Every day is a good day to learn a little more about history. Today, Juneteenth, is an especially good day to listen to a story that has shaped our present day through a long and painful struggle for freedom. In the words of Opal Lee, the grandmother of Juneteenth, the freedom we celebrate through the telling of this story is freedom not only for enslaved people, or Black people, or Texans, but for everyone.
At a time when threats to the life and people we love seem overwhelming and out of control, it is essential that we focus on those things that matter most, and those things that we can control. Our imagination is one such thing.
I’m writing on Pentecost Sunday, filled with powerful images of breath and fire. I think of 100,000 people (and many more) who ceased to breathe. And one unarmed black man named George Floyd, who could not breathe under the weight of a white police officer on his neck. And the fires that have erupted in the midst of protest, leaving all of us mesmerized and breathless.
