EARTH PRAYERSfrom Around the World
365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations for
Honoring the Earth
Edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon
(All photographs contained within these prayers are my personal property unless otherwise indicated with the internet source.)
PART ONE: The Ecological Self
"Earth Prayer begins with our intuition of the oneness of all life. We recognize that our identity is inextricably entwined with lives beyond our own. This sense of identity goes beyond human relationships. We depend upon trees, trees depend upon grasses, grasses depend upon animals, mountains depend upon oceans, the colphin depends upon the farthest star. Physically and spiritually, we all are woven into the living processes of the Earth...Our breathing, our acting, our thinking arise in interaction with our shared world....
These prayers seek to heal the division that has grown between us and the rest of nature. They tell us: Pay attention. Attend to the relationships alive among all forms of life. Use imagination to explore the binding curve that joins us together....When the human spirit is understood in this sense, it becomes clear thgat our entire life is an Earth Prayer." (p.1-3 excerpts)
PART TWO: A Sacred Place
"To the ancients, as well as to many contemporary seekers, the world is alive with spirit. The landscape is infused with creativity and meaning and each place speaks to us of the divine...
"This notion of a richly sacralized world may seem strange to the mainstream western culture. We live in a secular landscape. We have been taught to identify the sacred primarily with cathedrals, churches, and temples. The rest is considered 'real estate'.....
"The poems and prayers in this section encourage us to reacquaint ourselves with the immanence of the spirit in the natural world. They are filled with a deep love of the Earth and awe in the presence of its mystery..." (p. 37)
PART THREE: The Passion of the Earth
"Today the ability of the Earth to support life is being deeply eroded....In this section of Earth Prayers the pain of the earth is expressed. Knowing that the world is an intricate balance of parts we see that if one of the parts is sick or wounded, its plight and suffering affects us all,. Here we humble ourselves before all creation and allow the outcries of despair from around the globe to touch our hearts, opened by the realization of an ecological self." (p.65)
PART FOUR: Healing the Whole
"During this time of great imbalance on planet Earth we may feel ourselves torn betqween the priorities of healing ourselves - resolving our own inner spiritual or psychological problems - and attempting to cure the social and economic ills that beset our culture. ...This attitude misses the main point of Earth Prayer. It continues to view the individual as somehow separate from the rest of the world. But if we accept that we are totally part of this living Earth, then we must recognize that isolated health is an illusion. Healing ourselves and working to resolve the contradictions in the human-Earth ecology is the same work.
"All healing involves making whole again....The prayers in this section show us a pathway back to an understanding and appreciation of life. They remind us that our participation extends to the whole." (p. 89)
PART FIVE - The Elements
"The prayers and poems of this section remind us of our roots. We are made of the planet's elemental energies: Water - "washing and nourishing through endless riverways of gut and vein and capillary"; Earth - pouring 'through us, replacing each cell in the body every seven years'; Air - its 'oxygen kissing each cell awake'; and Fire - 'from our sun that fuels all life...
"Yet as basic as these elemental energies are to our own lives, it is easy in the modern world to dissociate ourselves from them. Our search for comfort and security and our fear of Nature's forces has led us to use our technology to create a barrier between ourselves and the natural world...
"...Our future and that of our children lies not in overcoming them but in aligning ourselves with their energies." (p. 128)
FIRE -
AIR -
EARTH -
WATER -
Part Six: BLESSINGS
"Invoking the powers of the universe or bestowing our blessing on the Earth or other beings is neither a simple benevolent wish nor an act of hubris. Rather it is an act of creative confidence. Emptied of the needs of our personality, our ego, or the demands of our society, we free ourselves to come into dynamic relationship with the whole universe. 'May all beings be happy!' " (p. 170-1)
Part Nine: CYCLES OF LIFE
"When we are aware of the Earth's processes, seeing ourselves as parts of a whole, we learn to let go of the need to control life. We are reminded to accept the inevitable cycles of green and dry, birth and death, cold and warm, emptiness and fullness, light and dark, that characterize the events and activities of our daily life. The prayers in this section draw us into this great seasonal round, reminding us of their role in shaping not only our physical existence but our hyman consciousness as well." (p. 283)
