To Breath by Gunilla Norris

Excerpt from Hints for the Heart: Embodying the Soul

an excerpt from Hints for the Heart: Embodying the Soul by Gunilla Norris.

Between the first breath we take and our last exhalation is a life of breathing. It is a constant we don’t think about much. It takes care of itself. For the most part we are unaware of the ancient love and fidelity it represents. In Genesis 2:7 we read that it is God’s breath that made us living souls. In Navajo spirituality the name for God is Breath Giver.

To inhale is to be filled, to be infused and inspired. Our origin is dust and earth and God’s breath. It took billions of years for us to be formed and to become living souls. In cosmology we learn that two billion years ago the prokaryotes, by gathering their oxygen from the oceans, released oxygen into earth’s development, and though they themselves perished, unable to use the oxygen, a eukaryotic cell emerged that could use it, the Vikengla. From there the first multicellular animals emerged in the earth’s ecosystem. What gratitude we owe to these very a…