Black Lives Matter - Lewes.  On the evening of 9th June 2020, in silent honour of George Floyd - there has been nothing like it in my memory - 1000 people or more with their placards and sentiments of rage and togetherness and protest  in a vibrant respectful listening.

I was invited to introduce and close the 8 min 46 sec silence  echoing the time during which George Floyd was denied the right to breathe. 

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Opening:

Good evening fellow Lewesians, and those who hav come from a long way away. Good evening. My name is Reverend Razia Aziz, and it’s an honour to be among you today and a privilege to be invited to say a few words to open and close a shared silence in honour of George Floyd.

Beloved friends, take a moment to breathe, even as George Floyd was denied the right to breathe. Take a moment to enter into your Heart - and find there the rage the anger and the despair and also the love - even as so many hearts have been broken by the manner of his passing.

Black is the origin, the condition for the beginning and end of things and for the possibility of light. Silence came before the word, and reigns throughout and beyond the trajectory of time. Silence is the condition for the possibility of sound.

Black is the womb of the mother and tomb of the earth’s embrace. It is the colour of our foremothers and forefathers and of the night which dignifies the rising sun, the setting moon and the turning stars.

Silence is the backdrop to every vibration, every voice; it is the depth of knowing from which we call out to unknown horizons.

Everything in creation has its song – silence allows those songs to be heard. Hear Our Song: Black Lives matter.

Black Silence is the very ground of Being, the very possibility of Life. Without it we are not.

Please light your candles and let us together enter the Black Silence in honour of George Floyd and countless others who have passed this way.

I invite the Black Silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.


Closing:

Eight minutes and forty-six seconds: such a long, and such a short, time.

May all-encompassing Love bring truth and healing, compassion and undying peace to all the species of our fractured earth.

May the dream of the brother and sisterhood of humanity be born in the world through the tribulations of our heartbreak, sweat, blood and tears. May laughter and a common song of unity, not uniformity, arise from the silent ruins of an unjust order.

May the infinite Mercy of True Justice prevail.

Oh Love, may your healing waters cleanse our hearts, our relationships and our societies of the sickness of racism and oppression; quench our rage, our pain and our fear; and clear a way through the thorn bushes of bigotry, over the walls of hate and across the scorching deserts of exploitation to the fruitful gardens oneness which are our true shared inheritance.

Amen. So be it.