Breath, that everyday word/experience, exploded in force in 2020. We‘re still shaken by George Floyd’s “I CAN’T BREATHE!” before he died under police knee restraint, those last words a rallying cry for the protests that subsequently swelled.

Shortly before, Covid-19 severed breathing for multitudes and gave us all potentially infectious breath, adding to the horror of the pandemic and splintering communities even further.

Such polarized, terrifying associations, however, are nothing new for this seemingly benign word, I found. Breath has been heavily loaded, attached to myriad critical circumstances, positive and negative, across centuries. Here are some key points.

At their heart: Breath is a multi-faceted means of power, therefore crucial for self-determination. Consider the breath control of divers, singers, and practitioners of Eastern meditation. We invoke breath’s potency when we use the word metaphorically to express strong reactions (breathtaking) or psychological needs (breathing space).

We’ve long envisioned forces over our world and life as supernatural breath. Greek mythology represents winds as the breath of gods. In Ezekiel’s account in the Old Testament of his vision in captivity (37:9), God commanded the breath or spirit (translations differ) to “Come from the four winds, and breathe on those slain, that they may live.”

In Scripture, God’s breath provided humans their nonphysical essence, my neutral word for a contentious subject. According to Genesis 2:7, God quickened the clay Adam by breathing into his nostrils or face (translations differ). Big arguments mushroomed: Did Adam’s different treatment from that of other creatures, which God commanded into being/life, give humans alone a soul? Debates about who received souls at Creation have shaped approaches to the Other and animals throughout time.

Scripture also contends that we later humans owe our lives—and/or souls—to God’s breath, which also signals his ongoing support and gift of power. I’m struck, though, by the possible impact of today’s crises on how we might view its most earthbound form.

In John 20:22, the very breath of the resurrected man-god transmitted the Holy Spirit to his gathered disciples. The episode inspired Edwin Hatch’s hymn for divine guidance, “Breath on me, breath of God.” Does this sung invocation of God’s lifegiving breath gain new, possibly unstable meaning within Covid’s respiratory dangers?

— Suzanne Glover Lindsay, St. Stephen’s historian and curator