The silences

What if the commandment “do not take the lord’s name in vain” is not about the crying out of a name, the swearing and the pain that comes with it? What if the blasphemy comes not from crying “Jesus!” when one stubs a toe, but from the ignoring of the silences?

“Yahweh”, the Hebrew name for the god of the Christians and the Jews, is an unpronounceable phrase, a word for one who will take claim to none. Yahweh. The word meant not to be spoken, but to be felt and to be known. Felt, as one feels the closeness of a lover.

What then, is god’s name but a breath on the neck of the person you love; the silences that conversation need not fill; the spaces between fingers? What if, all this time, this god of the jews was just warning us not to forget the little things, to not blaspheme the silences? To remind us broken, brittle beings of the lives that surround us, and the silences that go with them.