 Home
Current
issue
Previous
issues
Noticeboard
Discussion
board
About
CTiB
|
Abwoon!
by Revd Jean Boulton-Reynolds
|
The Holy Trinity: Rublev
|
Is it possible that a foreign language can change your life? For me
the answer is undoubtedly yes!
In November 1999 I joined an initiative from the Institute of Spirituality
at Sarum College in Salisbury to commit to Reflect 2000 – a year
of meeting each month in small groups of all denominations to journey
into the New Millenium together in reflection and prayer. The heart
of Reflect 2000 was the prayer which unites all Christians: The Lord’s
Prayer. But what made this experience life changing for me was having
my heart and mind opened to the original Aramaic, thanks to the commentary
by Neil Douglas-Klotz which we followed month by month.
Abwoon is the inspiration for this edition of BiC. So what does it mean?
The word translates into the very familiar Our Father, however Douglas-Klotz’s
commentary was to challenge all my preconceived assumptions about God.
Of Abwoon, he writes:
Abwoon may be said to have four parts to its sound-meaning:
A: the Absolute, the Only being, the pure Oneness and Unity, source
of all power and stability (echoing to the ancient sacred sound AL and
the Aramaic word for God, Alaha, literally, “the Oneness”).
bw: a birthing, a creation, a flow of blessing, as if from the “interior”
of this Oneness to us.
oo: the breath or spirit that carries this flow, echoing the sound of
breathing and including all forces we now call magnetism, wind, electricity,
and more. This sound is linked to the Aramaic phrase rukha d’qoodsha,
which later translated as “Holy Spirit”.
n: the vibration of this creative breath from Oneness as it touches
and interpenetrates form.
There must be a substance that this force touches, moves, and changes.
This sound echoes the earth, and the body here vibrates as we intone
the whole name slowly: Ah-bw-oo-n.
As I reflected on this translation I became more and more aware that
to speak the word Abwoon was the very act of breathing itself (try it!).
I came to realise that in simply breathing I am at one with the entirety
of creation and Creator and more than this that if God is breath itself
then every breath we take comes from God (do read the poem in this edition
on page 5).
So if the very act of breathing IS the presence of God then God is in
us, with us and around us all the time. When we speak of our ‘God-given
potential’ we are therefore saying that every person, every relationship
and every living thing has the potential to bear witness to the presence
of God. This revelation was life changing for me and the more I thought
about it the more aware I became of how important it is to be rooted
into the community beyond yet including the community of the church.
So in this edition of BiC we have tried to reflect God’s breath
flowing through all and in all bringing hope and potential in every
living thing.
|
|
