We are meditating on that interior experience we call praise, and its opposite which is essentially taking for granted or not noticing. There is so much to praise and there is so much we take for granted.
Let us consider Earth, Air, Fire and Water and how these elements are worthy of attention and praise. How, in Mary Oliver’s words, they are worthy of astonishment.
How astonishing is air? James Joyce spoke of the air in Dublin this way:
The air without is impregnated with rainbow moisture, life essence celestial, glistening on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God’s air the Allfather’s air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee.
This is quite a poem to air. The last line is surely urging us not to take it for granted and not to participate lightly. Rather, to “breathe it deep into thee.”
Of course, we cannot take for granted that air today is healthy to breathe in deeply. Pollution is an attack on our Allfather’s air. Air of course is what we breathe, it is our breath—and what most spiritual traditions around the world understand as spirit.
One of the stories of humanity’s creation in the book of Genesis is that the Allfather breathed his/her breath into the first human and thus we came to be.
Breath and Wind are often identified with Spirit, no doubt because they are invisible but their effects surely are not. The first breath of a baby? The last breath of one who dies? These are not minor events.
Thus, many meditations practices instruct us to breathe air/spirit in and breathe air/spirit out. Not to take breath for granted–indeed, to recognize it as sacred.
What is science telling us about air today? A lot.
In Sam Kean’s book called Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the air Around Us, we learn that today’s science is convinced that our atmosphere is so complex that “it rivals the human brain in both its intricacy and its fragility.”*
With every breath we literally breathe in the history of the world. It is very likely that with every breath we are inhaling particles from everyone else’s breath who ever lived—thus the title of the book: We are inhaling molecules of Caesar’s last breath.
Talk about interconnection! We are already inside one another, inhaling one another’s breath and that of our ancestors. Community is already here holding us together. Interbeing is interbreathing. Let us praise our common breath. To be continued
Sam Keane, Ceasar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the Air Around Us. (NY: Little, Brown & Co., 2017), p. 230.
See Matthew Fox, Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society, p. 71 and pp. 45-62.
To read the transcript of Matthew Fox’s video teaching, click HERE.
Banner Image: Morning Mist, Keswick, England. Photo by Rebecca Prest on Unsplash
Queries for Contemplation
Do you praise the air? Or do we take it for granted? Are we working to keep the air pure and healthy?
Recommended Reading
Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh: Transforming Evil in Soul and Society
Visionary theologian and best-selling author Matthew Fox offers a new theology of evil that fundamentally changes the traditional perception of good and evil and points the way to a more enlightened treatment of ourselves, one another, and all of nature. In comparing the Eastern tradition of the 7 chakras to the Western tradition of the 7 capital sins, Fox allows us to think creatively about our capacity for personal and institutional evil and what we can do about them.
“A scholarly masterpiece embodying a better vision and depth of perception far beyond the grasp of any one single science. A breath-taking analysis.” — Diarmuid O’Murchu, author of Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics
8 thoughts on “<strong>Let Us Praise the Air</strong>”
Matthew, Yesterday you began a series on interior experience of praise, and its opposite which is essentially taking for granted or not noticing. There is so much to praise and there is so much we take for granted. And so now, you lead us in to a study of the four elements, beginning with air. Of course, we cannot take for granted that air today is healthy to breathe in deeply. Pollution was a huge problem when I was young and growing up in Southern California. There were days when it hurt my lungs just to breathe. So I am very impressed how all of our mandatory smogging and unleaded gasoline has cleaned up our air so it is breathable. You mention that “Breath and Wind are often identified with Spirit”, and having pastored a church in Tehachapi, CA where they have wind generators on top of the hills and mountains, I started a study group for “spiritual adventurers” in the spirit of Matthew’s One River, Many Wells and it is named “Spiritwind.” You ask us, “What is science telling us about air today? In Sam Kean’s book, Caesar’s Last Breath: Decoding the Secrets of the air Around Us, we learn that today’s science is convinced that our atmosphere is so complex that ‘it rivals the human brain in both its intricacy and its fragility.'” and you add that “It is very likely that with every breath we are inhaling particles from everyone else’s breath who ever lived—thus the title of the book: We are inhaling molecules of Caesar’s last breath.”
Thank you for the scientific message on the element of air in today’s DM. It was not only informative but also humorous. Today’s message made me also think about being interconnected with all that breathes, beyond space and time. Mother Earth truly is a living, breathing being!
Thank you Matthew for today’s beautiful DM on the sacredness of air, which is another blessing we should be grateful for. Today’s spiritual DM reminds me of the universal message of mystics from all of our Perennial Spiritual Wisdom Traditions — our Creator Spirit of LOVE~LIGHT~LIFE(including air) is always eternally Present within, through, among, around us in All of our ongoing evolving co-Creation~Cosmos in our Diverse Loving Oneness….
🔥💜🌎🙏
We cannot live without the air around us which most of us take for granted. We hear almost daily about pollution and its harmful effects. However numbers of people are committed to improving air quality by driving less and flying less. Some have pledged to become “flight free” in the coming year to improve air quality. Seems the least we can do to continue to honor our ancestors and our future generations so they can continue to breathe freely.
Each time the breeze touches me, I think of and experience spirit moving throughout.
I remember once your saying that we breathe the same air as Jesus breathed and it has stayed with me. Thank you.
It is fascinating to be reminded that air is shared with every living creature and has been recycled from the very beginning. As a person with lung disease, I do not take it for granted and do deep breathing both for exercising and maintaining lung function and for a meditative practice. I think it was Jim Finley (but probably not the first) who provided the beautiful image of the first breath of a baby being God’s expiration and the last breath of a dying person being God’s inhalation, thus completing the circle of physical and spiritual life. I hope that our government “leaders” will continue to enact protections for our precious air.
Sue, What a beautiful image is painted with these words you which you wrote/paraphrased: “the first breath of a baby being God’s expiration and the last breath of a dying person being God’s inhalation, thus completing the circle of physical and spiritual life.”
I wish that I could take credit for such a moving image.