Wind

As Helena and I walked to buy vegetables a couple of days ago (well, I suppose as I walked and carried her, and she entertained herself by watching the world go by and kicking her legs), a strong wind came down from the northeast.  Helena hasn't faced much wind in her life, and she didn't like it.  Or perhaps more accurately, she complained and was fascinated at the same time, wanting to understand what it was that was beating against her face and making her cold.

It seemed like a good time to give an etymology of wind, an idea that plays a much bigger role in the history of religion and philosophy than most people realize.  In Hebrew, the word for wind is ru'ah; in Greek, pneuma, and in Latin, spiritus; in all three languages, the word also means two other things.  First, rather like the English phrase "he got his wind back," or "she ran faster after she got her second wind," all of those words also mean "breath."  But more significantly, all of them have also been translated as "spirit", that essential word in the history of western religion.

I explained to Helena Iara that spirit, like wind, is something you can't see, at least not directly.  You can only see its effects and consequences.  Helena loves to watch the trees blow in the wind, for instance, or to watch a stormcloud roll over the house.  In the same way, many ancient peoples believed that you can't see spirit, but that doesn't make it any less present; its effects are obvious.  And spirits/winds can be both good and bad, blowing the clouds away to show the sun, bringing clouds and rain to water the crops, but also the cold wind of winter that bites our faces, and the drafts that almost every traditional people believes is the origin of colds and the flu.  Good and evil winds, good and evil spirits.

Spirituality, on the other hand, seems impoverished and new age in contrast to the raw power of wind.  Maybe it's because we're too German, where spirit is Geist, a cognate of ghost: it seems like what is left over when the body is gone, a soul that floats up to heaven.  But like most religious concepts, spirit starts out as something very material, like the sun (Apollo, Ra) that burns and makes the plants grow.  You feel it in your face, use it, curse it, struggle against it...

And as we walked back from the market, the wind at our backs, Helena seemed much more content.