I Can't Breathe

It is Saturday. The Saturday preceding Pentecost. And things do not feel right.
A week ago I thought it might be because of the pandemic and celebrating the birthday of the Church virtually. But then George Floyd was murdered!
I cannot breathe! The words now haunt me and cause tears to well up just upon their reading. Terror, atrocity, racial hate. But breath. It makes terror tortuous and atrocity unspeakable and hate unfathomable. 
Breath, Holy Breath, is the life which is breathed into us on Pentecost. There has been an attempt to desecrate but we must resist because the Holy Spirit breathes life even after we take our last breath. 
So I offer this blessing by Jan Richardson which was poignant with the lung incapacities of COVID but is now essential as we gather ourselves yet again to weep together and breathe together. Jesus weeps as well...

When We Breathe Together
A Blessing for Pentecost Day  by Jan Richardson
This is the blessing
we cannot speak
by ourselves.
This is the blessing
we cannot summon
by our own devices,
cannot shape
to our purpose,
cannot bend
to our will.
This is the blessing
that comes
when we leave behind
our aloneness
when we gather
together
when we turn
toward one another.
This is the blessing
that blazes among us
when we speak
the words
strange to our ears
when we finally listen
into the chaos
when we breathe together
at last.

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