BREATHING is Essential for Life

For weeks we’ve awakened daily to rising and falling numbers, be it deaths, closures, layoffs, or a declining stock market. We’ve been pummeled with news reports of a virus so powerful some have moved away from calling it by its name. Maybe thinking that if the dreaded “C” word is unspoken it will somehow go away, but silence never makes anything go away. Silence is merely a bandage left unchanged to fester and infect a wound that leads to sepsis, in other words, bad blood.

I went to bed on May 25th with the latest stats of COVID-19 on my mind and arose to the news of the senseless death of George Floyd. Like many I had grown weary of the daily narrative of the pandemic and longed for the day when the narrative would change, but not like this. It was as if the ringing of coronavirus in my ears had moved to the background and my eyes were now being assaulted with the images of a 46-year-old African American man begging for his life. At first my ears, now my eyes, what’s next?

The saying “silence is golden” means that sometimes it’s better not to say anything, we’ve done that and now we’re here. The wound of racism left bandaged for hundreds of years has poisoned the system, and the whole body is sick. Shhhh…don’t say anything, keep silent – ignore the elephant in the room, maybe he’ll go away. We can keep telling ourselves this, but truth be told the elephant is sitting on our chests and the whole world is now screaming. Will we let the elephant remain seated until our body goes limp and is drug off to a gurney for the pronouncement of death? Or will we cry out and do what’s right?

And we can’t get it twisted, it’s not about elephants or donkeys, reds or blues, it’s about human life and the right to Breathe. The Creator’s intent for every human being and no one or nothing has the right to decide who breathes and who doesn’t. Take a deep Breath. We have to collect ourselves and begin to get oxygen flowing to our brains so we can think and think rationally.

It’s time to fight, but not what we can see. It’s time to fight our unseen opponent. We can’t see a virus with the naked eye, but that doesn’t stop it from destroying us from the inside out. Our hatred, jealousy, envy, and strife are killing us from the inside out. Ask yourself who’s calling the shots in your life, it could be one of the nemeses above.

I don’t know how things will play out in the days ahead, but I do know that we must Breathe. The violence and riots of the past few days are the symptoms of a grave condition. Wounds need air to heal at some point. We’re at that point. Coronavirus is still here and so is racism. Let’s talk about it.

Best regards,

Clifton Campbell
Executive Director