Your Spirit Like Breath

"Imagine how our perceptions would change if we used 'wind' or 'breath' and not 'spirit' in our language.

Spirit was not 'spiritual' for our ancestors; it was sensory. It was the invisible that had visible effects. It was invisible but not immaterial.
Air has as much materiality to it as does a granite mountain: it can be felt, heart, and measured; it provides the molecules for the quiet breathing that is part of all life, human, and animal, waking and sleeping -
the puffs of air used to make up words, the gentle breezes that caress the skin,
the brisk winds that fill the sails of ships, the wild storms that tear the roofs off barns and uproot trees.

In Genesis creation story we hear God's breath. God begins. He begins by creating.
God breathes or blows over the 'waters of the deep'. The breath is life and life-making.
We see the wind moving over these waters, these dark waters, God breathing life into unlife, nonlife.
And then this breath of God, no longer just an inarticulated blowing is used to make words. We first see the effects of God's breath on the water, then we hear the articulation of God's breath in words.

The Genesis creation text is not confined to telling us how the world came into being, it is also a witness to the creation work of the Spirit of God now. The Spirit of God that moved over the face of the waters in the beginning, continues to move, continues to create, is the only one who Creates."

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Eugene Peterson