Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, presumably because we have a preference for vowels.

But scholars and Rabi’s have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing.

YH (inhale): WH (exhale).

So a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God.

A deep sigh calls His name – or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words.

Even an atheist would speak His name, unaware that their very breath is giving constant acknowledgment to God.

Likewise, a person leaves this earth with their last breath, when God’s name is no longer filing their lungs.

So when I can’t utter anything else, is my cry calling out His name?

Being alive means I speak His name constantly.

So, is it heard the loudest when I’m the quietest?

In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs.

In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst.

In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly to help us calm down.

When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage.

When I think about it, breathing is giving him praise. Even in the hardest moments!

This is so beautiful and fills me with emotion every time I grasp the thought. God chose to give himself a name that we can’t help but speak every moment we’re alive.

All of us, always, everywhere.

Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips.

People have been employing words and images for the Divine that move beyond the masculine from the very start. I thought I’d compile some examples chronologically. 

Links in any of the points lead fuller explanations or excerpts. Feel free to add on to this timeline!

First Century: 

Paul himself, right there in the canonical Bible, implies that God is pregnant with all that exists! And he’s not pulling that image out of nowhere, but from his own Jewish scriptures.

100s:

“In his ineffable essence he is father; in his compassion to us he became mother. The father by loving becomes feminine.” - St. Clement of Alexandria

200s/300s:

“Come, secret Mother; Come, You who (fem.) are manifest in your deeds; You who (fem.) give joy and rest to those who are united to You (fem.)” - The Acts of Thomas .

”She is the kind and heavenly mother…” - Symeon of Mesopotamia (speaking of the Holy Spirit) .

St. Barbara envisions both God and those who follow God as Saints as being beyond the human gender binary

300s-400s:

the earliest Syriac Christians frequently employed feminine language to all three members of the Trinity, including Mother language for God and sometimes using She pronouns for the Holy Spirit .

“He who has promised us heavenly food has nourished us on milk, having recourse to a mother’s tenderness. For just as a mother, suckling her infant, transfers from her flesh the very same food which otherwise would be unsuited to a babe…so our Lord, in order to convert His wisdom into milk for our benefit came to us clothed in flesh.” - St. Augustine of Hippo 

1000s-1100s:

“And you, Jesus, are you not also a mother? Are you not the mother who, like a hen, gathers her chickens under her wings? …. And you, my soul, dead in yourself, run under the wings of Jesus your mother and lament your griefs under feathers. Ask that your wounds may be healed and that, comforted, you may live again.” - St. Anselm of Canterbury  .

“In Hildegard’s day there were other traditionally feminine theological ideas: for instance, the Cistercians feminized the language for God by replacing ‘God’ with ‘God is love’, and, because love (caritas) was a feminine noun, God could be denoted as ‘she’.” - Andrea Janelle Dickens

1200s:

“What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From the beginning of eternity, God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to all.”  - Meister Eckhart, German theologian (c. 1260 – c. 1328) .

St. Francis of Assisi envisioned the Trinity as a group of three women (who give him a feminine title!): “Three poor women appeared by the road as Saint Francis was passing. They were so similar in stature, age, and face that you would think they were a three-part piece of matter, modeled by one form. As Saint Francis approached, they reverently bowed their heads, and hailed him with a new greeting, saying: ‘Welcome, Lady Poverty!’”

1300s:

“As we know, our own mother bore us only into pain and dying. But our true mother Jesus, who is all love, bears us into joy and endless living.” - Julian of Norwich  .

In various places in medieval Europe starting around 1320, Jesus’s side wound was frequently depicted as a vulva. Scholars have suggested various reasons for this depiction, including: making Christ androgynous as androgyny was seen as more holy than belonging to an earthly (binary) gender; and helping women see themselves in their Lord (birthing girdles were even made bearing Christ’s wounds so that one could imagine their labor pains in parallel to Jesus’s pain on the cross) - See my #androgynous Christ tag for more info + scholarly sources

1400s-1500s

Madre Juana de la Cruz in Spain imagines the Trinity as working together to weave divinity and humanity into one being (Jesus), just as a seamstress sews a shirt. She also envisions God the Father as having a womb, and, speaking in the voice of Jesus, said: “And all those who seek in me a father, will find in me a father. And those who seek in me a mother, will find in me a mother. And those who seek in me a husband, will find in me a husband. And those who seek in me a bride, will find in me a bride. And those who seek in me a brother, or a friend, or a neighbor, or a companion, likewise will find in me everything they desire…” .

A convent in Belgium commissioned a painting of Jesus in which he has breasts  .

God cares for us with an everlasting maternal heart and feeling.” - Martin Luther, who also pictured scripture as God’s womb.

1800s:

1800s: “My Father, my Mother, it is in You that I sleep, it is in You that I breathe. Awaken!” - Saint Mariam Baouardy (1846 – 1878)

Our principle is, and our practices have always been, to seek peace, and ensue it, and to follow after righteousness and the knowledge of God, seeking the good and welfare, and doing that which tends to the peace of all. All bloody principles and practices we do utterly deny, with all outward wars, and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretence whatsoever, and this is our testimony to the whole world. That spirit of Christ by which we are guided is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we do certainly know, and so testify to the world, that the spirit of Christ which leads us into all Truth will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world.

And as for the kingdoms of this world, we cannot covet them, much less can we fight for them, but we do earnestly desire and wait, that by the word of God’s power and its effectual operation in the hearts of men the kingdoms of this world may become the kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ, that he might rule and reign in men by his spirit and truth, that thereby all people, out of all different judgments and professions might be brought into love and unity with God and one with another, and that they might all come to witness the prophet’s words, who said, ‘Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more’. (Is 2:4; Mic 4:3)