Stll with the Breath

I wanted to tell you about church, a play, an Evensong, and a reception, but I need to finish some thoughts I had about breathing, the wind, the words, the living entity about us, that solid thing that is solid and apart and yet within us--the air.

I was thinking about the air and imagining it as a solid thing, a person. The Navajo think that this air in the largest sense is WakanTanka.  It exists inside of us and in us it is made up of Little Winds but is still part of the whole. When the fluids of a man and a woman unite, then a small wind or little winds are created, and that happens at the moment of conception. (So that settles that!)

I was thinking of when Gregory died, and when I was wakened up and told that he had "stopped breathing," and I visualized his Little Wind, the part of Wakan Tanka that was apportioned to him at conception, drawing back into the larger body. Just gently joining back in to something that was there all along.  When we wear out or lose the house where the Little Wind has been residing, then there is a receding of the individual's wind into the Wakan Tanka that has been in us all our lives.  That is a gentle concept, for it means that the essence of Gregory was not lost, and I never thought it was.

In fact, so many people who have lost a loved one have told me, not in any Native American sense, that they 'feel' that their loved one is all around them still.

Then I thought about our Christian theology (which I am not too knowledgeable about either) and wondered what idea could compare to where all our loved ones are now, and I thought--Purgatory.  There they all are, (and we too if we remember that it's all around and within our houses of flesh)...and when the Great Gettin' Up Morning comes,--what will happen? We don't know yet.  But we will only be where we have been all along.  All is OK.

I won't talk about the play, the Armed Forces Evensong, and the reception yet, but perhaps later, when I have sorted out the email, read the paper, and fed Theodore his breakfast, I'll come back and do just that. YAZZYBEL