BREATHING FREELY
Celebrating The Imperfect Life


FOREWORD
by Brennan Manning

Weeks before receiving the manuscript of this book, I had been haunted by the words of theologian Paul Tillich: "We live lives that are hopelessly broken, and we know it." No one is exempt from the intuition or flat-out recognition of our desperate human plight. Some people become aware earlier than others. Some awaken through a midlife crisis, some through debilitating illness or addiction, some in the dark woods of depression, despair, and overwhelming fear. Others, caught up in the love of pleasure, trapped by fierce pride, or consumed by ravenous greed, are suddenly startled by a flash of insight that their lives are a senseless, chaotic blur of energies and their minds are a zoo from which most of the animals have escaped. Yet others are simply defeated through the painful discovery that efforts to extricate themselves from the shambles of their lives are self-contradictory, because the source of the shambles is the imperious ego. Thrashing about trying to fix themselves is an exercise in futility.

When the hopelessness of the human predicament is finally acknowledged and accepted, the inward journey properly begins.

The great spiritual masters and mystics affirm the truth of the ancient Eastern adage: "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." For many readers of Breathing Freely, Ruth McGinnis will be that teacher. In this lyrically beautiful memoir, she shares with uncommon candor her gut-wrenching trauma as a sixteen-year-old, the emptiness of pursuing a career in music as a classical violinist, the hollowness of human approval and adulation, and two tragic premature deaths, inducing a breakdown of her old world that led to a breakthrough into a new possibility.

"I started to look at life differently, less as a journey through peaks and valleys and more as a series of layers-layers of horrible and beautiful constantly weaving together like threads in a tapestry. To love life means learning to embrace this tapestry, this unspeakably complex backdrop against which the human drama plays daily."

I cannot recall a book that so movingly describes the decisive generational impact of parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents on the life of a young woman. After visiting the cemetery of a paternal grandmother she had never met, Ruth writes: "My grandmother's short life has left an indelible imprint on my earthly journey, a reminder of the mysterious human connectedness we all share. Her story has inspired me to feel and express every emotion along life's path. Her painful leaving makes a poignant case for the magnificent release of grieving. Her grave reminds me to seek beauty in the heartrending process of living but not to miss any part of it, especially the exquisite agony of the dying time."

Masterfully written, Breathing Freely offers a buoyant response to Nobel prize-winning poet Seamus Heaney's probing question, "How perilous is it to choose not to love the life we're shown?"

I recommend this book without reservation to anyone seeking to live gracefully in an imperfect world.

Brennan Manning
New Orleans, Louisiana