Rick Lee James connects the Hebrew name of God, YHWH, to breathing: the inhalation "Yah" and exhalation "weh" make every human breath a utterance of the holy name. Working in a hospital chapel where breath means life or death, he asks how we should guard what we say if we speak God's name with every breath.
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Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James. I'm so glad that you're here with me today. This is going to be a very short episode, as many of them have been lately. Now that I am finished with my master's degree from Loyola University, I have been entering into the world of board certification, so it's a whole other realm of busy. I've also started to record some music again, and in addition to that, I have been booking concerts. And with the busyness of life and school ending for my wife and son for the summer and learning new rhythms, I have not had a chance yet to book a guest for this week, so the guest is me. I wonder if this might actually turn into a longer podcast or possibly even a sermon that I share, as I have been doing from the hospital during our chapel services. But this is just something I wanted to share today because it's been on my heart. I just finished a run. I'm walking outside and you may be able to hear birdsong in the background. If you can't, I'm sorry, because they are singing beautifully right now. It's 5:47 AM on Wednesday morning at the end of May, and it's beautiful outside. So as I have finished running and I am breathing heavily, I'm reminded of this today. The word that we so often translate Yahweh, the name of God in Hebrew scriptures, The name God, Yahweh, was considered so sacred that it wasn't to be spoken aloud. Some have actually reflected that it's not even a word at all, but it's a sound to be breathed. So if you hear my breath Yahweh is supposed to be the sound that human beings make when they breathe in, Yah, and when they breathe out. So when you inhale with the Yah, you are in a sense exhaling and you are in a sense saying the name of God. From our first cry as infants when we enter this world, what is it that we do? We wait with anticipation to hear their cry, their first breath, to make sure they're breathing, and that cry indicates that they are. And so as we enter this world, "weh," the name of God is already on our lips according to the Hebrew scriptures. And whether we're aware of it or not, every human being begins and ends life breathing, in some sense saying, the holy name. So in a place like the hospital where I work, where breath is so precious, where life is so fragile, that image of the breath reminds us that each person we care for in this world, they carry the sacred. It reminds us too that what we allow to pass through our own lips words of healing or words of harm. They matter deeply. So a reflection question as I close out this podcast today, as we think of the sacredness of every human, the holy name that is on every person's lips, whether they realize it or not. If every human being begins life and ends life with the holy name of God on their lips. How might that change what we choose to let in and out of our mouths today? Psalm 19:14 says, "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my rock." and my Redeemer. Thank you so much for listening to Voices in My Head. Thank you for bearing with me in these short episodes without guests. I hope that you're finding them to be helpful. I hope they're leading you into reflection. If you check my website, by the way, I do have a few dates, a couple next month and one so far in July, where I'll be playing at different churches around Ohio, different venues. Rickleejames.com, or if you follow me on Bands in Town, uh, you can find those links, I believe, on Facebook and Twitter, X. And, uh, we'll see you around. Thank you so much for listening, and God bless.
