Breathe

Meeting with the creator through meditation

The following poem is a part of our February focus on the spiritual practice of Meditation. Read more here about our exploration of the spiritual disciplines in 2025 through creative and reflective writing.

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by Sunny Zheng-Herb

Every morning
I enter 
the space between 
You and me.
Here, my lungs expand
on Your exhale.
Here, every morning,
I relearn how to breathe.

Quite often
we do little else 
but sit together,
marveling at the sunrise.

I have learned to let go
of my demand for revelation.
Sometimes,
insights arise.
Most of the time,
I simply spend
a quiet moment 
alone
with You,
my God.

I have been groomed 
to produce,
to offer the fast results of
my prayers,
my quiet times,
my retreats,
displayed on a silver platter to those
who would evaluate 
my spiritual growth
on the basis of fresh 
understanding.
“What’s something new you’ve learned?”
“What have you heard?”
“What have you seen?”
“How can we apply this?”


Maybe all I have seen is 
a God who breathes
in time with me.


Meditation requires 
consistent
return,
to the same old truths,
to the things we already know,
but need to see,
to hear,
to speak,
to taste,
again
and again
and again.


I have learned 
to define progress
as a linear path,
ignoring the ellipses 
that surround me,
ripe with glory.

May I remember
how to return,
how to interrupt 
my mulish, unwavering
trek forward,
to sit with my God
on a familiar hilltop,
and marvel at the sunrise.


Every morning
I return
to the space between
You and me.


Every morning
I relearn how to breathe.

Sunny Zheng-Herb is a Chinese-American woman, raised in the “626” Asian-majority suburb of Southern California. She is a painter, musician and teaches high school visual arts in Aurora, CO. Her writing experience includes gallery publications, grant-writing, museum wall text, and an undergraduate dissertation on Asian-American visual politics, which won the 2016 history department thesis prize at Haverford College. Sunny is working on her first book, a memoir short essay collection on trauma, chronic pain, and the wrestling to believe.

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