Breathe

Do you ever just think about the beauty of breathing? How it is the one thing in our life that can be both voluntary and involuntary?  How beginning to notice our breaths can slow us down and fill us with an energy and calmness that nothing else can?  How we can go days without noticing that we are indeed breathing as we are lost in our business?  Tonight, my roommates and I had our monthly spirituality night and watched this short video about breathing: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4657662595934098105.

If you have a few extra minutes, I highly suggest that you watch this too.  I would love to hear what it makes you think about.

I see it as a beautiful reminder that our breath, the very thing that makes us human, is the spirit of God flowing through our bodies.  This breath carries the oxygen that delivers energy to each cell to keep us alive.  I often think of our creation and what it means to be a human created in God’s image. As a scientist, I often think of humans as animals in one big animal kingdom—seeing the patterns between behaviors of nearly every creature that walks on this earth.  So what makes humans unique?  We are in reality just a bundle of atoms—quite literally dust from the earth.  But as Adam was created, God spoke the breath of life into him; man was created in the image of God, the very spirit of God pulsing through every vein.  The moment that we are born, we take our first breath.  We inhabit a temporary physical body that will enable us to live fully on this planet of ours.  Our breath, the Spirit, is what connects every human being together—as one in God.  And as we die, that bundle of atoms falls away as dust to the earth, and the spirit that moved through us, giving us life is now one with God again.  I find it really empowering to slow down and pay attention to my breathing.  To feel that breath, the very thing that gives me life, uniting me with all creation and with the Creator.

Have you noticed your breathing today?