By Chakira M. Haddock-Lazala

By 2016, my clinical experience as a psychologist had taught me that psychopathy is a real illness. By  2018, my personal experience as a Puerto Rican woman had taught me that evil was also-very real. 

“I can’t breathe!” – Eric Garner, Black man killed in the New York City after Daniel Pantaleo, a New  York City Police Department (NYPD) officer, put him in a prohibited chokehold while arresting  him on July 17, 2014. 

By 2020, we became breathless. Overwhelmed with an unspeakable dread, we watched the World  lose it’s mind and slowly, its soul. Some of us became inconsolable, disabled by a broken heart. Each  myocardic beat a prayer for another breathe. Each breathe, a song of praise to…sigh.  

“Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord. Praise ye the Lord”. (Psalm 150:6, The Holy Bible KJV) 

… I sat for hours in worship and prayer, speaking to… sigh.. I sat for hours in contemplative  meditation, listening for…sigh. “God…we need a miracle… and a revolution.” 

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man  became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7, The Holy Bible KJV) 

The breathe of Life is what gives a human being a “living soul”. What “animates” us. What allows us  to “move”. 

WE. ARE. A. MOVEMENT. 

Animated by Love.  

Freely associating through the social distance. 

Comrades. Co-Conspirators. Allies. Associates…in the struggle against dissociation.  Lovers of Truth. Lovers of Love.  

True Lovers. 

“So Doctor, what is the diagnosis?”  

Sigh.  

Unfortunately, the diagnosis is COlonial VIolence Disease… Materialist Psychopaths pathologized  the Spirit and so, the prognosis is chronic, long term and fatal. 

“What’s the treatment, Doc?”

“Your breathe is your promised land.” – Pedro Pietri, poet laureate of the Nuyorican Movement in the  60’s and 70s. 

Eve writes to Adam: 

I want to be Free to Love you, 

I want to be Love to Free you, 

I want to Love you for Free, 

I want to Free you for Love, 

I want to Free Love, 

I want to Love Free. 

A proposal of Love Eternal… 

Be. Here. Now. 

With Me. 

Breathing. Forever.  

The Promised Land of our Breathe. 

Academia had become a faithless defeated foe. 

So I sought answers everywhere, including Scripture.  

(types “breathe” into the online Bible search) 

9 results 

3 passages about how God gives Life through breathe 

but 6 of the passages were about Conquerors and Kings who 

“[…] utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel commanded” (Joshua 10:40, The Holy Bible  KJV). 

Devastating. 

Sigh. 

I kept searching… for hope. For faith. For breathe. 

“Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for false witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out  cruelty”. (Psalm 27:12, The Holy Bible KJV)

I inhaled the goodness and exhaled the badness. Sigh. 

“Thus saith the Lord God; Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live” (Ezekiel 37:9, The Holy Bible KJV). 

Exasperated, Eve asked Adam, 

“Can these dry bones live again? Can we rise up after this most violent fall?”

Adam replied, “Breathe.” 

“Then said Jesus to them again, Peace be unto you: as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you. And when he had  said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit: Whose soever sins ye remit, they are  remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” (John 20:21-23, The Holy Bible KJV). 

“Doctor, why are you crying?” 

Because I am so grateful to be breathing 

Here  

With you. 

“Yeah… it IS nice. I wish this moment could last forever…  

but anyways, see you next week Doc”.  

Yes, same day, same time, same Zoom link.