roo-awk - spirit in creation
earth & skies series
I looked up and saw a small murder of crows stuck in mid-air. Their wings flapped, straining to make headway, but there they hung, suspended in flight.
I’ve discovered an aspect of living in a city situated near the coast is the cyclone season that drops by each year. An aspect within this aspect is the accompanying tropical storm winds that come rolling in off the vast Pacific Ocean. Growing up in landlocked Huntsville, AL kept me and my brothers at least six hours away from anything remotely tropical.
The particular gale on this particular day howled with a particular intensity. Its intensity bent our banana tree into its eponymous shape and pressed PAUSE on the flight plan of these crows frozen above my head.
At the time, I was ankle-deep in learning vocabulary words and parsing verbal stems for my Hebrew classes. My lecturers told us one of the best ways to learn a new language was learning to think in that language. In other words, when you see a house, don’t think “house”, think “BEIYIT” (the Hebrew word for house). So standing there, crows overhead and me in awe of the raw power of the wind, I said out loud, “RUACH” (pronounced roo-awk)1 which is, unsurprisingly, the Hebrew word for “wind”.
“Wind” is a great translation for RUACH.
However, in ancient Hebrew, like many ancient languages, there are significantly fewer words than in modern languages.2 Because of this, lots of words do the linguistic heavy lifting of taking on multiple meanings. Often, these multiple meanings have increasing layers of wisdom and insight as well. RUACH is one of those words.
So yes, at its first level, RUACH simply means “wind”.3 It’s that blowy thing in the air that makes trees dance and clouds fly. It’s what stopped the crows in their flight. But what causes this wind? This brings us to the next meaning.
The second layer of meaning for RUACH is translated, “breath”.4 Why would a language use the same word for “wind” and “breath”?
Actually, it’s not too far-fetched. Imagine picking and blowing the seeds from a dandelion clock.5 How’d we do that? Our mouth produced a teeny micro-wind strong enough to scatter its seeds into the air. However, unlike the massive winds dancing with the trees, your breath is generated from within your body. It’s like the wind but in a personal form. So, for “wind” and “breath”, Hebrew uses the same word: RUACH.
For an ancient thinker, the question might have gone something like:
“If I am generating this mini wind, then what - or rather who - is generating those epic winds out there?”6
In the worldview of many ancient cultures, the elements of the natural world were seen as directly caused by, or the physical embodiments of, divine beings in a widely-populated spiritual world.7 Thus, the wind was thought of as being, or being blown by, the gods.8 This divine breath could be seen in action as it carried the birds through the skies, swept over a mountainside, or blew down your cousin Betzalel’s beiyit.9
This brings us to the third meaning of RUACH, and it’s where things get interesting.
RUACH first shows up on the first page of both the Jewish and Christian scriptures. See if you can spot it:
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was formless and empty and darkness was on the face of the deep waters, and the spirit of God hovered over the waters.” (Genesis 1:1-2)
Could you see it? Do you see a “wind” or “breath” word in that verse? It may not be immediately apparent, but RUACH is in there.
RUACH = 1. wind 2. breath 3. spirit.
The writers say that RUACH ELOHIM moves out over the waters. And thanks to brilliant, hardworking biblical scholars, we get to read the passage above in English as “the spirit of God”. Another equally accurate translation could be “and the breath of God moved over the face of the waters” or as it’s translated in the NRSV: “while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”
As we saw earlier, the connection between breath and wind is easy enough to understand. But “spirit”? Why “spirit”?
The connection is about movement, and the ability to generate that movement.
RUACH is the energy that animates what is otherwise motionless. In this epic poetic narrative of Genesis 1, this wind, this divine spirit-breath blows and begins the creation process by separating the deep waters, ordering the unproductive landscape, and speaking to call into being and name what has been created.
When God breathes into something, it comes to life. So as the Hebrew scriptures unfold, its writers use RUACH for both humans’ and animals’ breath saying that it is on loan to them from the Divine and that as they die, they are handing their final RUACH - their animating, life-giving spirit - back to God.10 They saw life as a gift - a gift animated by the Source who gave life to all of creation.
So, RUACH isn’t just about this powerful force of nature out there rearranging the clouds, but it's also the air that I'm breathing, the animating energy that is giving me life here and now.
Why does any of this matter?
Some might argue, “Aren’t these just ancient ways of thinking, outdated science from outdated stories?” Fair, fair, fair. I hear all of that. The deal is - these texts aren’t about that. They have a fundamentally different purpose - which still invites those with eyes to see, to see everything with a different set of eyes.
The invitation in our highly “secular” world,11 which has largely lost interest in boring and tired religion is to see that the idea of “spirit”, according to the Bible, is never a stagnant, ephemeral, or religious word. The Divine Spirit, according to these Hebrew texts, is gritty and powerful, it inspires concrete action, and sparks movement that is intimately tied to justice, care for creation, and care for others.
Holy and sacred RUACH is not about a god who is far off and disinterested, but One deeply entrenched in the details of our lives - right here with us giving breath and presence in the middle of our pain and struggle, our elation and awe. It’s also about your sense of aliveness and creativity in the world…
RUACH connects us with BEING itself.
For these ancient thinkers, a “spiritual life” was not something outside of ourselves, like a shoe that could be simply taken off and on. Instead, RUACH is woven into the very fabric of creation. Life itself is a breath, borrowed and shared, and something that exists as long as it flows to us from The Divine.
As suggested by the brilliant French philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, having a spiritual life isn’t something we choose, but is something that we are.12 This means the whole of our life is an act of spirit. The question then isn't, "Do I want to have a spiritual life?", but "What kind of spiritual life am I going to live?"
In the worldview of these Hebrew scriptures, there were multiple “spirits” that could animate a person. And while there are plenty of people and traditions that take these kinds of “spirit” ideas WAY too far, if you're like me, it’s not hard to acknowledge that there are often what feels like competing "spirits” or energies locked in a kind of tug-of-war within us.
These energies, or driving forces, have lots of different names - terms like True Self and False Self or Essence and Ego have bubbled up to the surface in recent years.13 "Ego" or “False Self”, in this context, is similar to what the Apostle Paul called, "the flesh".14 “The False Self” is the part of us that tries to function from a place of willpower, personal strength, and independence. It is usually driven by a deeply embedded sense of fear and lack, leading to our grasp for control and fostering a narrative that says, "There's not enough (resource, time, love, safety), so I need to fight for and protect what I have".
The unfortunate result of having the Ego/False Self as our driving energy is that it never brings us what we ultimately long for and is therefore a self-defeating project and comes at a tremendous cost to ourselves and those around us.
We see the cost of this kind of RUACH playing out in the zeitgeist (the spirit of the age) of our culture - a culture whose people are increasingly frantic, hurried, anxious, addicted, and over-medicated to name a few.
It is a RUACH, but one that pushes against, rather than flows with, the RUACH at work in this ancient Hebrew creation story.
“Essence” or True Self” on the other hand, is the driving force that begins with a deep knowing that we are already loved, and from that spirit flows a healthy care of self and a narrative that says there is always enough and therefore I can give freely. Grounded in our Truest Self (the self God created us to be) we see the world - ourselves and everything around us - from a place of interconnectedness, interdependence, and Ultimate Goodness.
This animating spirit is about propelling us forward, bringing new life, and expanding beyond ourselves for the good of others. That is precisely what we see happening in this Hebrew text.
God breathes RUACH, this powerful wind, to separate the chaotic and unfruitful waters, speaking beauty and goodness into being and creating a world full of potential that is beneficial, not for the Creator, but for the ones created.
This poetic Hebrew narrative flew in the face of the more dominant creation stories that floated around at that time. In those stories, the humans were created for the sole purpose of being slaves, providing food and drink for the gods - aka the king and his royal house.15
Thinking back to those crows that were stranded over my house, I’m reminded that there are real energies at work within me. It's so easy for me to simply live on autopilot and go the path of least resistance. Still, every day I have the opportunity to choose which energies or “spirit” I partner with or which ones I push against as they prove unhelpful in bringing me to who it is that I am created to be: my Truest and Deepest Self.
My daily task is to investigate my motivations as I go through the day by asking, "What kind of RUACH is animating my activity right now? Are my reactions and responses being motivated by fear and grasping, or to create a better world for everyone around me?"
Even a glance at today’s headlines makes it easy to see all the ways that other people and systems around us have failed at creating the kind of world we want to live in. But, along with these ancient Hebrew writers, if we can see that RUACH is not just power outside of ourselves, but is tremendous power inside us as well, then our journey towards awareness and transformation - for ourselves and the sake of the world - can begin.
But you have to kind of gargle a little bit in your throat when you get to the back end of “awk”
Biblical Hebrew has around 8800 unique words, which are based on only about 1800 root words. Compare that to modern-day English, which has some 400,000+ words. Even commonplace words sit at around 25,000 or so.
For instance, see Gen. 8:1; Exod 10:13, 19, 14:21, 15:10; 2 Sam 22:11; 1 Kings 18:45, 19:11; 2 Kings 3:17. In these instances, it is quite clear that the author has in mind what we would call “wind”. The Hebrew word used here is ruach.
A few examples are Gen 6:17, 7:15 & 22; 2 Sam 22:16; 1 Kings 10:5; 2 Chr 9:4; Job 7:7, 9:19.
This is what the white, fluffy-balled, pre-flowering stage of a dandelion is called. I learned this one minute ago.
They said “epic” a lot back then.
See especially John Walton, Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament: Introducing the Conceptual World of the Hebrew Bible, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic 2006), 47-72, 131-147.
Egyptian myth saw the winds being blown by Shu, the god of air. In Mesopotamian mythology, Enlil controlled the wind, air, and storms - both in life-giving and destructive ways. Tarhunna also controlled storms in the stories found in the Hittite culture. All of these were neighbours of ancient Israel and their cultures and languages influenced the world of the ancient Israelites.
6 points if you got it.
Gen 6:17; Ps. 104:27-30; Eccl 3:18-21, 12:6-7. In the passage in Psalms 104, RUACH shows up twice, in verses 29 and 30. The translators of the NIV use both “breath” in v.29 and “Spirit (meaning the Holy Spirit)” in v.30, but both are the same word in Hebrew: RUACH.
I use “secular” not to mean “non-Christian” but in its true sense - the thought of life disconnected from “spirituality” or from things thought “spiritual”.
de Chardin’s actual quote is, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience." Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 165.
The terms “True and False Self” were first introduced by psychologist Donald Winnicott. They have been adopted by many spiritual teachers, most notably by contemplative writer and Trappist monk, Thomas Merton and Franciscan Priest, Father Richard Rohr. See especially, Donald Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment (London: Karnac Books, 1965); Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961); Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2011); and Richard Rohr, Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013).
An observation made by Father Richard Rohr in Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2013).
Ruach is a word that caught my attention, too, back in my seminary studies. You’ve given us much to think about here, especially with the questions to ponder at the end.
Profound and succinct Phil. Thank you.