Like this one (translated by Daniel Landinsky):
With every breath I extract God.
And my eyes are a shop
where I offer him to the world.
For us God people, this clump of 19 words is perhaps as rich as it gets. If you're not a God person, it's probably worth your while to work with the inherent riches and wisdom here--and translate them into something that works for you.
I was hiking with a Qigong instructor a couple of months ago, and toward the end of the hike the group of us came to a gnarly old red spruce that had a special toughness and beauty about it. She asked if we'd like to do Tree Qigong. We were game--and she gathered us around this old evergreen and taught us very simple movements that respected the tree and literally 'moved' us to become open to its existence and energy (qi or chi translates as energy).
I hike on this trail a lot--have been admiring this old tree for about 40 years. I like having a more engaged way of 'saluting' it.
Her invitation for us to literally embody an openness to its energy got me thinking about photosynthesis--and got me curious enough to start refreshing my memory on how it works. As I Googled 'photosynthesis' a phrase I began to see was 'breathing partners.' Trees (and all green plants) are our 'breathing partners'--ours and all animals. We're not just poetically breathing partners with trees but literally, organically, evolutionarily breathing partners with trees.
With every breath we breathe in the oxygen trees 'breathe' out. With every breath trees breathe in the carbon dioxide we breathe out.
The tiniest sacks of our lungs, our alveoli, are 1/25000 of an inch thick. So thin that our CO2 and trees O2 can each pass through. And just thick enough to keep most other little bits of bacteria, etc., out. The heme in our hemoglobin is such a wise little mule, it knows how to carry O2 down and up and out to each of our cells, let go of it when it gets there, turn to 'embrace' the leftover CO2 in each of those cells, and then carry the CO2 back to our alveoli where it releases it into the biosphere--over and over and over again.
The smallest parts of a leaf's structure, the chloroplasts, perform their own little miracle--with help from the sun. Water (H20), drawn up from the ground into the tree, meets the CO2 taken in from 'us.' Exactly 6 molecules of H2O and 6 of CO2. Then photons from the sun (elementary particles that are little packets of energy that know how to 'interact at long distances!) energize the electrons of all the molecules, making them jump to the new orbits that transform them into new kinds of molecules--exactly 6 oxygen and 6 glucose molecules. The tree 'breathes out' oxygen for us and keeps the sugar for itself!
This is what it means to be breathing partners with trees.
Now when I pass this old spruce (or walk in any wooded place) I'm working to anchor what I've learned biologically so that I also can experience it contemplatively--let my mind and soul absorb what my lungs and blood have been absorbing all along.
We humans are quite literally breathing partners with trees--whether we choose to be conscious of it or not. My experience of life is that it just gets richer and richer when we become more conscious of life's endless ordinary mysteries and miracles.
With every breath trees give us energy for life (oxygen)--and we (and water) give trees the sugar of life (glucose). This little miracle comes with being alive. Aquinas's miracle comes with being even MORE ALIVE (Jesus called it being born again--or being born 'from above').
With every breath we have the potential to 'extract' God--and the ever-renewing potential to share God's Energy, Life's Sweetness, with the world.
We're not alone in this. We are partnered. We are forever receiving life in many ways--and passing it on in ways of our own.
