God’s Breath of Life: The Great Equalizer

What if the living God is not missing out in the mystic heavens somewhere but is as close as our next breath? Could it be that in all our long searching for God, we have forgotten the age-old truth to end all truths that God is innate in us, and yes, that means all of us, the good, bad, and the downright ugly. 

Human imposed barriers just don’t cut the mustard in this scheme of things. They pale into insignificance against the all-inclusive, never exclusive, biblical imperative that God alone breathes the breath of life into the best and worst of us (Gen 2:7). 

A good deal of my mystic pondering (meditation) during the past week has been on two passages from Psalm 104: 

When you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your Spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the earth. (Ps 104:29-30).

Without doubt, the poet who penned the above had the Genesis creation myth narratives (Gen 1-2), looming large in the background of their creative prose. Indeed, the same underlying context holds true in many other poems that make up the psalms. Clearly, these mystic poets did more than a little pondering about Yahweh’s (God’s) creative breath and its essential meaning for life itself. 

In the original Hebrew text, the word for both breath and Spirit is “Ruach.” Ruach is interchangeable in its use, including in the above passage, where breath can mean Spirit or vice versa. When God breathes the breath of life into us, it is God’s Spirit that we receive. There is no life apart from this breath or Spirit because it is the source and sustainer of all human life. Even more startling in the whole creation myth shebang is the claim that this selfsame creative, sustaining Spirit-breath is equally present in all other forms of life (Gen 1:30).  

Now, you don’t have to be a misfit mystic—although it helps if you meditate—to realize that there’s a profound call to humility in all this. Perhaps we are not the all-knowing, self-contained autonomous little creatures that our ever-active egocentric selves, and the age of reason, have led us to believe. Maybe, as the ancient wise ones profess, we are all intimately connected to the life-giving Spirit from which all life and breath arises and thrives.  

In this scheme of things, hierarchy in the human realm, with all its destructive oppressing consequences, is superfluous. The Spirit-breath of life does not get dispensed more lavishly to some and less to others. The Creator God gives it to all in equal measure. This is a realm of the spirit reality, spirituality from below writ large. To paraphrase St. Paul:

We are not female or male, black or white, rich or poor, LGBTQ or straight, we are all one with each other and with the rest of creation through the Spirit- breath of life (1Cor 12:13; Gal 3:28). 

Ponder that if you will, my dear comrades, ponder that without ceasing and breathe in and of the Spirit, because in the end that’s all there is! That’s who we are, made equal by the great equalizer. As the old hymn says, “O breath on me, O breath of life.”