Earth Day Prayers

These prayers are from the book "Earth Prayers From Around the World"

Suggested for Earth Day

And now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.....

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man fathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity
(Life is what it is about,
I want no truck with death.)

If we were not so single minded
about keeping out lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding out selves
and of threatening ourselves with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go

Pablo Neruda

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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 valley and hills.
a land of wheat ad 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
he has given you.

DEUTERONOMY 8:7-11 NRSV
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Don't destroy the world
I've only nibbled
the grasses of my lover's meadow.
We are early May
and clematis has not yet blossomed.
Alyssum, lady's slipper, buttercups
I want to hold the to her chin as we did childhood summers
shining their yellow reflection.

And the large magnificent trees
rhododendrons, splashed pink as dawn
magnolia, white waxy bowls of purple swooning.
I've waited my lifetime for this.
Plums are yet to come, fat, taut
the fragile bloom misting their skin like breath.

Let there be days of grainy juices
sticky on my face I
want time. There's
plush mango I smear over her.
Let me lick the pit clean, memorize
each crevice with my tongue

Don't
destroy
the world
because my child;s five, because
she crises when she scrapes her knee on gravel' skin shredded, blood beading through the dust
cries pitifully and long
while I envision scenes of devastation
holding her against the clawing pain
her screams, my helplessness.

"I hope nothing really bad ever happens to you," I blurt
the accusation, shield for my own hysteria...
Don't Don't destroy the world.

Ellen Bass


Happy Earth Day

Jeannette