EARTH DAY PRAYER APRIL 22, 2012 “The world is charged with ...

EARTH DAY PRAYER APRIL 22, 2012
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.
Opening Song: Sing Out, Earth and Skies by Marty Haugen vs. 1, 2, 3
Leader: Good and gracious God, Creator of the world, draw us into prayer and
celebration as we gather to remember the gifts of your earth and the stewardship
you have entrusted to us as tillers and tenders in your image. Your Holy Spirit stirs
and moves and gives us courage to remember that all good gifts come first from you.
We praise you for this creation in the words of the psalmist, sung by our ancestors in
faith for generations:
ALL: “God speaks: the heavens are made; God breathes: the stars shine.
God bottles the waters of the sea and stores them in the deep.
All earth, be astounded, stand in awe of God.”
Leader: Keep us faithful to this gathering in hope and “bless this vine your right hand
has planted” now and forever. Amen.
Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 8: 7-11
For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of flowing streams,
with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat
and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey,
a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land
whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat
your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land you have been given.
Pause for Reflection
Psalm 65:
1) It is good to give thanks, for the boundless mercy which renews us and
makes us whole. Happy are those who know this and open themselves to the
Light and sing.
2) You make the sunrise and the sunset shout for joy. You are the earth’s
fertility. Your law governs her cycles of snow, run-off, flood and rain. You
crown the year with abundance.
1) The wild lands are watered with dew. The hills deck themselves with green.
The meadows adorn themselves with flocks.
2) The valleys gown themselves with grain. They dance together. They join in
song.

ALL: Glory to You, Creator and Sustainer.
Glory to You for the awesome gift of life.
Contemporary Readings:
When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound,
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the
wood drake rests in her beauty on the water and the great heron feeds. I come into
the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come
into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with
their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. –Wendell Berry
There is an awe and reverence due to the stars in the heavens, the sun, and all
heavenly bodies; to the seas and the continents; to all living forms of trees and
flowers; to the myriad expressions of life in the sea; to the animals of the forests and
the birds of the air. To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine
voice. –Thomas Berry
Quiet pause / preaching / shared reflection
Prayer of Praise: All respond after each reading:
**“All creation is a song of praise to God.” (Hildegard of Bingen, Mystic)
1)“The Earth is a sparkling blue and white jewel laced with slowly swirling veils of
white like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery.” (Edgar Mitchell, Astronaut)**
2) “O moving force of Wisdom, you encircle the wheel of the cosmos, you
encompass all that is, all that has life in one vast circle.” (Hildegard of Bingen)**
1) “It could be that God has not absconded but spread, as our vision and
understanding of the universe have spread, to a fabric of spirit and sense so grand
and subtle, powerful in a new way, that we can only feel blindly of its hem.” **
(Annie Dillard, naturalist, writer)
2) “…stardust is not just fairy-tale magic; it is what we are really made of…” **
(Elizabeth Sahtouris, Ecofeminist)
1) “ Great Spirit,…give me the strength to walk the soft earth, a relative to all that is!
…all over the earth the faces of living things are all alike… (Black Elk, Oglala Sioux)*

2) “There is not anything new to be born. It has been within you from the beginningless
beginning. It has only to be awakened, to become aware of itself in you.” **
(Zen saying)
1) “…For in God we live/and move/and have our being.” (Acts 17:28) **
2) “…When you stand in the presence of the moon, you become a new creation
…The elementary particles of your body have absorbed an influence and in that
sense they—and you—are brand spanking new, a human being resonating
everywhere with moonlight.” (Brian Swimme, physicist) **
1) “We shall not cease from exploration/ and the end of all our exploring/ will be to
arrive where we started/ and know the place for the first time. (T.S. Eliot poet) **
ALL: Almighty God, who are mother and father to us all, look upon your planet earth
divided. Help us to know that we are all your children, that all nations belong to one
great family, and all of our religions lead to you.
Multiply our prayers in every land, until the whole Earth becomes your congregation,
united in your love. Sustain our vision of a peaceful future and give us strength to
work unceasingly to make that vision real. Amen. –Helen Weaver
Closing Song: Sing Out, Earth and Skies, vs. 4 and 5