A Little More Breathing Room

The eyes and ears — along with the hearts and minds — of the whole world have been focussed on the trial of George Floyd until the jury’s verdict was finally rendered on Monday, and we could all breathe a sigh of relief that some sort of dramatic change was in the air at last. When the truth of what happened was captured on a video by a young bystander, all other arguments to the contrary not withstanding were emptied of any meaning. In horror and dismay we all watched the white knee on the black neck and heard the haunting words “I can’t breathe.”

Killing another human being is heinous enough and the lowest common denominator under any circumstance, no matter for what reason or how it is executed. Of course, guns tend to be the most convenient choice these days. Living in a country like this where getting a gun is seen as a “God-given right” is equivalent to blaming God for anything that one does with all those guns. Just think of the mass shootings that have taken place since the beginning of this year, never mind that a total of 13,361 Americans have been killed by guns since this year began. Talk about an outrageous pandemic!

Rather than waste a bullet, the guilty officer knelt on the neck of the victim for well nigh unto ten long minutes, and he did so with outrageous indignation and obvious nonchalance toward the handcuffed and subdued Mr. Floyd. Someone has argued that the callous death had nothing to do with the failure of the victim’s heart but with the hardness of that officer’s heart. What we all saw that fateful day was self-evident truth about systemic racism that must be rooted out of our culture in order for all of us to have a little more breathing room for getting along better with our neighbors.

Between the masks and distancing of Covid19 and the painfully divisive politics of 2020, some of us found it emotionally and spiritually claustrophobic. And don’t forget that inconvenient truth of climate deterioration which will surely take our breath away. No matter what side you might be on in the great divide that was intentionally created by the last administration to foster that conflict and chaos we witnessed on January 6, we must overcome all our differences in order to go forward with liberty and justice for all of us. George Floyd’s unjustified death will not have been in vain if we all see it as a chance for a new birth of freedom once again.

This could be our balm in Gilead “that makes the wounded whole…that calms the sin-sick soul” of our beloved country. In his collection of meditations entitled The Magnificent Defeat, Frederick Buechner says it so well: Heaven knows terrible things happen to people in this world. The good die young, and the wicked prosper, and in any one town, anywhere, there is grief enough to freeze the blood. But from deep within whatever the hidden spring is that life wells up from, there wells up into our lives, even at their darkest and maybe especially then, a power to heal, to breathe new life into us.