Smoking and the Breath of Life

There is an anti-smoking commercial with a singing cowboy who has lost his tongue, apparently, to tobacco. The cowboy sings, "You don't always die from tobacco/Sometimes you just lose a lung./You don't always die from tobacco./ Sometimes they just snip out your tongue."

I think the commercial does an excellent job of showing concrete devastations of smoking. It is easier to think about losing a tongue than the vague, "Smoking kills." It also highlights the nature of verbal communication. As smoking takes your breath away by condemning your lungs, and by removing your tongue so is the person affected. Communication is an intricate element to human existence and speaking is one of the most intimate abilities. Without breath we cannot speak.

The other day I was listening to a lecture by Father Raniero Cantalamessa and he was talking about the importance of the Spirit and the spoken word. God's Spirit, or Breath (ruach in Hebrew), is the transmission of God's Word (Son). God's Word cannot be spoken without God's Breath; our words cannot be spoken without breath (as the singing cowboy illustrates). For this reason, Father Cantalamessa urged the preacher to remember the Spirit in the preaching of the Word. Without God's breath, the Word is not preached.

(Theological Question: What does this say about the order of generation? If God's Breath carries God's Word, then does the Son also proceed from the Spirit, as well? Where's Terry Tiessen when you need him?)