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AIR

“There came a sound like the rush of a violent wind…”(Acts 2)  and  He breathed on them and said to them “Receive the Holy Spirit…'”  

                                                     Air and Life

For the ancients there were four elements, not the ninety plus that science now teaches.

Those four were air, water, fire and earth.  Today, Pentecost, I will concentrate on air.  The readings from the Vigil of Pentecost say that air is life-giving:  “I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live,” and “I will put my spirit within you and you shall live.”  (Ez 37)  Every year we celebrate the day we took our first breath of air and we remember the day our loved ones, ancestors and the saints took their last.

                                                    Air and Environment

The air we breathe is the same air we hear in the wind and thunder and “see” in the clouds.  In another reading from the Vigil “Moses would speak and God would answer him in thunder.” (Ex 19).  Think about it.  the environment is not just “out there” but it is inside of us with every breath we breathe.  The separation that we imagine exists between ourselves and the environment is the result of Original Sin.  We are not above and apart from the rest of creation.  We are a part of it.  We have not been put on this earth to exploit it and use it. We are a part of Creation and within it just like it is a part of us and within us, like air.  Trevor’s dogs taught that to him and to us.

                                                     Air and Language

The moment we first breathed , we cried and everyone around breathed a sigh of relief.  I imagine that “once upon a time”

 a mother heard her infant’s cry for milk as calling HER by name, “maa maa”.  When Mama answered, human language began.  The story of the Tower of Babel, also in the Vigil Mass, (Gen 11) is a short and surprisingly accurate precis of thousands of years of the development of languages.  Etymologists trace our Indo-European languages back to one -Sanskrit- and many of our words today trace back that far.  The word “air” itself goes back to the Sanskrit “veti” it blows. (Eric Partridge, “Origins”)

                                                       Language and Community

“Spirit” and “Animus” can be traced back through Latin and Greek to wind and breath  “Anima” like “Spirit” came to mean mind over matter.  We think of our mind as our own personal possession.  But we use words to think.  But words come from our community, and our community’s history.  We must breathe out in order to form words and like air, words are “out there” as well as inside of us.  Fr Phil’s desire to hear us sing together expresses the fact that we are not alone but in a community.  

                                              And Pentecost is the Birthday of our Community!

~Diahann & Agnes