Celebrating the Earth
Catholic Action Network
Women Led Prayer
April 26th, 2008
Opening Song: How Great Thou Art
Opening Prayer:
O’ God,
May we today be touched by grace, fascinated and moved by this your creation, energized by the power of new growth at work in your world.
May we move beyond viewing this life only through
A frame, but
Touch it and be touched by it,
Know it and be known by it,
Love it and be loved by it.
May our bodies, our minds, our spirits, learn a new rhythm
Paces by the rhythmic pulse of the whole created order,
May spring come to us, be in us, and recreate life in us.*
Reading 1: From Hildegard of Bingen
I, the highest and fiery power, have kindled every spark of life . . . I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows, I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, moon, and stars. With every breeze, as with invisible life that contains everything, I awaken everything to life. The air lives by turning green and being in bloom. The waters flow as if they were alive. The sun lives in its light, and the moon is enkindled, after its disappearance, once again by the light of the sun so that the moon is again revived . . . And thus I remain hidden in every kind of reality as a fiery power. Everything burns because of me in the way our breath constantly moves us, like the wind-tossed flame in a fire. [Vision 1:2.]
Reading 2: Genesis 1:24-31
Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth after their kind"; and it was so.
God made the beasts of the earth after their kind, and the cattle after their kind, and everything that creeps on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good.
Then God said, "Let Us make humans in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth."
God created humans in Her own image, in the image of God She created persons; male and female, She created them.
God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth."
Then God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you;
and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food"; and it was so.
God saw all that She had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.
Beware of the false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves.
"You will know them by their fruits. Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes nor figs from thistles, are they?
"So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit.
"A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.
"Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
"So then, you will know them by their fruits.”
Homily by Shantha Ready
Made in Her Image to Bear Good Fruits
Genesis 1:24-31; Matthew 7:15-20
For the past two weeks in the morning, I have been smelling the blooming flowers’ scent wafting through my open window, stepping outside to marvel at the green earth, and it is all I can do to keep from singing, “My God How Great Thou Art!” And I remember that by God’s green finger and from her fiery core emanates all we see, and all we are. While it is true every day of every year that we are one with nature, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by this awesome mystical connectedness with the divine through nature during this season of spring.
In her own image, we have been carefully crafted… DNA sequenced… cultivated in the womb - to participate in the life of this masterpiece of creation: Our Earth. Those green fingers coax us to desire, to be inclined, draw life from her divine love and to bear the good fruits of the good news: good news that has been shared in some of the oldest of Israelite oral tradition – good news that God has given us this Earth - an abundant paradise in which all creatures sing with joy as we jubilantly “rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” and all green things are good to eat for everyone!
But the second I leave my springtime world and turn on the news, I have to ask myself… what kind of jubilant rulers are we? Certainly not the stewarding kind. At the end of his sermon on the mount, Jesus not only talked about the bearing of good fruits by those who are faithful… but also the bearing of bad ones.
Every time I log on to the internet, my homepage pops up to the BBC news. I have seen for many days in a row that the prices of wheat, corn, and rice have DOUBLED in the past 3 years. In fact, in Asia, rice prices have risen by more than 75 percent in less than three months! The poorest families all over the world are scrambling to feed their families! People from - Ghana, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Haiti, and many more countries are scrambling to survive. United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-Mun has said, "The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency proportions.”
Honestly, though, I did not let these articles, statistics and quotes touch my heart for quite awhile. I would click a button and they would disappear. It was not until I was by myself, in my car, driving to class, with my NPR Radio turned on that I allowed the reality of what is happening to sink in. There was a news story reported from Haiti. I could hear children in the background. And the reporter was describing how Haitian families were mixing mud with sugar to abate their hunger. I stared ahead blankly at the stop light for a moment… and I just started weeping. I knew then. I let it sink in: it is I… along with my nation, producing the bad fruits we heard about today – fruits that are borne from the idolatrous values of materialistic greed and hoarding – bad fruits that are causing such terrible suffering.
Surely, the commercial production of luxury goods for the first world, or 1/3 world, as some call it now, because we are the privileged minority, is directly contributing to this obscene poverty. The head of the World Bank has said, "The allocation of even one percent of the assets of sovereign wealth funds [investment funds, many of which are based in the Middle East] to equity investments in Africa could draw $30 billion to African development, growth, and opportunity.”
God, who remains present through all creation and has from the beginning of time, must weep and cry out as I did at the stoplight --- with heavy-hearted grief at the first/1/3rd world’s bad fruits of greedy ecological destruction and hoarding. How could humanity fail to recognize the abundance laid before them, and the needlessness of such suffering?
God reminds us, but we cannot hear, “every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed” I have given for you, you who are good and made in my image, to tend. God cries out, “each day of creation it was good, it was good --- it was good!” What happened? We have borne the bad fruits of ecological destruction and incredible disparity in resources between rich and poor by drawing our life source from that which is NOT God but greed… By these bad fruits, these mudcakes, we have plunged too many on Earth into a living hell of starvation, relegated to the pain of watching their loved ones die with hungry bellies and wanting eyes.
Are not all the green things God gave us for all humankind?
Yet --- even as we suffer, God continues to burn with a fiery core to produce all life, and to careen the earth with her green fingers each spring. It is a wonder she has not stopped and said – enough! My son warned you about the results of the bad fruits you would bear if you draw your life force from any other than myself.
Perhaps we humans are too egocentric to grasp that mystical, radically intimate connectedness with Mother Earth, she who is NOT a RESOURCE… but THE SOURCE of all that lives and breathes and has being. She that is the embodiment of God; she that binds us all together. God spoke the same language into each of our DNA, weaving us into beautiful creatures with fins and hooves and paws and talons and feet all trying our very best to swim and gallop and fly and walk in the Glory of God – to bear good fruit. We are made in God’s image… and all of creation teems with the divine spark that is in us. In fact, scientists who have studied early embryos have shown that in our first weeks, our early cells have such plasticity that we are indistinguishable from an eagle, a dolphin, or a kangaroo! When we say a woman holds the world in her womb, that is no metaphor. For the language of God is being spoken in her womb as the baby develops sequences of DNA that could become any creature --- but turns into a human, one with the humbling and awe-inspiring honored role: steward of creation.
It is from this womb that God with her green fingers first coaxed each of us, caressed each of us, whispered to each of us, “I have made you in my image, and it is very good. And so, humans, bear good fruit. Open the fertile grounds of your hearts and let my green fingers tend your brokenness, and let me cultivate this profound love you have for all creation, for the connectedness you feel with your brothers and sisters in Ghana, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, & Haiti; with the suffering creatures of sea, land, and sky and your trembling planet. Grow, now. Grow. Grow in love, and wisdom, and reconciliation. So that you may live in right relationship with all creation.”
Amen.
Sharing: What is Greening in you? How is God Hidden in your reality? Where are you called to unmask God hidden in your world?
Circle Dance: Dance of Blessing from returnblessings by Diane Neu pg 78
Directions are for the inner circle, the outer circle follows using the opposite hand, Dance goes until we make a rotation.
O, Great Spirit (Left hand circles up, out and to center)
Earth, Sun, Sky and Sea: (Right hand circles up, out, and to center)
You are inside (Partners, palms touching, bow to eachother)
And all around me. (Partners let go of hands)
Alternative Peace: "You are Beauty for our World"
Closing Prayer:
Beautiful women and men, let us go forth to walk in beauty.
May beauty be with in us,
May beauty be around us.
May beauty be ours in eternal life.
Let us open our circle.*
Closing Song: How Can I Keep from Singing?
* From “returnblessings: Ecofeminist Liturgies Renewing The Earth” by Diann L. Neu