| A friend sent me this. He’s one of my closest friends, an African American. This man is my brother. I’m touched. I hope you are too. Thank you, Doc. Bill “I can’t breathe.” “I can’t breathe.” who moaned? a black man head locked by a boot under a police car in Minneapolis. “I can’t breathe.” “I can’t breathe.” who couldn’t even breathe that? a Jew man, hands locked by nails suffocating on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem that’s what crucifixion does. George didn’t pretend to be Jesus. Jesus did intend to die for George and all the Georges of the world. I wonder, was he there, trying to breathe for George or breathe out with him? Oh, dear Jesus, please breathe your breath on us again, for all those suffocating in sin, or sorrow, in sickness or servitude, or slavery. breathe out your Pentecostal fire on all flesh black brown yellow red white burn out our hatreds, our silences, our forgetting’s, before we all burn, before we all die. -Leighton Ford, Pentecost 2020 “Breathe on us, breath of God.” |
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