Poems offered by participants at our final gathering…
“A Prayer of Healing” (from “Only One Earth”, a UN Environment Programme publication for “Environmental Sabbath/Earth Rest Day” June 1990)
Reader: We join with the earth and with each other.
To bring new life to the land
To restore the waters
To refresh the air
We join with the earth and with each other.
To renew the forests
To care for the plants
To protect the creatures
We join with the earth and with each other.
To celebrate the seas
To rejoice the sunlight
To sing the song of the stars
We join with the earth and with each other.
To recall our destiny
To renew our spirits
To reinvigorate our bodies
We join with the earth and with each other.
To create the human community
To promote justice and peace
To remember our children
Reader: We join together as many and diverse expressions of one loving mystery, for the healing of the earth and the renewal of all life.
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The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry
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 his 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.
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When I am among the trees by Mary Oliver
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
They give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world,
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile”.
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you, too, have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine."
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And still,
after all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look
what happens,
with a love like that.
it lights the
whole sky.
— Rumi
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And the one we composed together…
The Gifts of the Journey this year are…
Compassion, Healing, Support…
Deeper thinking and awareness…
Shared reality…
Being with fellow travellers on the journey
A place to talk from the heart about the climate, knowing I’m not alone…
Generosity of the Earth, Dharma, and Sangha…
A soft place to land...
Seeing my hopes and fears reflected back to me through these friends...
Support during trying times…
Shared heartfulness…
Realizing I am not alone…
Like roots intertwined, strength in a compassionate community…
Being supported by friends of like mind supports my own resilience.
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