Breathing

Breathing

It was shocking to see the news pictures of George Floyd’s final moments as he was pinned down by a police officer’s knee for over eight minutes in Minneapolis as he called out, ‘I can’t breathe’. The images of people suffering so badly with Covid 19 that they need a ventilator to breathe for them. We need to breathe and when our bodies are denied air then we die, it’s as simple and as frightening as that. And there are the huge consequences of those deaths: Riots, as people protest as Black lives still don’t count, and demanding justice. The world in lockdown to protect and save lives yet wreaking economic havoc. And the hastened death of so very many loved ones.

One better thing to have emerged in the news is the cleaner, fresher air that we can breathe. Less vehicles, less planes, the cause of our planet’s emphysema means clearer skies and our plants and trees, our great forests, the lungs of our green planet, able once again to convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen in sufficient quantities that we can breathe healthily again, particularly in the large cities of the world.

 

Our story of creation and salvation is a drama of divine breath inhaled and exhaled. God gives breath to all living creatures in creation (Genesis1:30). Breath is God’s gift of life. And God became one of us when Jesus drew his first breath, and died when he breathed his last and then life was restored at the resurrection. We could imagine the risen life as filling our lives with the life giving oxygen of God’s breathing.

Jesus breathes on his disciples and says to them ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them and if you retain the sins of any they are retained.’ (John 20:22).

Every act of forgiveness ‘is another breath of the Body of Christ. Without it we are dead. An unforgiving community suffocates everyone’ Timothy Radcliffe reflects, challenging us all to think about areas of our lives that we can breathe life giving forgiveness into.

 

Tomorrow we celebrate Pentecost, the coming of God’s Holy Spirit. In this time when we need to be alert and avoid breathing over others, can we give others breath by living lives that tread lightly on our planet, breathe forgiveness and ensure the justice that everyone has the right to breathe?

Breathe on me breath of God

Fill me with life anew,

That I may love the way you love

And do what you would do. 

 

Gerard Manley Hopkins compared Mary to the air we breathe; an air that is both enfolding and safe - but also tempestuous and cosmic;

Oh live air, of patience, penance, prayer:

World-mothering air, air wild,

Wound with thee,

In thee is led,

Fold home, fast fold thy child.