yh (inhale) wh (exhale)

God as breath in Chicago

We are in the middle of a series right now - Letters to the Faith that Raised Me - but I didn’t want to wait to share this with you. The next letter will come next week as usual.

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Last week, I attended the

Pastors Priests & Guides

retreat in Chicago. I started following them a few years ago, following the breadcrumbs of my friend Jonathan’s work. I lucked out this year and won a giveaway to attend a retreat but then life quickly fell on top of me. Edit deadlines for the next book. Panic about the manuscript not being what I wanted it to be. Self doubt. Feeling like a fraud. All things that are pretty cyclical for me. I hadn’t time to think or process or prepare and then suddenly it was Monday morning and I was on a plane to Chicago.

one thing I will tell you about Chicago is that it will take you 2 hours to drive 30 miles.

Why would you need to think and process and prepare, Kristen?

Great question and the really simple answer is that I am scared of Christian spaces because I have chronic church-related pain. It’s not because of a single event that happened - per se - but because I grew up in these spaces and there hasn’t been one day of my life that I felt like I belonged in them. Not one. It’s not anyone’s fault, really.

It’s just the reality of being a woman who’s not very feminine and is also a
neurodivergent/introverted/thinker in Evangelical spaces. All women like me feel like that at some point whether someone did something to make us feel that way or not.

So when I pulled up to the retreat house, my first thought was - What the heck am I doing here?

But I spent more than we could afford to be there and time away from my family always has a price, so I fully committed to being there, even as I was worried that this would be another spiritual space I leave feeling bad about myself.

And then I walked in the room.

It’s not that anything magical was happening.
I didn’t see anyone I knew.
No music was playing.
It was just a room with chairs and strangers walking around.

It was just … the air.

It felt like walking into an exhale.

The Hebrew word for God, Yahweh, is supposed to sound like breathing. Rabbis teach that the letters (we added vowels later) - YHWH - represent the sound we make when we take a breath. yh sounds like taking a breath in. wh sounds like exhaling it out.

The name of God is an inhale and an exhale.
His name is breath.
He is breath.

My weekend in Chicago was the inhale and the exhale of the name of God. Over and over and over again. In every interaction, every practice, every scripture, every song, examen, and liturgy…

YH. inhale
WH. exhale

On our last night, we took the Eucharist together. It was so simple and so embodied. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Real bread, real wine, my hand being held as one of the spiritual directors said, “Kristen, this is Christ’s body and he broke it and bled for you.” As if Jesus was thinking of me. As if he really did do that for me. As if he was standing there in front of me, stretching out his hands and saying, see for yourself.

How many times have I taken communion in my life? I don't think I could tally it up if I wanted to. This was something else entirely.

I dipped my bread into the wine and ate and I don’t really know how to talk about it. I don’t have words for what it was and what I felt and what I experienced.

YH. inhale.
WH. exhale.

And that’s kind of how I feel about the whole weekend. I couldn’t tell you all the words that were said in the sessions. I know that Jonathan spoke the most beautiful words about hope. I know that Julian talked about music and why he and other black people find rest in dissonant notes. I know that Father Michael talked about why their imagery has Christ on the cross, while Evangelical imagery focuses on the resurrection. I know that the conversations across tables made me fell seen and understood and welcome.

But all I really remember is breath.

Sometimes you have experiences that require years to fully unpack and I think this will be one of them. I tried to say the words out loud to my husband and they caught in my throat and I ended up just crying. If all I can remember is breath, maybe that’s also all that I need to share with you.

YH. inhale
WH. exhale.

I hope you feel the breath of God as you come and go, as you face whatever it is you have to face. Inhale. Exhale. He is with you, around you, and in you.

YH.
WH.

- Kristen