mat·ter /ˈmadər/

I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works for my salvation. I venerate it.

~ John of Damascus (6th century Father of the Church)

mat·ter

/ˈmadər/

noun: matter; plural noun: matters; noun: the matter

1. physical substance in general; (in physics) that which occupies space and possesses rest mass.
2. a substance or material."organic matter” material substance; stuff; medium
3. an affair or situation under consideration; a topic."a great deal of work was done on this matter”
4. LAW  something which is to be tried or proved in court; a case. the present situation or state of affairs.
5. something that evokes a specified feeling."it's a matter of complete indifference to me” 
• the reason for distress or a problem."what's the matter?

verb: matter; 3rd person present: matters; past tense: mattered; past participle: mattered; gerund or present participle: mattering

1. be of importance; have significance.
• (of a person) be important or influential.

2. (of a wound) secrete or discharge pus.

Black Lives Matter.

This phrase is so bold as to need shouting in the streets, indeed painted onto the streets in giant script, bold reiteration, again, and again.

We are fatigued of this shouting and yet we will reiterate, reiterate until the oppressor hears - not just hears but changes.

I add bold font to the words and phrases in this definition which best illustrate the problem: situation, distress, wound, ~ of importance and significance.

Black Lives Matter.

St. John of Damascus spoke of matter as the stuff of God in the way that modern physicists speak of matter as the stuff of all existence. These two concepts are not separate, not two. Matter is God. God is Love. Love matters. All of life matters.

Black Lives Matter.

Idiots who argue against this bold, loud statement with counter phrases like all lives matter or even blue lives matter are not listening because they have been reared through history by the ignorant, privileged, discourse of hate which seeks to redefine the very word matter. They only see their own situation as worthy of mattering. They only live in their own bubble. They do not recognize the foul puss discharged from this wound of the world. They refuse to see the importance of anything other than their own fear and anger. They reiterate the wound we seek to heal.

We who see this fault and all the evil it has caused through that same history shout - out - loud. It is no longer a coincidence to me that the pronunciation is /ˈmaddər/.

Black Lives Matter.

Though eternally hindered by my own whiteness, I listen none-the-less. In my own listening, I hear a word that means wound, a word that means situation, a word that means significance. As a Christian, I hear a word that means the very essence of the Incarnation, Christ lives in us, works through us, in spite of us. If we but listen. All of life, all of creation, all of the stuff of the love of the living God - matters. But what needs shouting most - “I venerate it:”

Black Lives Matter.