“Come from the four winds,
O Breath,
and breathe on these slain,
that they come to life.”
Ezekiel 37:9
Emerging from the womb, our first act in this world is to breathe. Returning to the dust of the earth, our final act in this world, is to breathe. Every moment between our first and our last, is Breath. The Life-giving Breath of the Creator, the Spirit of Love, flows through the air into our lungs, interfaces with our blood, allowing the exchange of oxygen-rich nutrients for carbon dioxide-rich metabolic waste.
This divine physiological process of breathing air gifts us with the most rudimentary requirements for life. And yet, the air on which the Spirit of Love travels is polluted. This air has fallen victim to the mass contamination of an industrial society, to the fumes of a people concerned more with convenience than with sacred simplicity. We now breathe into our bodies air filled with contaminants and toxins and those pollutants take refuge in our bodies, affecting our health and well-being.
We can choose to continue our consumption-centered lives, to pervert the very air that is essential for our living. Or we can choose to do things differently. We invite you during this Lent, and beyond, to join with us in trying to do things differently—to live differently, simply, and wholly. May the following reflection materials serve as ‘a breath of fresh air’ as we seek to cleanse the air and ourselves.
Part One, Sonnet IV (By Rainer Maria Rilke)
You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins behind you.Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins:
You are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.
Image Credit: Ganden Monastery, 2009, by Antoine Taveneaux, CC-SA-1.0
“Come from the four winds, O Breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life.”
Explore these themes more deeply in
"The Great Chain of Being"
