This poignant prayer comes from a fellow Chaplaincy Institute graduate:

A MYSTIC’S CLIMATE PRAYER

REV DR JOHN ROBINSON

Divine Consciousness of Life, Earth and Cosmos, God of all names and none, holy Presence dwelling in every creature, we come to you on our knees, in guilt and shame, in sorrow and dread, admitting horrific crimes against Creation. Listening to the Earth’s dying cries, we acknowledge our sins of arrogance, apathy, selfishness, plunder and rape. Our “stewardship” of Creation has been a tragic joke. In failure and profound remorse, we humbly seek forgiveness and guidance – we have completely lost our way and stand to lose so much more.

We know you, Divine One. We share your Being and Consciousness. We are you when we cease pretending to be someone else, someone separate and superior, someone in charge. In abject surrender, in ego-shattering fear and grief, in naked helplessness, we seek the only path home: we return to you. As the fires and storms of human foolishness consume our grandiosity, we ask you to receive us, Divine One, help us return to Creation.

Born of Earth, we can live nowhere else. We are the latest blossom of your enchantingly beautiful, infinitely mysterious, love-drenched creativity – the 14-billion-year evolution of yourself – and our home is here. Can a fish live out of water? Can a bird fly with no air? Can humans survive the cold toxic radiation of space? Desperate plans, false solutions, more foolishness.

But what can we do? Divine One, what do you need from us? Even as we ask, words burst from sacred consciousness:

“Be still. Be silent. Stop talking. Turn off TV and cell phone. Go outside. Open wide your eyes. I shine before you as Creation: vibrant, colorful, alive; the symphony of your life and destiny. Look intensely. Look without thought. Open your senses: seasons of Earth, power of wind, greenness of plant, wetness of rain, warmth of sun, smell of soil, abundance of life, chatter of bird and squirrel, busyness of ant and worm, darkness of night, love-making everywhere, all rising in the holiness of Creation. You don’t have to figure this out because you are Creation. Let the one you were born to be take you home. Creation will heal you, then your tenderness, joy, and adoration will heal Creation.”

May the Earth bless and keep us,
May truth lead the way,
May the ancestors see our efforts,
May peace finally stay.

May the heart inform our journey,
May Creation bring us home,
May our lives be deeply planted,
And may we know we’re not alone.

As we move through transitions, this is a reminder to be present for and mindful of the inner, the outer, the heaven, the earth, the star, and the stone. (from Panhala – To subscribe to Panhala, send a blank email to Panhala-subscribe@yahoogroups.com )

Evening 

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat
held for it by a row of ancient trees;
you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight,
one journeying to heaven, one that falls; 

and leave you, not at home in either one,
not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses,
not calling to eternity with the passion
of what becomes a star each night, and rises; 

and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel)
your life, with its immensity and fear,
so that, now bounded, now immeasurable,
it is alternatively stone in you and star.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~ (The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell)

This beautiful set of practices comes from the latest issue of Emergence Magazine ( https://emergencemagazine.org/ )

Inspired from his essay The Voices of Birds and the Language of Belonging, David G. Haskell created this five-part practice for listening to the language of birds. The human capacity to take in sound evolved over thousands of years, in direct relationship to the sensory, living world. Our attentiveness to the voices of other species provided us with vital information. In today’s age of ecological crisis, we again find ourselves in a situation where attentive listening is required for a mutual thriving, even survival. Bird sounds offer an opportunity to reclaim this ancient connection. 

Step outside and listen.  

Follow the link below to see the practices he offers:

In a practice for one of my Master’s program classes this week, I noticed that I felt a sense of shame at not being adequate to the immense needs of our planet and our children.

I felt a deep sense of desperation that nothing I am doing or will do will ever be enough.

Have any of you ever felt those feelings?

Yesterday, I was blessed to spend time in the forest at Hawthorn Farm, and as I sat with those feelings, I found myself weeping with pain and sadness.

After some time with those deep feelings and their expression in tears, this poem arose:

Weeping in frustration
and sorrow – finally
drained of tears (for now).

I open my eyes and breathe in
the scent of mushrooms exploding
in slow motion out
of the moist earth.

Breezes stirring
in the trees and freeing
the many-colored leaves
to do their final dance
to the welcoming forest floor.

Clouds of so many shapes scuttering
across the deep blue
creating moving fake mountains over
the newly snow-dusted Olympic range.

Out of sorrow, joy. 
Out of tears, prayers.
Out of suffering, gladness.
Out of darkness, light.

I hold
sorrow, tears, suffering, darkness
In my left hand.
I hold
joy, prayer, gladness, light
In my right.

Together they make me whole.
Together they fill my soul.

In this posting from Matthew Fox, he speaks to the inspiration Howard Thurman received from the young people attending the March on DC in 1963.

I am often asked and have often wondered myself, what good our protests and marches actually do.

Thurman notices and is inspired by the way these young people in 1963, (and I would suggest those today involved in the Climate Strike, Gun Control, Black Lives Matter, and other causes) demonstrate such courage and have “caught the spiritual overtones” of the activism work they are engaged in.

Matthew Fox asks: Are we becoming “attuned to the spiritual dimensions of what we are about today” in our efforts at rebelling against our and other species extinction?  At addressing Climate Change?  At realizing that the peril of the planet is also a perspective that allows all generations but also all religions and all nationalities and all peoples and all tribes to work together t combat a common enemy—the death of the planet as we know it? 

Check out the full posting here:

ACT GREAT

What is the key
To untie the knot of your mind’s suffering?

What
Is the esoteric secret
To slay the crazed one whom each of us
Did wed

And who can ruin
Our heart’s and eye’s exquisite tender
Landscape?

Hafiz has found
Two emerald words that
Restored
Me

That I now cling to as I would sacred
Tresses of my Beloved’s
Hair:

Act great.
My dear, always act great.

What is the key
To untie the knot of the mind’s suffering?

Benevolent thought, sound
And movement.

~ Hafiz ~
 (The Gift – versions of Hafiz by Daniel Ladinsky)

I took a walk to find some air and found, instead,
a chill that lives in the marrow.
The sky was colorless,
lifeless: no bird, no insect, no visible sun or moving cloud.
Even the Monarch slept.
The earth, the land, the hills, the path
all void of bloom, muddy and soggy from winter.

The lake was frozen
though the mallards seemed to find a path.
“Keep moving,” I whispered to them.
“Just keep moving.
All this is fleeting. Keep moving.
Despite it all, find the stream that flows.”

Then, suddenly, as if they heard my supplication,
they turned toward me. One after another in a line
following the leader, they came ashore.
I sat awhile and watched them do what ducks tend to do.

The wind picked up, the chill thickened, and I thought,
I must forgive what was. I simply have too much to lose:
dignity, trust, my dreams, a sense of self,
faith, love, imagination,
joy, confidence,
God.

Then just as quickly as they came ashore,
They returned to the pond.
“Keep moving,” I whispered to them.
“Just keep moving.
All this is fleeting. Keep moving.
Despite it all, find the stream that flows.”

Forgiveness is like a stream in a winter pond. It finds a path through the ice. Keep moving forward toward goodness and love. Keep moving away from hurt, keep moving toward wholeness, so you can regain what you have lost. Let the pain be as fleeting as the winter chill. Let love and wholeness abide. Find the path through the ice. — Rabbi Karyn Kedar, The Bridge to Forgiveness: Stories and Prayers for finding God and Restoring Wholeness (2007), pgs. 21-22.

 All will come again into its strength:
the fields undivided, the waters undammed,
the trees towering and the walls built low.
And in the valleys, people as strong and varied as the land. 

And no churches where God
is imprisoned and lamented
like a trapped and wounded animal.
The houses welcoming all who knock
and a sense of boundless offering
in all relations, and in you and me. 

No yearning for an afterlife, no looking beyond,
no belittling of death,
but only longing for what belongs to us
and serving earth, lest we remain unused. 

~ Ranier Maria Rilke ~