“YHWH” as (the) Breath (of Life)

This is an excerpt from a talk Fr. Richard Rohr OFM gave at Norwich Cathedral in 2015 titled “Christian Contemplation-Becoming Stillness.” It can be found online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TGS-JD80nE&t=778s  / Published on YouTube on: Jan. 18, 2015.

Rohr recounts a conversation he had with a scientist who happened to be a Jewish Rabbi. The Rabbi makes the case that the name of God, sacred to Jews and Christians, YaHWeH, was originally an attempt to replicate breath. Hence, we can conclude, that our very breath is intimately linked with the Greater Reality (some of us call God) and that, with every breath we take throughout our life, we exist within the greater divine reality. [jkk]

[50:03]

He [the rabbi-scientist] said, "Did you know that the consonants used in the spelling of the sacred name, Y-a-H-W-e-H,  are in fact the only consonants that if correctly pronounced do not allow you to use your tongue or close your lips?

In fact we know that the pronouncing of the sacred name was an attempt to imitate and replicate breath, that it was inhalation and exhalation."

And then he began to do it into the microphone and, in a few minutes, tears started being audible in the room [full] of PhDs

I now give this to every crowd I can because it can change your life.

If I would come back here a year from tonight and if some of you hold on to this and begin to live it and to experience it and to practice it, your prayer life will dramatically change. But notice it has nothing to do with thinking.

Here, Rohr reminds us that we should transcend the action of cognitive thinking in order to experience the spirit of contemplation. That, in turn, will change our lives.[jkk]

In fact it moves the entire experience to the cellular body, to the corporeal breath level and it means, wonder of wonders,  that the first word you ever spoke when you came out of your mother's womb was the name of God.

And it will be the last word you'll ever speak. You don't have to try to remember to say a prayer before you die.You're going to anyway: that last breath you take on your death bread will be the name of God

And it's the one thing you've done constantly. You just did it now and you did it again: You're breathing. [52:16]

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Being mindful of one’s breathing is a fundamental component of practically all meditation techniques found in the world’s various spiritual-wisdom traditions (the world religions). Here is one way to make breathing exercises explicitly Christian: to understand and practice it as a form of recitation of the sacred name of God. Besides, one does not need to recite it audibly. The very breath is a recitation of the divine name and communing with the divine presence. [jkk]

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