Listening to the news last month, when the verdict was announced against Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd, I was struck by a remark made by Minnesota State District Attorney Keith Ellison about the witnesses, like Darnella Frazier, who stood and even videoed for over nine minutes as George Floyd’s life slowly ebbed away under the force of Chauvin’s knees.
Ellison said, “They stopped and raised their voices, and they even challenged authority because they saw his humanity.”
His humanity.
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What did DA Ellison mean? This question came to me as I was reflecting on a phrase from our congregation’s covenant*, “To honor the profound in each of us.” Is there anything more profound in each of us than our humanity?
What a gift it is to be alive, to have the Spirit of Life embracing and enlivening us. The word for breath in Hebrew is “Ruach,” which also means Spirit. We humans only become “living beings” when that Spirit animates us. And when that breath is taken away, our humanity is also taken away.
We will never forget the phrase, “I can’t breathe.” In 2014, Eric Garner’s breath was choked out of him by a police officer; in 2020 George Floyd’s breath was squeezed out of him by police officer Derek Chauvin. When we think of the miracle of life, and what it takes to animate a human body, and how intricate the mechanism of the lungs working to breathe in and out: what can be more profound? How can a person, whose life is a miracle, presume – because of the power he has through the discharge of a deadly weapon – to take away the life of another person breathing the same air, living on the same fragile planet?
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It’s at the most profound level of existence that breath operates for human beings. Thich Nhat Hanh says the air we breathe is the bridge connecting life to consciousness. Some of you may recall the words of the Psalms, “Everything that has breath, praise the Lord.”
Let’s hope that this is not going to be another long, hot summer, a summer where we see, again and again, senseless violent action enacted against people of color by people with power. A summer like last summer when George Floyd was murdered. But in fact, we’ve already got a jump on summertime. In eastern North Carolina, near to where I live, on the morning after the verdict came down on Derek Chauvin, Andrew Brown Jr. was killed by a shot to the back of his head as he was driving away from police. And on the day of the verdict, a teenage girl, Ma’Khia Bryant, was shot in Columbus, Ohio. In all, there were six police killings in the wake of the Chauvin verdict.
Watching the news about Brown, I was struck by the sadness and the suffering of those who knew him. So often it’s Black women we see being interviewed after these killings, like Brown’s aunt, Martha McCullen, who said to the media, “The police didn’t have to shoot my baby.” Blessings be upon those women who care enough to testify to the humanity of those loved ones taken from them.
Womanist ethicist and theologian Katie Cannon writes that Black women are carrying the grief of the community in all its continuing oppression. Like Darnella Frazier holding up her cellphone in silent witness, I think those women hold up a mirror to our community so we can see the grief that is caused by the devastating failure of those in power to honor the profound in each of us.
Katie Cannon as a child heard the Christian doctrines of God’s love for all beings preached in the Black Church; years later as she undertook her studies in theology, she tried to make sense of those teachings in the face of suffering, oppression and exploitation of Black people in American society. In her groundbreaking work on womanist ethics back in 1988, Cannon goes on to identify the qualities that Black women embody in their community: the first is invisible dignity – endurance with integrity; the second quality is quiet grace – despite restrictions imposed by the larger community, being able to hold on to collective wisdom transmitted from one generation to the next.
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And the third quality is “unshouted courage.” Katie Cannon coined the phrase to describe their stamina and fortitude in the face of oppression. Unshouted courage is the renewed sense of purpose and steadfastness in the face of oppression that comes out of experiencing tragedy. Unshouted courage is drawing upon strength in the belief that God “makes a way out of no way.”
Another Black theologian, Howard Thurman, writes about the inherent worth and sacredness of every human being, “imago dei” defined as the divine essence of each person. In community, Thurman says, persons come to know the many faces of God. Thurman says that each of us must reflect the divine in our actions.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. also speaks about the divine as reflected in every person.He says that every act of injustice mars and defaces the image of God in man” (Where Do We go from Here? P. 99). You may have heard his quote about love and how it is the binding force of life in “an inescapable network of mutuality.”
Mutuality – we don’t act alone or live alone. Everything moves toward community. It is a scandal to people of faith and none to see that endurance of life seems to be more of a luxury in some communities than in others, and that continuity is tenuous when grandmothers and aunts are outliving and memorializing their own descendants. We can only humbly admire what Katie Cannon calls endurance with integrity, just as, equally, we dread seeing it on display the next time – and we ache when we know in our hearts that there will be a next time.
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By affirming the profound humanity in each of us, may we live in solidarity with those suffering in our midst – in our neighborhoods, our towns, our country, our world. May we say the names and speak truth to power with the ever-present hope that God will make a way out of no way, and may we be the ones who make it so.
Gaye Morris is a lecturer at Augusta University and a minister in the Universalist Unitarian Church as well as a columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach her at producers@theaugustapress.com.
*The entire covenant of the Universalist Unitarian Church is:
Rooted in LOVE, we covenant
To gather in peace
To face conflict with compassion
To see strength in diversity
To share laughter and tears
To honor the profound in each of us.
With purpose and passion, we care for one another and grow together.
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