I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t speak.
Jacob Blake is 29 years old. My kids are this age – all three of them. Pam and I find ourselves rejoicing in amazement, every day, at their maturity and grace as they live into adulthood. And also, we hold our breath, every day, afraid that in a moment, by some accident or misfortune, all that has brought them to this place might be lost.
Julia Jackson is Jacob Blake’s mother. She has experienced what Pam and I fear. When I watch the video of Jacob walking to his car, opening the door, and being shot in the back before he can get in, I see the thing I fear. But it is not an accident that I see in that video, and the word “misfortune” is painfully inappropriate to use. I see an attack, an affront, an act of violence.
Human civilization has learned to live with the threat of accident and misfortune. People constantly invent ways to reduce the possibility of accidental harm, from safety-sealed bottles of Tylenol to motorized warning arms that swing out across the front of a school bus when children are getting in or getting out. We hedge against misfortune with insurance policies and savings accounts, with extra toilet tissue and cans of soup stored on shelves in our homes, just in case.
But what we are seeing in our country so clearly this year is no accident. It is not misfortune. It is violence. And violence stirs up in our heart and gut and soul a fierce and desperate reaction. You can feel it in your very body when you think of when you have been attacked, and perhaps even more fiercely when you watch someone you love being hurt. In my body it feels like a fire that burns out from the center of my chest, racing to my arms and throat and legs with an irrepressible urgency to shout and push and run.
When that fire is given air and fuel in a moment of urgency, our bodies erupt in movement and sound. Not words, but primal sounds; and not fluid motion, but lunging. You may know the odd experience of being unable to run or move with purpose because the adrenaline rush to your legs and arms is too great to handle, or being unable to put into words the clarity that your mind wants to shout aloud.
The shooting of Jacob Blake does this to my body. I can’t breathe; I can’t move; I can’t speak. I can’t find the words to say what my mind is so clear about, that needs to be shouted out in alarm. Jacob Blake is not a category. He is not “just another” entry in a list of Black men shot by police this summer. He is his mother’s son! He is his children’s father! He is our flesh and blood! He bears God’s image in creation as every person does. We must stop the violence! It’s killing us!
Which is why I am so astounded at the dignity and grace that his mother, Julia Jackson, manifest in the national media yesterday. And so grateful. She spoke of her grief. She invited our nation’s leaders to be better examples for our citizens. And she spoke of our faith, naming our Lord Jesus and bearing witness to his presence in her life. As clearly as I see Jesus in the suffering of those whose bodies are broken by violence and injustice, I see Jesus in Julia’s testimony to us.
The violence must be stopped. The fire that burns from our chest out into our throat and arms and legs will not stop the violence, unless it is the fire of the Spirit of Jesus, that calls for justice through compelling words, and that works for peace with hands that do God’s work, and that carries us with fluid grace across bridges of hate into the beloved community for which we work and pray and yearn.
Bishop Kurt F. Kusserow