8th of June 2020

Today’s prayer is chosen by the University Chaplain, Revd Dr Harriet Harris.

Today’s prayer was written in 2014, in memory of Mike Brown, Eric Garner, and many, many others, recited as part of a Pilgrimage of Lament in Berkeley, California. The necessary lessons have not been learned, and we are lamenting again, for George Floyd and many, many others

The prayer comes from T’ruah the Rabbinic call for Human Rights, and is inspired by Yehudah Amichai and Rabbi Rachel Barenblat.

Dearest God, We stand before you because we must. We stand before You because truths that should be self-evident are not so evident in our countries. And so we turn to you to breathe ever more of Your Spirit into us because we find we cannot breathe, when we call out for justice. We call to you in defiance of of systems that betray our noble ideals, where every Black man, woman, and child is twenty times likelier to be killed by police. We shout to the Heavens with one, unified voice: Black. Lives. Matter.

We are called by scripture to pray for the day when we will beat swords into ploughshares and study war no more, when the surplus of war led by greed and deception will not spill into our streets, where swords and tanks and rubber bullets and tear gas will be beaten thinner and thinner, the iron of hatred vanishing forever. (Amichai)

We pray to you because as our prophets have taught us: human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere. We call to you, O God, because Your Spirit was choked out of a father who called out 11 times’ “I can’t breathe.” We raise our hands to you, knowing that the work is ours to do, black, white, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, young, old, gay, straight – These are your images, battered by those sworn to protect and serve. We are all responsible for what happens next. And so we pray to You, Source of Life, raise up our eyes to see You in each other’s eyes, to take risks for justice, to bring through our unified prayer today more Love and Compassion into the world. We pray today not for calm but for righteousness to flow like a mighty river, until peace fills the earth as the waters fill the sea. Comfort the families of all who grieve. Strengthen us to work for a world redeemed. And we say together: Amen.