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I don’t expect I was the only person this week to feel challenged by various media reports about our worsening air pollution, nor the only one to regret having bought myself a second-hand diesel car - believing, as I did back in the day, that I was doing the right thing, becoming part of the solution, not the problem. The thing with air pollution, of course, is that you can’t always see it, until the conditions are ‘right’, as they were in London with the recent cold snap. So it’s easier to politely ignore it, even as it gets worse. But it seems that we do so at our peril. I get reminded of this when I walk in to my own city centre in Winchester with my 11-year-old daughter, who often complains of feeling choked, and who hates the taste of the air that we adults have possibly grown far too used to. How we tolerate the gentle creep of toxicity! There are, of course, practical steps we can take to becoming part of the solution, from walking and cycling more, to trading-in vehicles if possible, and even demonstrating. But there’s a profound spiritual connection with “breathing the air”, too, which most faith traditions acknowledge, and which I believe can inspire us, as we go. I’ve been helped by simple mindfulness techniques, for example, to pause, and to draw more deeply of the physical, emotional and spiritual energy that breathing can yield. And it’s worth noting I think that both the Hebrew and Greek words for “breath” that we find in the Bible - ruach and pneuma - are synonymous with Spirit. For me, that suggests we are all God-breathed, as part of a good Creation. But however you see it, stop to notice your breath, even briefly, rather than driving relentlessly onwards, preoccupied - and I think it’s hard not to feel more fully alive, connected. Pause to breathe before you go into a meeting, perhaps, or when you’re about to have a tough conversation on the phone, and it’s likely you’ll be less toxic and more focused, present, lovingly attentive. Which brings us back to the air; back up for air! Breathing it attentively is surely one of the simplest and most humbling reminders, of who we all are, within the inter-woven wholeness of this life we share. And that can remind us, in turn, to keep working for the kind of atmosphere, physical, emotional and spiritual, in which we all may flourish. The founder of the Cloud Appreciation Society, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, puts it rather well: “We are creatures who inhabit an ocean of air,” he says. “We do not live beneath the sky; we live within it.” First broadcast 4 February 2017