“The Breath of God brings ice, and frozen are the expanse of waters” (Job 37.10).
Breath of God, you have brought us ice and cold. The ground crackles underfoot and the trees creak with the weight of their limbs in the wind beneath gray skies. You have exhaled and changed the world overnight.
As I breathe in the morning and evening air, I feel it sink into my lungs, a very real presence that I breathe out in a cloud that drifts out to dissipate, becoming a part of the air we breathe. The breath you have breathed into our lungs, which we receive and give back.
In the cave at Horeb, Elijah heard the fire and the whirlwind and you were not there. But in silence, like that of our world slowed down by these frozen day, you were there. And you are here, in the weight of frost, the falling of snow. Your Breath, your Spirit surrounds us, reminds us that you are near.
And what terrible beauty has come with you. Glistening limbs crack beneath the stress even as the birds leave small tracks in the snow. Ponds become solid, still mirrors of the sky above even as our exposed skin grows red and begins to ache.
You, too, are beautiful and terrible, wild Breath. You inspire in us childlike joy, and a desire to run and play in this world you have made. Yet you are too much for us, your quiet strength forces us to run inside, to rest and to warm.
Fill us, Divine Breath, change us, leave us as the world outside—dramatically changed. Touch us, Wild Spirit, not gently but reddening our skin so that, well after our encounter, we can feel the sting of you. Cover us, like the berries and branches so we are both wrapped in you and protected from what is to come.
And, at the end, come to us with fire that we might shed every weight and greet the sunrise with our hands and our fingers stretched high. From them, let new growth come.