Breath

Daily Devotion - May 27

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays) 

while we are pausing gathering in person. 

- Kara

Our city is grieving, angry, weary.  I have written and erased so many words. I am grieving, angry and weary, and I don't have any words today. 

But my friend, Pastor Jodi Houge, shared this with her congregation today, and it spoke to me. I am grateful for her words.

Breath

The amount of time that we have all spent thinking about breath lately seems staggering. I'm not interested in virtue signaling or an echo chamber because it doesn't lead us anywhere we haven't already been. And I'm tired of the loop.  It's Pentecost this Sunday--and the Spirit blows so hard on those gathered that it feels like everything is coming apart. Perhaps it's time for this to come apart?

We already have a virus that steals breath. And now, we are surrounded by images of a kneeling police officer squeezing the very breath out of a man named George Floyd. While I can't actually find someone to blame for the virus, I do know the collective sin of white supremacy is one I inherited, benefit from and want desperately to be free of. I want things to change because I love your kids and your babies and the expectant parents on the cusp and I want them to grow up without fear. I don't want anyone to have to fight and beg to breathe.

Scripture tells us: "We shall not kill." Lutheran theology takes us to task with a proactive regarding that commandment: "We are to fear and love God, so that we neither endanger nor harm the lives of our neighbors, but instead help and support them in all of life's needs." Baseline: do not kill one another. Next level: help one another live. Racism, church, does not help us live. Not any of us. I have waves of panic when I think specifically of our sweet adolescent boys who are brown or black skinned. George was someone's baby.

Now, there are 10 million actions steps you can take--they are all being heavily circulated right now. But perhaps first we take a minute, a breath, to repent. Because none of those actions steps create real change unless there is change within our own hearts and minds. And as a person of faith, I believe that is holy work. That is the Spirit. That is God-breathed and will bring life.

________

OK, a few words, after all...

When God breathes into dust, life comes where there is no life.  I want to join God in building a world where our belonging to God and each other is the lived reality.  

Our faith gives us two responses, both of which we avoid because they're uncomfortable, and they're honest; they make us face and feel our powerlessness instead of giving us the illusion of power.  But these holy tasks return us to the core of our humanity, and empower us to participate in God bringing life. They are Lament, and Repent. 

When we lament we bear the grief and don't turn away from it. Mouring upholds our shared humanity; it honors the ones who are lost. It keeps us connected to how things should be by bearing the pain that they are not that. 

And when we repent, we confess the brokenness around us, the sin and lies we have absorbed and perpetuated. We come honest to our hearts, so Holy Spirit can cleanse and ready us for the freedom and newness God wants to bring in us and through us.

So today I am returning to breath. I'm lamenting and repenting. 

God, breathe life into the dust of us.
Amen.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

Tonight, perhaps we can practice both lamenting and repenting, through speaking or singing these words, until we've felt ourselves emptied out and filled up.

Breathe on me, breath of God.
Fill me with life anew,
That I may love
what thou doest love,
an do what thou wouldst do.