***This is the fourteenth of a series of posts based on a book I’m reading for a class called Connections in Religious and Ecological Education entitled Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation. The chapter is “Splitting the Sea…So What!” by Rabbi Zoë Klein.
Kabbalists imagine that the forgotten pronunciation of the name of God is Yah on the whispered in-breath and weh on the whispered out-breath, the whole name of God formed by a single cycle of breath, the awesome mystery of God’s name not separate from the mystery of breathing. I don’t know about you, but I forget most of the time that I breathe at all. It’s a mystery of the human body that we don’t consciously supply ourselves with what we need to survive from moment to moment. Dolphins have to remind themselves to breathe. Perhaps if we did, as well, we would remember more often where that breath comes from, its communion with the air of our environment, with the ruach, the Spirit that moves eternally around us, through us, shared amongst us, cycling within our bodies and given between ourselves and all of the living things on earth. The whole world breathes in Yah and exhales weh, and we are only a moment in that cycle.
