In the day that God made the earth and the heavens….then God formed the human one from the dust of the ground, and breathed into the human’s nostrils the breath of life; and the human became a living being.
Genesis 2:1,7
I am sure I had human anatomy in 9th grade health class or 10th grade biology, but whatever I learned didn’t stick! So when I started reading the anatomy textbook assigned for my Yoga Teacher Training a few years ago, I was fascinated. It was one revelation after another! Ask me sometime, if you dare, about our bowling ball heads or our amazing spines that have 4 curves and move in 6 ways…
One of those revelations was about breathing. When we inhale, I learned, we are not actually pulling air into our lungs. What we are doing is using our diaphragm muscles to open space in our chest area. When we create that space, the air around us comes into our bodies of its own accord, because the air pressure outside us is greater than the air pressure inside us.
We can’t make ourselves breathe in the oxygen we need to live. All we can do is create space for the air around us to do its own work of bringing life-giving oxygen into our bodies.
In Hebrew, the word for “breath,” ruah, is the same as the word for “spirit.” At the heart of our faith is the recognition that breath and spirit are intricately intertwined. And so this truth about breath can point us to a truth about God’s Spirit.
We cannot make God’s Spirit move through our lives according to our plans. All we can do is create space in our lives for God’s Spirit to move. Fortunately, blessedly, that is all we have to do.
Breathe in us, O Holy Spirit. Amen.