Singing Life into Being

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What are the essentials one needs to live? Most people would answer food, shelter and clothing. All true, but a person can go for a long time without shelter or clothing (depending on the environment), weeks without food, less without water. But the time one can go without breath is measured in minutes. The element needed to create sentient life is breath which is the vibratory animating essence. Breath is equated with the wind and with speech. In order to speak, our breath needs to vibrate the air across our vocal chords. Indeed breath and words are inexorably connected. Unless we draw a breath, we cannot speak.

In the act of creation, god sends a great wind or in the King James Bible, “the Spirit of God moved.” Other translations speak about God’s spirit as hovering or fluttering and then god speaks:

 

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
Genesis 1:2-3

 

The wind is “elohim’s breath” or more familiarly “god’s spoken word” that stirs the waters. My favorite way to think about it is that “god is singing” life into being. Breath and sacred word come together as song (or chant) and vibration.

Job and nature teaches us,  “Ask the fowls and they shall tell thee.”

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