Breathing the Name of God

The following is a quote from one of my all-time favorite books, Eyes Remade for Wonder, by Lawrence Kushner. Kushner is a Jewish Mystic, and as one writer puts it, "he helps us see through the mundane details of everyday life to catch a profound glimpse of the sacred sparks that surround us."

In one of my favorite chapters of this book Kushner makes some interesting observations about the name of God in Hebrew. The following is an excerpt from that chapter:

"The letters of the name of God in Hebrew are yod, hay, vav and hay. They are frequently mispronounced as "Yahveh." But in truth they are unutterable. Not because of the holiness they evoke, but because they are all vowels and you cannot pronounce all the vowels at once without risking respiratory injury.

This word is the sound of breathing. The holiest Name in the world, the Name of the Creator, is the sound of your own breathing (Kushner, 144)."

I once heard Rob Bell (www.mhbcmi.org) speak on this fascinating topic and he raised some interesting thoughts about this particular topic. He said, "could you be sitting at lunch with an atheist who is telling you there is no God and at the same time breathing the name of God?" He also asked the audience, "Is the first thing you do when you're born breathe? Or say the Name of God?" Also, "Is the last thing you do before you die take your last breath? Or is it when you're no longer able to say the Name of God that you cease to exist on earth?"