Commentary on the Gospel of
Breathe & Push
On December 31, 2016, at an inter-religious gathering in the United States, Valerie Kaur, a social activist, made a powerful speech. Reflecting on the troubled times the US was going through then, she said: “The mother in me asks: ‘What if? What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? What if we are not a dead country but a country that is waiting to be born? What if our story is one of long labor?’ And what does the midwife tell you to do when you are in labor? ‘Breathe and Push’.” The darkness over the world has only worsened since then. So what should we do? We must continue to breathe and push, so that the baby that is within us – the Kingdom – will be born. If we don’t breathe, we die; if we do not push, the Kingdom dies within us.
