Breath As Life

I pay attention now to these little breaths -  my breath, your breath. All breaths, one by one,  mark the moments of time. Rather than monuments made of stone and steel and sun and moon,  it is these little things that continue to construct the moment to moment phenomena known as life. Without these seemingly invisible matrices there is no form, no manifestation of being, no intake and output of individual and collective expression. Without this formless presence there can be nothing, is nothing, or ever was anything here. But is the being that is air not unlike the ubiquitous yet incomprehensible entity that eludes our superior intelligence?

How long did it take us to know air (Oxygen et al) by name? Long after mankind instinctively knew  that air, as a transparent self, was the quintessential moniker of life- breath. And yet is air possibly the closest image we will ever conjure up or understand of "spirit" in the world of matter? Could air be the magic carpet for a divine presence to permeate our very microscopic atomic pulse? 

Whether or not I can see it, I can at least comprehend that breath effectively is the life force for this earthly universe. The cognition that this "unseen" elemental force has the profound power to start and stop life, to construct and deconstruct, create a rhythm or a seeming chaos, and yet remain unquestionably available to all living things without prejudice is a profound concept. And as I breath in and out I know I am a continuum of all the breaths before mine and after mine. I begin to feel the vastness of time and space, of essence and eternity, all in one breath.