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Spirit Words


When I was taking Latin in high school, my heart was not really into it.  I was doing it because someone told me I should do it.  I don’t actually remember the reason why I should do it, but I did it.  As with many things in life, in retrospect I wished I had put more into it.  I did not do anything with Latin while I was in college.  But then to my surprise, I went on to graduate studies.  A theological degree led to a doctoral degree.  It turns out, I had to do more Latin. 

My doctoral studies focused on the early Christian centuries.  I became fascinated with the early church.  How did a little known Palestinian Jew, Jesus, gather a motley band of disciples, get killed and in the process became the most famous person in world history?  And how did that motley little crew somehow manage to survive the death of their leader and sow the kernel seeds of what would become a worldwide movement that today numbers more than two billion people?  That story still fascinates me.

Those early figures in Christian history I studied almost all were writing in either Latin or Greek.  So I began to take my Latin more seriously.  Again, I wish I had paid more attention and really nailed it.  But it is still serviceable.  And for me, Latin became a kind of revelation of language.  I learned that root meaning of words were amazingly insightful.

For example, I think of our English word, spirit.  You can write it either spirit or Spirit and suggest different meanings.  It is remarkable what a capital letter does to a word!  I know our English word comes from the Latin, spiritus.  That is an easy translation!  But it means so much more than our English word, spirit.  The Latin, spiritus, can also be translated “breath.”  That opens up yet a whole new world.

Spirit language, then, means the breath or air that I breathe.  Breathing enables me and you to live.  Without spirit we literally cannot live.  For me this has theological connections, too.  I understand God’s nature to be spirit.  I describe it simply: God is Spirit.  That means God is also Breath.  I like to think that God is indeed that which inhabits me in my breathing.  Literally God is keeping me alive.

This drives me toward other spirit words.  The Latin verb for spiritus is spiro.  Again this is revealing.  If we continue with the breathing idea, we can talk about taking in a breath.  We can use the Latin preposition, in, to make the compound word: in-spiro: inspire!  Inspiration is a divine in-breathing.  Inspiration is the Spirit coming to dwell within us---it is having the Spirit breathing into us.  Latin tells us that inspiration is a divine-human encounter---and divine-human exchange.

At the other end of life, we all know that we die.  One revealing way to talk about this is to say the person expired.  Again, using Latin expire uses another Latin preposition, ex, which means “out of.”  To expire means literally to “breath out.”  In a radical way, expire means that we breathe out our last breath.  Literally, the Spirit leaves us.  There is nothing animating us anymore.  Our body becomes a corpse.

There is one more word that we can consider, namely, the word, aspire.  Not surprisingly, this uses yet a third Latin preposition, ad, which means “to” something or some end.  When you hook that preposition to our word, spiro, the “d” drops off and we get aspiro---aspire in English. 

Aspirations are those longings or desires we have that literally are our breathings (or even pantings) for something or to some end.  In this spiritual sense, aspirations do have something to do with the Spirit.  Personally, I have aspirations to be a child of God.  I want to be a child of the Spirit. 

I can imagine that inspiration and aspiration are tied together.  As I an inspired by the Spirit, so do I aspire to the Spirit.  Inspiration operates at two levels.  At the concrete level, inspiration is the basic inbreathing of God’s Spirit that keeps me alive.  It is the breath I breathe.  At the figurative level, inspiration is the special dose of the Spirit that God gives to take me to a new, inspirational level.  We become inspired to speak, sing, live prophetically, etc.  We become inspired to love our neighbor as our self.

I hope I can live inspirationally and aspirationally before I expire.  I know some day I will breathe my last breath.  The Spirit will leave me and I no longer will have spirit.  We can speculate on what that means for any future “I” might have.  But that is another piece.

In this present moment---while I still have breath/spirit---I want to be open to the Spirit’s inspiration.  And I want to act on and act out the Spirit’s call on my life.  I want to be spiritually aspirational.  I want my life to count.  I will count my blessings as I count on the Spirit.
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