved holding my breath until I almost passed out. I punctured my lungs, perplexing hospital staff as to the cause of my subcutaneal emphysema. Doctors and nurses and my friends and relatives looked alternately sad and amused by the puffy sight and crackly sound of the air pockets under the skin of my face and neck. Just a few months after dropping out of high school, I’d become ambitious about transcending my worldly need to breathe, and changing, thru meditation and prayer, my queer self into a new person inside the same body. For about a week, I didn’t leave my bedroom much. During the day I’d break from prayer momentarily to glance over at a large Bible on the dresser and think about Jesus as cicadas in the hot brightness outside the window sang a dirge for my ego. At night, my shut eyes saw only a bright white three dimensional mass within the vast darkness of my psyche. It pulled me, mind and body, into itself, telling me with neither words nor images: God was gifting me with precious suffering; muster gratitude with all my might.