Dear Friends,

 One of the worst complaints to afflict a dentist must be halitosis - bad breath.  Not a good advertisement for dental health or oral hygiene.  It might even indicate some deeper malady.  Bad breath is something human beings shun both in themselves and other people.  It is very unpleasant.  But the fact is we are surrounded by it.

Imagine sitting at the traffic lights in a queue of traffic in the comparative safety of your car.  The lights turn green and the bus or lorry in front revs up with a plume of black brown diesel fumes.  Your car is filled with ‘bad breath’ serving as a reminder that traffic fumes surround us all the time. 

The world news is full of the bad breath of conflicts in Iraq, India and Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere as in Madrid last month.  The outbreaks of indiscriminate violence and terrorism, mayhem and carnage can occur anywhere.  Nowhere is safe.  The reasons for this volatile situation are numerous and hard to pin down.  Everyone has an opinion, some more informed than others.  The real danger seems to be that the nature of the conflicts are so closely allied to the main world religious cultures – Judaism, Islam and Christianity – that they turn into a major religious conflict.  The situation in Israel and Palestine is just one example.

 ‘Bad breath’ is a world phenomena rather than an individual affliction and there is a lot of it about.  It not only manifests itself

in human conflict but also in the way we pollute the environment with little regard for others or future generations. 

The Christian festival of Pentecost is all about breath, but certainly not halitosis.  It recalls us to the breath of God, the breath of the very life we live and share with all living things.  It reminds us that the present world situation is no way for nations to live together and is certainly no part of God’s will. 

In Genesis God breathed his life into all that lives (2:7).  Later in the account of Noah and the flood the word used for breath (ruach) also means ‘spirit’.  In the prophet Ezekiel, at the valley of dry bones, life is breathed into old bones (37:9).  In St. John’s Gospel the resurrected Jesus breaths new life into his disciples (John 20:22).  Significantly at that point he declared the forgiveness of sins – an opportunity of a new creation, a new start.  In the Acts of the Apostles (2:2) the Holy Spirit came on the disciples as a rushing mighty wind – breath – and the church is born. 

We have no need to put up with this cosmic halitosis.  God’s breath is the life (his Spirit) that is in us and sustains the world.  If we ignore it then we only have ourselves to blame.  The good fresh air of the Holy Spirit is available to all if we would but breath it.

Alan Hayday