During Advent of 2021, I did an Instagram Live video series for Advent Breath Prayers using the Book of Common Prayer.

Here’s the very first one for the First Sunday of Advent. The full transcript is below. I also pulled some quotes if you want to get the gist of the video and practice without watching the entire thing.

Thanks so much for watching!

You can see the original video for the Instagram Series here.

Quotes:
“So, breath prayer is an ancient Christian practice dating back to at least the sixth century. Historically, it's associated with the Eastern Church, particularly Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches. Many consider the earliest known breath prayer, the Jesus Prayer, which is ‘Lord Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me as sinner.’ And when you use that prayer as a breath prayer, you inhale the first half of the prayer and you exhale the second half of the prayer. So you would inhale ‘Jesus, Lord Jesus Christ, son of God,’ and then exhale, ‘have mercy on me as sinner.’ And you would repeat it over and over a few times or 10 times or a hundred times, however many times you want to repeat it.”

*

“Breath prayer is pretty much just repeating a short prayer over and over while connecting the words with your breath. That's all. It's if your attention wanders, you can just return to the prayer, return to the words. Also, if your attention wanders, I consider that part of prayer. Again, don't feel like you're ever praying wrong or doing it wrong. It's just impossible to mess up prayer.”

*

“So one reason I like to, well, there are a couple of reasons I like to use the Book of Common Prayer to create and write my breath prayers. Most of the daily readings and collects from the Book of Common Prayer are usually very in line with the church year or closely tied to the church year in ways that are obvious. And there are also all kinds of things to choose from. In addition to the weekly collects and other collects, there are additional prayers, excerpts from morning prayer or evening prayer liturgies. The morning and evening psalms can be used, and sometimes I use the daily scripture readings. There are also just other random things in the Book of Common Prayer that I can pull from that are helpful when creating breath prayers.”

*

“So, today we're going to use the Collect for the First Sunday of Advent.

I'll read the collect twice, and then guide us through a couple of different breath prayers using language from that collect. So, this is the collect for The First Sunday of Advent, Rite One:

Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light. Now, in the time of this mortal life in which thy son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility that in the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life and mortal through him who liveth and rainy with thee and the Holy Ghost one God now and forever. Amen.”

*

Inhale: Put light upon us.
Exhale: Cast away the darkness.

Put light upon us.
Cast away the darkness.
Put light upon us.
Cast away the darkness.
Put light upon us.
Cast away the darkness.

Full transcript:

(00:01):

Hi, I am Charlotte Donlon. Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Welcome to Advent Breath Prayers with the Book of Common Prayer. Here's a copy of the Book of Common Prayer.

I hope this is an easy and gentle practice that you can use during Advent to connect to yourself and God in ways that nourish you. I'm going to take a few minutes to explain a bit about breath prayers because not everyone's familiar with the practice and I thought it might be good to just explain it a little bit where breath prayers originated and that kind of thing.

Our other times together moving forward after today might be a little shorter because of this breath prayer kind of introductory information, but I will share other information on other days maybe about the Book of Common Prayer, about Advent, that sort of thing. But the main point is obviously the breath prayer practice using different things from the Book of Common Prayer.

(01:10)
So breath prayer is an ancient Christian practice dating back to at least the sixth century. Historically, it's associated with the Eastern Church, particularly Greek and Russian Orthodox Churches.

Many consider the earliest known breath prayer, the Jesus Prayer, which is “Lord Jesus, son of God, have mercy on me as sinner.” And when you use that prayer as a breath prayer, you inhale the first half of the prayer and you exhale the second half of the prayer. So you would inhale “Jesus, Lord Jesus Christ, son of God,” and then exhale, “have mercy on me as sinner.” And you would repeat it over and over a few times or 10 times or a hundred times, however many times you want to repeat it. Some who use the Jesus Prayer draw it out a little bit more. I like to draw it out when I use the Jesus Prayer.

(02:05)
So I'll inhale, “Lord Jesus Christ,” exhale, “son of God.” Inhale, “have mercy on me.” Exhale “a sinner.” And then some people shorten it so they will inhale, “Lord Jesus Christ.” (Sorry, I have notes because it's early in the morning.) Some shorten it and they'll inhale, “Lord Jesus Christ,” and exhale “have mercy.” And then other people shorten it even more and will only inhale “Jesus” and exhale “mercy.”

So, there are dozens of ways you can do breath prayers. There are no rules. I mean, some people think there are rules, but there are no rules. You can't mess this up. Breath prayer is a contemplative practice that gives us one way to pray continually. I have thoughts on what it means to pray continually. I personally, as a spiritual director, I think we're always praying that everything we do is prayer, but that's a different IG life section, segment, whatever.

(03:08)
If you do breath prayers often, you may find yourself falling into them without meaning to, and this happens to me sometimes when I go for walks outside. I'll just be walking on my walk and I'll notice that I'm saying the Jesus Prayer and rhythm with my breath and with the steps I'm taking. I'm not saying that to show that I'm the super spiritual person. I'm saying that to just say how easy it is to incorporate it into your life and how it can just become a part of your contemplative rhythms and daily life without a ton of effort.

Honestly, breath prayers are usually prayed silently, but you can sing them or chant them or say them aloud as a prayer like you would pray any prayer out loud, but you can play with it and engage with it to see what's most comfortable for you and move forward that way.

(04:08)
Breath prayer is pretty much just repeating a short prayer over and over while connecting the words with your breath. That's all. It's if your attention wanders, you can just return to the prayer, return to the words. Also, if your attention wanders, I consider that part of prayer. Again, don't feel like you're ever praying wrong or doing it wrong. It's just impossible to mess up prayer.

So, in addition to incorporating breath prayer throughout your daily life, while you're going about your regular rhythms, you can use breath prayer for a more intentional focused time of prayer and time with God. If you want to do that, just find a quiet space and start with at least five minutes and quietly or aloud, pray your breath prayer over and over. I like to use a timer because my sense of time is completely shot, but you don't have to use the timer if you don't want to. And after you do that a few times for five minutes, you can increase the time to 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes or not. Again, do what you want.

So what else? My breath prayer introduction.

(05:31)
So one reason I like to, well, there are a couple of reasons I like to use the Book of Common Prayer to create and write my breath prayers. Most of the daily readings and collects from the Book of Common Prayer are usually very in line with the church year or closely tied to the church year in ways that are obvious. And there are also all kinds of things to choose from. In addition to the weekly collects and other collects, there are additional prayers, excerpts from morning prayer or evening prayer liturgies. The morning and evening psalms can be used, and sometimes I use the daily scripture readings. There are also just other random things in the Book of Common Prayer that I can pull from that are helpful when creating breath prayers.

So, today we're going to use the Collect for the First Sunday of Advent.

(06:27)
I'll read the collect twice, and then guide us through a couple of different breath prayers using language from that collect. So, this is the collect for The First Sunday of Advent, Rite One:

“Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light. Now, in the time of this mortal life in which thy son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility that in the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life and mortal through him who liveth and rainy with thee and the Holy Ghost one God now and forever. Amen.”

Okay, I'm going to read it one more time. This is the collect for The First Sunday of Advent, Rite One: “Almighty God give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light. Now, in the time of this mortal life in which thy son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility that in the last day when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal through Him who liveth and rain with thee and the Holy Ghost one God now and forever.”

(08:01)
Okay, so before I get to the breath part, a few more things about the Book of Common Prayer.

So, people have been praying these prayers for a really long time. People all over the world in their own personal morning prayer time, in their worship, in their churches are praying these words. And that's just another reason I love to use the Book of Common Prayer for breath prayers— is we're praying with others and it reminds me that we're praying with other people.

Also, the language is beautiful. So, as a writer and someone who cares about words, I like the words in the book of common prayer. So just pretty simply, okay, so in the collect I just read, some words that catch my attention are “cast away the darkness” and “put light upon us.” So, sometimes I change the wording a bit. Again, you do whatever you want with your breath prayers.

(08:56)
I'm using this collect as a breath prayer prompt, and I usually stick pretty close to the exact words because it's easier for my brain. But, we have freedom to change the words around, to insert other words, whatever.

So, here's one option using the words that I feel like have the most energy for me right now, I want us to inhale, “cast away darkness” and exhale “put light upon us.” But, actually, as I'm saying that, it makes more sense for us to inhale the thing we want God to give us and exhale the thing we want God to take away from us. So, that means let's inhale, “put light upon us” and exhale, “cast away the darkness.” So, we're going to switch that switch what I initially said.

(09:44)
I want us to do a few rounds of that prayer together. I'll say the breath prayer aloud while you pray silently or you can pray out loud if you want to. And just think about connecting the words with your breath, with your inhale and your exhale.

You can close your eyes and take a couple of deep breaths and then I will start.

Inhale: Put light upon us.
Exhale: Cast away the darkness.

Put light upon us.
Cast away the darkness.
Put light upon us.
Cast away the darkness.
Put light upon us.
Cast away the darkness.

(10:55)
All right, that's it. That's our first Advent breath prayer.

I want to choose one more to just show you how easy it is to pull a different breath prayer from the same source. I also like in that first collect—(amen. I probably should have said amen after I did the breath prayer anyway, amen. God knows our amens, right? Because you don't have to use amen. Again. You can't do it like I said. See, you can't do it wrong. So I don't need amen if I don't want it.)

So, another one that we can use this morning and that you can use from the collect for this First Sunday of Advent is I the wording about Jesus coming in glorious majesty.

So, we're looking forward to the coming of Jesus and we're remembering his first coming as a baby. And because this is a collect that's in line with the church year, these breath prayers are very much in line with Advent from those words.

Let's use a breath prayer with an inhale of “come, Jesus” and an exhale of “show us your glory.” I will do a few rounds of this one.

Also, you can close your eyes if you like, and take a few deep breaths to settle yourself for prayer. And then I will pray a few rounds, and then I'm going to keep a little silence for a few moments after the breath prayer also.

So inhale: Come, Jesus.
Exhale: Show us your glory.

(12:44)
Come, Jesus.
Show us your glory.
Come, Jesus.
Show us your glory.
Come, Jesus.
Show us your glory.
Amen.

Okay, that's it. That's how the breath prayers work. It's easy, it's versatile. You can do it whenever you want, is so simple and doesn't take a lot of time and thought, especially if you have a prompt or source that will give you good kind of biblical prompts for your prayers.

And of course, you can always use the Jesus Prayer. You can always just inhale one word and exhale another word. You can inhale “peace” and exhale “fear,” and that way you're kind of praying to God give me peace and take away my fear.

There are millions of ways to do it honestly, but I'm looking forward to sharing this practice throughout Advent using the Book of Common Prayer for our breath prayers. And thank you for joining me and for watching.

(14:14)
If you want to tell others about it, you can tell others about it. I'm going to try to do this every day of Advent, but I know myself and I know life happens and sometimes I won't be able to do it, and I'll try to put a post in my Instagram stories on the mornings, so I can't do it by 8:00 AM just in case you want to know if it's happening, you'll see the story or you can click on my profile, then look at the story because it might not show up in your feed and know that we're going to skip that day, but I want to do it every day. Maybe it will happen. Thanks so much for joining me. I hope you have a lovely day. I hope you notice God's presence…