God of all mercy and consolation, come to the help of your people
I'm Anna Nekola, a Professor of Music at CMU. I'm from south Minneapolis and I have been worshipping for several years (and this spring via Zoom) with my family's congregation at Calvary Lutheran Church at 39th and Chicago, one short block from where George Floyd was murdered. This has been a hard week, watching my home community devastated by yet another brutal act of police brutality. Minneapolis, a northern city where racism has at times been more covert and insidious than in other parts of the US, can no longer deny the inequalities and oppression that are a long part of its history.
As with any death, nothing afterwards will be the same for all of us who bear witness. This prayer-poem that I wrote is a frail and faulty human thing, embodying my rage and grief and composed in the wee hours of a mostly sleepless night. My best hope is that it reminds us that we're not alone, not in our anger and not in our work towards a different future. I'll leave you with words by someone wiser than me, Indigenous Australian activist Lilla Watson: "If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."
Holy Creator God. We come before you in grief. We have been brought to our knees by the pain we have felt this past week. And from our knees we now turn to you in prayer.
God of all mercy and consolation, come to the help of your people.
In Genesis we read that humans were formed from the dust of the earth, enlivened not by your power or might but by your breathing into us. Our first breath came from you. Our first breath is you. What should we think, then, when we hear again
and again
and again
and again
from our dying brothers and sisters, "I can't breathe"?
God of all mercy and consolation, come to the help of your people.
Clouds of smoke from days of and nights filled with fires that destroyed family businesses holding the work of generations, new ventures started by immigrants who came with little in their pockets, a center for Indigenous youth, a low-income housing complex under construction... So much smoke from so many fires... Tear gas lobbed from a distance and pepper spray aimed at our faces from inches away...
We all struggle to breathe.
God of all mercy and consolation, come to the help of your people.
We have failed you. When we asked your son, Jesus, he told us that the greatest commandments were to love you with all our heart and strength, and to love our neighbor as our self. But we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have been silent for too long. It is easier to look away. To cross the street. To blame the victim. We have not seen your face in the face of others. We have forgotten that our breath is your breath and your breath is their breath.
God of all mercy and consolation, come to the help of your people.
Too often our hearts are filled with fear. And fear can crowd out love. And fear can take our breath away. We beg for the courage to forgive. We may be feeling angry. But this anger also catches in our throats, choking us and denying us the living breath we need.
God of all mercy and consolation, come to the help of your people.
We pray for you to breathe upon us again. To fill us with your strength so that our breath can be used to call out for justice. So that with our breath we can speak out against police brutality, against the systems that oppress, against the daily microaggressions that erode the health and wholeness of our neighbors. Give us wisdom and guidance to work together to make change. Breathe on us, breath of God, so that we can see each others' humanity.
God of all mercy and consolation, come to the help of your people.
Aadapted from a prayer in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, 2006.
Communities in Canada and the US are strained as we deal anew with realities of racism, white privilege and injustice. Black people in Canada and the US continue to experience racist violence, as do Indigenous people, and all communities of colour.
In many Canadian communities significant anti-racism rallies are taking place, and here in Winnipeg one such gathering is planned for the evening of June 5 at the Manitoba Legislature. Together with many others in our community, CMU alumni, staff, and faculty will be attending. We support participation in this important initiative.
In this time of overt racial tension in Canada and the US, and confessionally in our own lives, CMU also offers resources to aid in our learning and unlearning, and to inspire us in reconciliation and love of neighbour.