I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
This mask I wrap around each ear before I walk into the grocery store. As I open the car door and get outside, there is no more breathing in the fresh air and it reminds me what it must be like to struggle to breathe. The weight on my chest as I watch the news, the politics of human life, the protests being silenced, I can’t breathe amidst this heaviness, this tear gas quieting my voice…yet how it all makes me weep. Her eyes are kind when she screams over the crowd, “would you stand between us and the police?” She and six other black women are standing in protest facing the clear shields and armed law enforcement. I am afraid but I move forward in the crowd and stand in front of her, eye to eye with the police officer. I feel afraid, I feel invited into salvation. Is this what Simon of Cyrene felt when he was asked to carry Christ’s cross? The officer is loading rubber bullets in his gun. I feel frozen but the tears are cascading down my cheeks. BUT wait, I am white and I am rich and I am breathing so if I feel like I can’t breathe within all of my privilege then maybe I can try to imagine what it is like to those without privilege of race or skin color. Maybe I could do like my marriage therapist encourages and repeat back what I hear the other saying. “You feel scared, silenced, you feel afraid of being killed by law enforcement in your own country.” My skin is not black and I feel like I can’t breathe, so what of the ebony color skin that few can see past? The world feels so heavy…whether COVID or racial injustice, I hear Mother Earth saying, I can’t breathe. So what as a believer must I do Lord, what do You say about injustice?
Let justice roll down like waters (Amos 5:24)
Seek justice, correct oppression (Isaiah 1:17)
What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice and to love kindness. (Isaiah 61:8)
Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. (Ephesians 6:13)
Stand, don’t move.
When the days of evil come, stand.
Stand, and when you’ve done everything,
Stand.
My feet hold the gospel of peace.
Keep standing for all of God’s people scripture says.
For all of creation to know peace,
Stand.
I can’t breathe.
Stand.
I can’t breathe.
Stand.
There is no justice.
Stand.
There is no justice.
Stand.
Stand.
Stand.
My mother’s heart doesn’t know what to do with the black bodies that are lying dead from injustice. I know what it is to build a body within my own. My stomach stretches with growing life, my hips expand to open, my good, good body breaks to let life emerge. What do I do with the ease of death in these days of injustice? Where are You, my Co-Creator? Are You screaming in childbirth like I did? Are You raging at the bodies having air suffocated out of them? Are You weeping at the grave? Father God, I know You turned Your face away from the cross but Mary, Mother of God, you watched, you stood at Golgotha, you stared at your boy’s body as life was beaten out, as He couldn’t breathe and much like George Floyd, did Jesus whisper, “I can’t breathe. Momma?” The deaths of injustice are on our hands? When Trayvon Martin bought skittles, did he know it was his last supper? When Emmett Till’s mother laid his beaten lifeless body for us to bear witness, did she know it was Jesus’s crucifixion reincarnated for me? How long will I turn away from the gospel being sacrificed in front of me? Will I not turn from my wicked ways and believe and stand in the truth?
#womanist #womanisttheology #blacklivesmatter #christian #treyvonmartin #georgefloyd #emmetttill