Station of the Cross Eleven 2023
Allie Senyard and Larisa Shaterian, Seminarians
Holy Apostles Episcopal Church, Good Friday 2023
The Stations of the Cross
The Eleventh Station: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross.
Station One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Fourteen
The Eleventh Station: Jesus is Nailed to the Cross.
Jesus breathed in.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Huge nails are hammered through his hands and feet to fix him on the cross. He is bleeding much more seriously now. As the cross is lifted up, the weight of his life hangs on those nails. Every time he struggles to pull himself up to breathe, his ability to cling to life slips away.
So I’m a music teacher and I actually talk about breathing a lot in my classes. Breathing in order to produce a relaxed, pleasant singing tone or breathing to help an instrumentalist have air flow through their instrument in a relaxed way. So I, I notice it. I can–I look at my students and see if their shoulders are crunched up and squeezed in tight towards their ears and I can hear a difference in their voice or can hear it if they’re signing out of their throat rather than singing with a more relaxed tone. So we talk about breathing a lot. I actually–we, I would say, multiple times throughout the day I’ll have my classes stop and take a breath and we try and connect to our breath and I have a ton of metaphors that I use about breathing and we fill up, fill up our diaphragm like we’re pouring a glass of water and we fill the bottom first and fill ourselves with breath from the bottom up to the top.
The other connection I was thinking about breath for me is I like to run and it’s something I do for exercise and just keeping my body connected to the world sometimes too. And I tend to run in the morning. So early on before work, so I’ll catch the sunrise a lot of times, and that for me, in the morning, is a time that sometimes I feel closest to God, right then. And I’m breathing in a different way than—-I’m not as conscious about it then when I’m running. laughs It’s just naturally coming in and out, and I’m in the Park and I’m connecting with nature and the sky and the trees and I know that my breath is, is important in that. But I know that I’m getting this deep oxygenation and it’s helping my body and my spirit and my self that morning and also just sends positive energy for me throughout my day.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Jesus breathed out.
Station One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Fourteen