"We take a breath"

In the last few days, the world has witnessed the very public racist murder of George Floyd by police in the USA, the global wave of grief, anger and solidarity in response, and the ways in which this has highlighted ongoing, structural, socialised white supremacy and anti-blackness in our world, in our society here in the UK, and in our churches.

In a tiny, personal way, the last week for me has also marked the end of co-writing with Ruth Harley our book, Being Interrupted: Re-imagining the Church's Mission from the Outside, In. The book begins with the 2016 Brexit vote, and ends with the 'great interruption' of COVID-19. In between, it tries to explore the interconnected structural divisions in our (specifically UK) society - and church - down lines of race, class and gender, and also acknowledging the ways in which we push children, and our other-than-human neighbours, to the edges of visibility, value and power. And it tries to do that exploring - particularly my voice in the book - in a way which is critically conscious of my own multiple privileges, as a white, middle-class, male, adult, ordained priest in the Church of England.

Before the book's Epilogue, which reflects on the interruption of COVID-19 that we're still right in the middle of, the final two chapters of the book focus on the cross and resurrection. We imagine the journey of conversion that the Roman centurion at the cross might have gone on, becoming a traitor to the oppressive Empire of which he has been a representative. And we try to catch, and point to, glimpses of what a fearlessly honest, painstakingly careful 'joining together' in resurrection community might look like.

***

The chapter on resurrection finishes with a reflection on breathing - or 'respiring', to use a more technical or old-fashioned word... 

respire   /rɪˈspʌɪə/    verb
gerund or present participle: respiring

1.       breathe.

"he lay back, respiring deeply"

(of a plant) carry out respiration, especially at night when photosynthesis has ceased.
"lichens respire at lower levels of temperature and moisture"

2.       (archaic) recover hope, courage, or strength after a time of difficulty.

"the archduke, newly respiring from so long a war"

Breathing is a theme in the resurrection stories. Jesus comes into a locked room, and breathes on his fearful disciples. The Holy Spirit at Pentecost is encountered as rushing wind - powerful breath - that sends them out, to connect and communicate with others.

Breathing is something of a universal necessity. We breathe, to live. The rhythm of breathing, taking in, giving out, is something every moment needs, but is also an invitation to move, journey - to pay attention to the cycles and spirals within which we are moving.

"I can't breathe," gasped George Floyd, repeatedly, as he was choked to death under the knee of a police officer in Minneapolis. "I can't breathe" gasped Eric Garner 11 times, as he was choked to death by a police officer in New York in 2014. Victims of state-sponsored, white supremacist, anti-black violence, six years apart, with so, so many in between. "I can't breathe," gasp Black sisters and brothers in the US, the UK and across the world, as our globalised white supremacist structures refuse to allow space for Black bodies, Black voices, Black lives to matter in the same why as white bodies, white voices, white lives apparently matter.

"I Can't Breathe" - graffiti art by Mohammed 'Aerosol' Ali, in Birmingham, June 2020

So what does breathing mean for those of us who are white, or whose identities are entangled in other forms of structural privilege? For many of us, even our breathing requires particular kinds of attentiveness. Some of us are just beginning to wake up, just beginning to pay attention, to our entangled pasts and presents, in ways that might make our future breathing, speaking, acting, more conscious and more consciously in solidarity with the multitudes of our kin - human and other-than-human - that struggle to breathe.

I wrote the words below, which conclude our chapter on resurrection, from that conscious position of multiple privilege, in the days after George Floyd's murder. They are not, as I say, the last word.

***

We take a breath
to resist the temptation to seize the initiative.

We take a breath
to avoid being the first to speak.

We take a breath
so we are better placed to hear others to speech.

We take a breath
to relax our defences,
to be better able to receive
interruptions,
challenges,
criticisms
as gifts.

We take a breath
to stay put,
to look,
and look again,
and to notice
the glory
in our common flesh.

We take a breath
to enter
into a shared unspeaking
with those human and other-than-human kin
who do not speak in words,
with those who have been silenced,
with those fighting for breath
because there is a knee on their neck,
a hand on their throat,
or because the air they inhale
is poisoned with toxic chemicals,
or because
they are breathing their last,
crucified by today’s Empires.

We take a breath
to ‘stay with the trouble’,
to let in the pain,
to be interrupted by the losses,
with cries too deep for words,
to breathe them in
and breathe through them,
to let them pass through our hearts,
‘making good rich compost
out of all that grief’.[1]

We take a breath
to let the work of relinquishing
and repentance
and reparation
begin in us,
to let the decomposers
and the processes of decomposition
do their thing,
break open,
chew over,
regurgitate,
reincorporate,
breathe.

We take a breath
to let ourselves be stretched
even to aching point
into wormhole solidarities
beyond our familiar horizons.

We take a breath
to ready ourselves
to follow after
and among
our respiring
con-spiring
‘mass of swarming neighbours’,[2]
a ‘force field
of speechlessly breathing bodies’,
catching a breath
in shared silence,[3]
stretching the Moment,
opening the window,
leaping and racing
together,
blown on the wind of the Spirit,
into the Background Realm
of Wild Reality
that is the kin-dom
of God’s shalom.

We take a breath
to pass up the last word.

***

Recommended reading - for white Christians especially (not remotely exhaustive!):

• Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People about Race (London: Bloomsbury, 2017)
• Akala, Natives: Race and Class in the Ruins of Empire (London: Two Roads, 2018)
• Afua Hirsch, Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging (London: Vintage, 2018)
• Anthony Reddie, Theologising Brexit: A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019)
• Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s so Hard for White People to Talk about Racism (Boston: Beacon, 2018)
• Ibram X. Kendi, How to be an Anti-racist (London: Vintage, 2019)
• Layla Saad, Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise your Privilege, Combat Racism, and Change the World (Quercus, 2020)
•  A.D.A. France-Williams, Ghost Ship: Institutional Racism and the Church of England (London: SCM, 2020)
• Mukti Barton, Rejection, Resistance and Resurrection: Speaking out on racism in the church (London: DLT, 2005)
• Michael N. Jagessar & Anthony G. Reddie (eds.), Black Theology in Britain: a Reader (London: Equinox, 2007)
• Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010)
• Ben Lindsay, We Need to Talk about Race: Understanding the Black Experience in White Majority Churches (London: SPCK, 2019)
• Anthony G. Reddie, Is God Colour-Blind? Insights from Black Theology for Christian Ministry (London: SPCK, 2009)
• James Perkinson, White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) 
• Jennifer Harvey, Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014)

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[1] Macy & Brown, pp.276-8

[2] Tom Dewar, in a global #TogetherApart conversation, April 2020

[3] Keller, pp.164, 167