Great Spirit of Life:
My heart is sore today, and I am lonely.
For lo, these many years I have been failing you.
This blue-green ball
that you have given us to live on,
Your sacred body,
this miracle of interwoven cycles
of water, air, earth, fire,
is heating up.
One by one we are killing our relatives:
tigers, grizzlies, elephants, oaks, otters,
whales, salmon, grasses, butterflies,
gorillas, orchids, lorikeets.
Thousand by thousand we are killing ourselves:
women and children first.
My voice is small
a whisper lost in the wind
Those who hear it laugh at me
and tell me how impractical I am
to want to find a way to live here
in love.
But please,
please:
help me not give up.
Help me receive Your gifts
and use them to save us all.
Grant me the presence of a mountain
implacable and unarguable
Grant me hope that grows like tiny tendrils of grass
after just one rain
Let me be rooted deeply and reach high, like the pine tree
flexible enough to weather the storm
Let me be as persistent as water
wearing away resistance one molecule at a time
Let me be as fierce as a grizzly bear
that I might protect all of the earth’s young
Grant me the endurance of the salmon,
the instinct to keep swimming upstream.
Grant me the vision of the hawk,
that I might see what to do next
Let me keep the wonder of a tiny child
and the joy of a baby’s belly laugh
Great Spirit,
the Web of Life is torn.
I place myself in your hands,
that you might use me to mend it.
Keep my heart full of the love that will sustain me
that I might find a way to sustain You.
Thank you for all you have given me.
Blessed Be
Amen