Spirit in the Wind, Flame, and Form

Spirit in the Wind, Flame, and Form

When a fire spreads from one tree to another, the flame itself doesn’t leap. It’s the wind—air molecules superheated by the fire—that carries the energy. Those hot molecules move swiftly through space, and if the next tree is close enough and dry enough, they ignite it. The tree doesn’t need to touch flame—it only needs to be ready. Dry, open, waiting. Then fire, seemingly out of nowhere, appears again.

Now imagine instead of air molecules, the wind carries spirit—molecules of God. The movement of these spirit molecules is ruach, the sacred breath, and their flow is shefa—divine abundance, or prana, or chi. The spirit, like heat in the wind, travels invisibly until it finds a form ready to receive it. Then, flame appears again—not from nowhere, but from the breath of what came before.

Just as a chariot is not a chariot until its pieces come together, a person is not a person until body, mind, and spirit align. Remove one part—say, the body—and it ceases to function as a full person. But that part, when brought to another incomplete person, can create something whole again. What if it’s not the body that’s transferred, but the mind? Or the spirit?

And like that second tree, the receiving person must be prepared. That doesn’t happen all at once. Sometimes, it takes a lifetime to dry out—slowly shedding what is too wet to burn, absorbing enough of life’s heat to become receptive. Preparation may look like longing, stillness, suffering, or study. But it’s all the same: the slow readiness for spirit to land.

Sometimes a single gust delivers the spark. Sometimes, it takes many currents, softening, shaping, whispering. The fire doesn’t force itself—it seeks the opening. And when readiness meets transmission, the old flame becomes new again.

In a house where spices have cooked for generations, the aroma seeps into every surface—walls, floor, ceiling, fabric, breath. Even after the cooking stops, the scent remains. So too with a person whose spirit has burned brightly—the residue of their presence lingers in everything they touched, and sometimes, when the wind stirs just right, it rises again.