Breathe on me, breath of God....

Let’s take a moment and focus on the breath.

Breath, the life source that brings oxygen into our lungs and exhales carbon dioxide.

This life source that the ancients believed was the very breath of God.

Of God breathing into the chaos that existed before creation and brought order to that swirling mass.

God breathing life to the dust of the earth which then, with God’s breath became human.

God breathing life into the dry bones of the community Ezekiel prophesied to

God breathing life into the crucified body of Jesus,

And on Pentecost, God breathing life into the followers of Jesus and inspiring the Church to form and grow, and spread the love of God throughout the world.

God breathing into the chaos of these times when our breath, our human breath is potentially dangerous to one another.

When breath is the way this virus is spread. 

And breathe, the devastating image as yet another black man dies from the brutality of a white police officer who deprived him of his breath even though he cried again and again, I cannot breathe.

And with his last breath called out for his mother.

And when breath is taken by extremists - racist, anti-government, anti-police extremists outfitted like militia - who incite violence and threaten death, who show up at protests with intent to change the narrative from justice to their own extreme values.

Breath can fuel the flames of unrest and trauma.

The trauma of these times catches me up short.

It is difficult to breathe when there is so much despair.

On this day of Pentecost I am struck by the contrast of life and death, 

of breath that brings life 

and breath that can harm life 

and the lack of breath which deprives life. 

I am struck by the contrast of this feast day, this celebration day, and the trauma of these times, including so much death. 

Death from mass shootings. 

Death from the virus.

 Death from racist abusive actions. 

Many white people are able to live in the world without really being affected by the trauma of these times. 

Some are critical of those who are rioting and thereby calling attention to deaths, bringing to life the racial tensions that live on and on. 

Rioting and protesting serve their purpose when it draws attention to the injustices and demands that people pay attention and change the world.

Rioting and protesting fail when they undermine the purpose and detract from the injustice  - like those on Twitter, where  account after account reveals that white agitators are the one’s starting the violence and destruction. 

Twitter accounts reveal to us that for every protest from Ferguson to Minneapolis over the last five years, white people are inciting the violence. 

And in every protest black and brown people are further traumatized. 

Right now many people are carrying some magnitude of grief in their bodies. For some the grief is slight, but for many it is profoundly life altering. 

In a recent On Being interview Krista Tippet spoke with the poet Gregory Orr, about the trauma of Orr, who when he was 12,  accidentally killed his younger brother while on a family hunting trip. Orr said:

“My experience of trauma was — as a 12 year old, was, there’s the board with the game pieces on it, and in one gesture, all the pieces are scattered off the board. But it’s such a powerful gesture that the board itself is erased. There’s no longer Chutes and Ladders, CLUE, Monopoly, whatever game you want, checkers, chess. The pieces are gone, but the board itself is erased, as well. It’s just a blank. This is the abyss. This is the world of no meaning. And of course, with trauma, you also get this threat to the integrity, not just the meaning of the world around you, but the integrity of the self is also threatened, even destroyed. What we know about trauma is that it shatters us.” 

Every time the media shows videos and photos of a black or brown person being killed, it renews the trauma of people who face this risk every time they leave their homes. 

In the 150 years since the Civil War ended, black and brown people have protested many times in an effort to wake people up to the reality that God made all people in God’s image: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs, people who are black, brown, and white.

There is a corporate trauma in our country that is shattering us. We can no longer live the illusion that some people are better than others. 

Every breath of God fills us with the power of this truth, we are made in God’s image and God loves each of us. 

We have work to do, to fix this shattered world of trauma.