Pleading for Breath in Our Communities
God, Please, My People Want to Breathe!
By Dr. Carolyn Graham
As I reflect upon where we are as a nation, caught in a vortex of addressing a health care crisis caused by the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic that at any moment, threatens our ability to breathe, my mind wanders. I am filled with questions that make me wonder why so many of my people have gone without the basics: adequate health care (and the resources to purchase it), housing, education, employment, a living wage, childcare, and support for higher education.
The social conditions that result from poor access to health care, decent wages, meaningful employment and housing alone, have made Black and Brown people victims of chronic diseases that cause our vulnerability to the insidious virus that leads to the cry, “I can’t breathe!”, and a drift into the midnight sleep of no return.
While we grapple with the health care crisis and the pandemic, we are simultaneously faced with a psychological and physical plague of massive proportions that manifests itself in the lynching of Black and Brown, male and female alike. This is not a new plague, but one that has ravaged our lives and communities as people of color for far too long.
From the misappropriation and theft of the land, and the murder of the indigenous people with diseases imported by their conquerors; to the period of slavery and the subsequent period of Jim Crow, where Black bodies routinely swung from trees as White southerners and their sympathizers refused to embrace the idea of human equality, our breath has been stifled. We cannot breathe!
Even in the 21st century, things have not significantly changed. Black and Brown men and women are the commodities that feed a prison empire of wealthy profiteers. All too often, young Black men and women are victimized while running, walking or driving. They are profiled and sometimes lynched by uninformed police communities across this country. I cannot in all honesty forget the impact that marginalization has had on the psychology of Black and Brown communities, resulting in internalized self-hatred that causes our young to turn on themselves, with violence and suicide. When will we breathe?
Black, Brown and poor White labor built this country. Unfortunately, the laborers, unable to breathe, have been unable to take advantage of the gifts that their labor has created. The exchange of life-giving energy that was theirs to give, has been restricted, stifled, and snuffed-out in far too many instances. A people’s labor and contributions should give rise to benefits grounded in justice and equity that allow them to rest in peace in their old-age. God, our people must breathe!
A mutuality of respect between owners and producers allows Life to flow and grow and continue to perpetuate itself. The realities of the current pandemics involving the senseless killings by force of young Black men, and the sickness and death from COVID-19 that this nation is trying to address, undeniably are glaring social and environmental hazards that cause far too many people to be unable to breathe. Breath gives life. When it is restricted in any way, death is inevitable.
One of the startling revelations that I, as a Christian minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, am struck with in this time is that when one of our Brothers’ or Sisters’ life-blood is compromised in any way, all humanity is at-risk of annihilation. We are ONE, unified by Creator God, and called to be expressions and revelations of that Creator, in a world that has been taught and implored by Divine teachers to love and cherish the beauty and wonder of ALL Life.
Yes, we are fragile beyond words and belief, and we often do not get it right. We do make mistakes, but when we intentionally destroy a human life that our hands did not create, I fundamentally believe that we insult the whole of Creation.
When we who call ourselves Christian can lobby against abortion and follow right-wing, imperialist ideology that seeks to perpetrate itself, and yet stay silent when children are caged like animals because they are Brown and speak another language, whom do we think we fool? I disparately desire to breathe!
When children die prematurely because of their mothers’ inadequate prenatal care, where is our voice regarding the sanctity of life and the access to resources that sustains life? Oh, God, where is the breath of life?
When we are silent in the face of children’s struggle for food, a decent education and access to health care—not in another country, but in America, where is our religion? Who is this God that we pay homage to? Do we believe that the God of our Creation looks favorably upon us in our silence, as politicians and bigoted policy-makers, promulgate policies that restrict the very breath of children before they have had a chance to live? Oh, God, my people must breathe!
What universe do such people live in, where they can remain silent in the face of human suffering, and breathless children? Life cannot breathe when justice and freedom are denied by one group who believes itself superior to another because of race or class. Yet, we stand idly by and watch the destruction of poor immigrants, working in fields for harvests to supply our tables with fresh produce. We express no care about their lack of access to health care, or worker protection information regarding the harm that comes from long hours of back breaking work. We express no care over the lack of time off to access health care, and exposure to life-threatening environmental chemicals, used to protect the produce from insects. Whom do we fool, and whose agenda do we care about?
Can we really believe that when we kneel or stand or sit and pray to the God of our Creation that we carry no blood on our hands? When will we wake up and realize that we have stopped the life blood of those brothers and sisters? Yes, they have picked the cucumbers, and kale and strawberries that will grace our tables and help us live. What have we given back to them in exchange? Not even a modicum of respect! Oh, God, your people really can’t breathe!
When we remain silent as poor, immigrant, undocumented laborers die at the hands of the deadly virus ravaging meat factories as they prepare choice meat cuts for our oversized stomachs and extravagant lifestyles (that are actually killing us as the virus kills them), why do we think we bear no responsibility for such atrocious acts, when we call ourselves Christians and lovers of Christ Jesus?
In the hidden folds of news accounts, we read about the needless deaths of Indigenous American women who have been sodomized, raped and killed, whose bodies are mangled and left to rot in the hot, sweltering sun of the isolated, poverty stricken reservations of this country. And yet, our lips are sealed regarding the historical public policies that have caused such outcomes for a people whose sacred land and lives were stolen because they trusted! I have to try to find my breath and query you about your God. Who is he or she? What is his or her name? I’d like to know. Please tell me so that I can breathe!
How is it that we can build mega edifices and call them houses of worship when the Big House where so many of our young, strong men (and women) of color are suffocating and can’t breathe because they are cordoned off from life itself. They cannot and will not produce and perpetuate the human race—they cannot breathe! Where is the preached word in this strange set of circumstances? Oh, God, we plead to breathe!
How can we as Christian leaders whine and pine to go back into our opulent houses of worship and believe that if we do, we have saved the world from the pandemics of our time? Where indeed is our righteous stand in such a demand as insult to the body of Christ whom we believe indwells us who call ourselves Christian occur?
I have no answers to the questions raised in this writing. Just absolute bewilderment regarding our callous, misguided, uninformed 21st century theology, that so many of us as preachers and teachers espouse to a people desperate for a Word that has transformative meaning, in a suffering world seeking the balm that can make a sin-sick world whole. Oh, God, we want to breathe!
As I conclude this writing, my prayer is that the God of Creation, who called life into being out of chaos will trouble our indwelling Christ Spirit such that we cannot be still. That indeed we will be forced to allow the Consciousness of the Holy Spirit to manifest in and through us, as us as actors empowered to bring Light and Love of a Christ who promised a Comforter to a suffering world. On that day racism, sexism, homophobia, hatred, and poverty will be arrested. And on that day we will declare that the prophet Amos’ (5:24), vision of justice and righteousness has indeed rolled down like a mighty stream of water!
My people will breathe on that day!