This past week, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco found themselves shrouded in smoke, as fires in these cities’ respective states blazed, destroying thousands of acres. Widespread fires brought on by a combination of drought, dry lightning storms, and human negligence, tore across entire regions of forest and land. The sky turned an ominous orange. The sun disappeared. On one stretch of Oregon highway, a dark orb of smoke descended, creating a tunnel of smoke so dark the sky turned twilight amidst the day.
Just when we thought 2020 couldn’t get any more apocalyptic, it proved it could.
This year, we have lost hundreds of thousands to an ongoing health pandemic and resulting economic crisis; witnessed ongoing racial oppression and police brutality towards Black people; and been faced with the reality that the United States is more divided than many (of us) were willing to admit before COVID-19 revealed our refusal to help one another in deference to our “personal rights.”
The ability to breathe, or rather to catch our breath, has become something that is increasingly harder to do as the stress and anxiety of health, economic, and racial tensions soar. On top of all of that, we now have widespread fires racing across three of the nation’s Westernmost states. In their wake, the very air we breathe is clouded with smoke and ash. We suddenly have even greater reason to wear our masks.
It is rough in these streets right now.
I don’t think it is coincidence that Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco, three of the cities that are leading the charge against racial inequity and global warming, who are moving imperfectly towards justice, are the places shrouded in smoke. I believe they are in the midst of spiritual warfare right now.
The earth is crying out---as our skies glow orange and our bodies groan, the sun hides its face. Something is definitely up, and not just on the planes we can see…but in the spiritual realms.
When there is a movement toward justice, there is always going to be a counter movement. Evil doesn’t just lay down and say “Uncle.” No, when the people begin waking up, moving forward, and resisting, evil throws hell back at them.
In the face of all that we are enduring, it can be easy to want to throw in the towel. “Why even try to move the needle, in the face of so much resistance?” we are tempted to ask. “Why even try?”
Not for the first time, I’ve looked to our neighbors up north and thought: “Vancouver B.C. looks like an incredible place to live.” To those of you who know me, this idea does not come as a surprise. It is one I have been playing with over the past several years, as I have witnessed the pain and oppression of being a Black person in this nation and have found myself reaching the limit of my tolerance for such madness. As I reach an age of wanting to settle into who I am with another person, to consider building a home where our bodies and the bodies of (now hypothetical) children are safe, I grow more and more convinced that the future I build may not be here.
But as long as I am here, I will keep showing up. I will keep telling the truth about what I see in my writing. As an artist, a prophetic individual, it’s my job to write about what I see in the spirit.
I believe we are in a time of reckoning.
The entire world is going through this pandemic, yes, but the United States is at present going through a time of massive upheaval that perhaps it took a pandemic to help us wake up to. This nation was founded on a set of ideals that, since their creation, have applied to some and not others. That reality of our history needs to be admitted, confronted, and set right.
Black and Brown bodies cry out from under knees of police officers in the streets: “We can’t breathe.”
Hundreds of thousands have struggled in ICU units, alone, gasping for air, fighting anxiety and fear: “We can’t breathe.”
The skies glow amber, the sun recedes. The air is choked: “We can’t breathe.”
Until we confront the reality of our reluctance to care for one another and our environment as we care for ourselves, it will only continue to get harder and harder to catch our breath. Locked out of every country but three, the U.S. is confined within its own borders, in a land where hostility and individualism is the norm.
The air is choked. Don’t you feel it?
The “United” States may have an abundance of cars and access to education and opportunity and privilege. But wouldn’t it be better if we could all feel safe, no matter the color of the body we inhabit? If we could cultivate kindness and equity and honesty instead of cultivating hate? Wouldn’t it be worth it to trade in some of the rage and grief we collectively carry in our bodies for a community in which we actually hear and see one another?
To have a conversation and an acknowledgement of wrongs is going to be uncomfortable for all parties involved. Any healing work is. But wouldn’t it be worth it, to collectively remember how to breathe?
Breath is the origin of all of life. If we lose our breath, we lose everything. Are you ready to learn to play nice yet, America, or do you need your throats to become even more constricted?
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