The name of God and your breath

What is God's name?

People will occasionally talk about "the name of the Lord," or about "taking the Lord's name in vain," but what are we talking about when we talk about God's name?  Does the God of heaven and earth have a name?

Turns out this is a question that people have been asking for a long time.  In Exodus 3, Moses asks God directly, "What is your name?"

In response (or at least, one of the responses), God uses the name "the LORD."  In English translations, this word is written in capital letters.  But this all-capitals-LORD stands for four letters in Hebrew.  The Hebrew letters look like this:

Since Hebrew is read from right to left, these are the Hebrew characters yod, heh, vav, heh.  Roughly speaking, these are the Hebrew letters for Y, H, V, and H.  Some people pronounce this name "Yahweh."  Many other people refuse to pronounce the name out of respect for the name.  They consider the name of God to be too sacred, too holy to be uttered by a human mouth.  So out of respect for the name, they will simply write YHVH (or YHWH), or they will say "Adonai" or "the Lord."

But there is another tradition about these letters.  I have learned about this tradition through Rob Bell's Nooma video "Breathe," as well as in Richard Rohr's book The Naked Now.  This tradition says that these letters, the letters of God's name, are essentially the sounds of breathing.

This tradition suggests that every time we breathe, we are saying the name of God.  Yod.  Heh.  Vav.  Heh.  Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.

The more I have thought about this tradition, the more I am blown away.  What if God's name is the sound of breathing?  What if we are saying God's name throughout the entire day, as we inhale and exhale approximately 20,000 times?  What if God's name is on the lips of every person who has ever lived, every time we breathe?  What if God's name is the first thing that a baby does upon being born, as it takes the first gulp of air?  What if God's name is the last thing a person does, when we take our last breath, before dying?  If God's name is the sound of breathing, then, as Rob Bell asks, is it that "when we can no longer say the name of God, we die?"

There are many, many implications of this tradition that God's name is the sound of breathing.  And as far as I can see, all of those implications are beautiful.