Life began with a deep breath.
Not a functional, scientific breath but a relational, soul-creating one.
“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” - Genesis 2:7
Breath was initially the connector between our deepest selves and the Spirit of the Love who made us. It wasn’t only about oxygen, but about intimacy.
A gift from the very depths of Him, to the very essence of us.
The biblical writers grasped this better than we do, both the Hebrew word ruach and the Greek word pneuma, words often translated as ‘Spirit’ are also translated as ‘wind’ and ‘breath’. Later those who translated the scriptures into Latin used the word spiritus which too is the root word for both ‘spirit’ and ‘respiration’.
For our ancestors, breath and the life of God were deeply interconnected.
So you might even say that the inter-breathing we discover in Genesis, this intermingling of life sources and the sharing of what’s essential to us and God that birthed us, was the very first prayer. A prayer not of verbal or mental conversation, but of a silent, unspoken interweaving of our very selves with God.
Before we had language, the use of our voice boxes or any context for spoken communication at all, we breathed in and out of God.
Deep calling to deep.
In this vision of communion it’s not our conscious mental dialogue that takes us into the deeper places of God’s heart, but our learning to share existence with Him. It’s about living openly toward Him, keeping conscious of Him always in a silent love that sits beneath all we do.
This kind of prayer oxygenates us. Not only our physical selves, but our souls which are often grasping for clean air in a polluted and chaotic world. And yet, so few of us actually breathe in this way. We don’t see prayer as a place of rested co-existence with God, but a wearying, performative space we’ve little to no energy for.
But if prayer is like breathing, then it’s precisely where we need to go when we’re exhausted and tired.
To pray like this, to breathe like this, all we need to do is turn our attention toward Him as the seat of ourselves and let His resting, life-giving Spirit flow deep into us.
It’s to close our eyes, breathe deeply and slowly, and remember that this breath isn’t just the oxygenation of our physical organs, but the moment by moment gift of God’s divine love into the very depths of us.
It’s a relationship. The continuation of the divine hongi displayed in Genesis 2. An invitation to unceasing, affectionate, intermingling prayer with the God who has made us his home.
Take a deep breath,
Receive Love,
come alive.
Much love,
Strahan.
(Practice deeper prayer like this with my guided prayer meditation Window of The Soul or read my story of discovering prayer as more than conscious mental dialogue and how you can go there too in my book Beholding)
Thank you for these soul stirring words !
Beautiful.