Psalm

With coals of juniper, Lord, with ripped willow clumps,
with lodge-pole pine and fir, with wind-wrack and slash,
I kindle an all-night fire to mirror You.
No longer waning, no longer falsifying chimes.
No longer smoking out rot, or eclipsing Yeshiva scholars.
No Lord I know what is within magnified.
Stars will just have to wait to eddy through gates of night.
Little swirl, mimicking nebulae, mimicking galaxies, which turns
for no apparent reason other than to cast and recast the whole
as it whirs and whirls, knocks and ticks at three am
in a snit to proclaim itself not as You but it in You.
If I can strut a note, can rack wobbly pins,
balance rocks into signposts, waves into a grass mass or two,
it will hear itself structuring time. This oddly chopped
watched dimension quarters us into early middle late.
Each day scans and wanes, some hope knowing its moaning
is mourning what it erases. The and stamped by the sea
each second. Be with it and what it erases ceases to toll.

-- Emily Warn (1953- ), poet, teacher, and Orthodox Jew, founding editor of poetry foundation.org; and former programmer at Microsoft

Offering Prayer: Planting a Seed

Prayer of Dedication

(inspired by Mark 4:26-34)

May the offerings brought this day be used as seeds,
planted faithfully and nurtured lovingly
so that God’s way may be realized anew in this world.
Grant us the humility we need to plant and then tend your precious garden. Amen.


-- written by Katherine Hawker

Scripture Reference: Mark 4:26-34, Proper 6B

Gathering Prayer for Un-Ordinary Time

Presider      God of the Lark,
God of the Aspen Grove,
we join with all your creatures
in a chorus of praise and worship.

All           We are upheld by your almighty hand;
all that we have and are is yours,
and we bow in gratitude before you.

Presider      May we echo the humble thanksgiving
sung out by cicada and tree frog,
who praise You and your provision without ceasing.

All           May we find delight in the labor you set before us,
as the hummingbird does.

Presider      May we lift our arms to you in praise
like the oak as it stretches skyward.

All           May we constantly sing your praises
like the wind that weaves through pine-needle
and sets them to resonating in joy.

Presider      May we open our hearts to your guidance
for our own sake and the sake of the world,
led by wisdom of the Spirit of Truth,
enlightened by the example of the Prince of Peace,
rooted deep in the verdant garden of the God of Life.

All           Holy Trinity, One God,
envelop us in your mercy and grace this day,

                  that we may be transformed by worship and prayer

              Into bold icons of your love and faithfulness in the world.

--Leslie Barnes Scoopmire, copyright 2023

Looking West, Late Afternoon, Low Water

The typical tidal range, or difference in sea level between high and low tides, in the open ocean is about 2 ft (0.6 m), but it is much greater near the coasts.—Desk encyclopaedia


Our beach was never so bare. Freak tide,
system fault, inhuman error, will it

never stop falling? After dark, said
the tables of high water and sunset

pasted on the wall, which don’t deceive.
Come on down for a walk while there’s light.

A wall of pale green glass miles above
head high alongside, complete with fish

crossing, is what will have been the wave
once it has broken. Leviathan is

the beached cachalot we left Bob Falla
filleting for science, the ebb to wash

away these fifty years, each one smaller
than the last. Come down, this is today

delivered factory fresh, in colour
heated by the late sun. Time to try

looking on the bright side, or join those
Great God! (says the poem) who’d rather be

suckled in a creed outworn: but whose
cast-off cult’s to be the lucky one?

Great waters, unfinished business, done
blind to the deadline. From that rock, to

this tree was tapu and it sticks. Thin
pickings, Tangaroa, this is pakeha

story time, only Okeanos and
sister Tethys having it off; the way

they love makes hairy cliff-hanging seas
roll drums on the sand, the 3-metre swell

flat on the seabed bangs the pubes,
very ancient and fishlike they smell

close to. Divine all the same. Dangerous,
not to be approached, least of all by

mortal man whose years are four-score plus
tomorrow night. While I count the three

strong swimmers carried past out of sight
round the North Rocks the whole shoreline shakes

underfoot again, dead friends call out
not to be heard. Look west, what looks

back is blood-orange nightfall, the stooped
sky drowning another sun overboard

where the horizon was: till it snapped
those deep-sea moorings and will be heard

oncoming, the sound of a scream, tsunami!
tsunami! splintering deadwood of the boat

I lost half a life ago, swept
away with a judgment on the work

she’s amateur built but your friends won’t know.
Last seen, one inflatable rescue

craft stood on its tuck, bows to skyward
in fast failing light, a turning tide.




-- Allan Curnow (1911-2001), New Zealand poet, teacher, and reporter.

The Letter of Chief Seattle

“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land.
But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us.
If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people.
Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect.

All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.
We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins.

We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and people all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors.

If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father, my mother’s mother.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. …

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children?
That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the children of the earth.

This we know: Earth does not belong to us, we belong to the Earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. We did not weave the web of life.
We are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. …
One thing we know, which white people may one day discover –
Our God is the same God.
You may think that you own God as you wish to own our land; but you cannot.

God’s compassion is equal for red people and white.

The earth is precious to God and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed?
What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many people and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires?
Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is it to say goodbye to the swift pony and the hunt?

The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red people have vanished with this wilderness, and their memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it.
Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.
As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.

One thing we know – there is only one God.
No one, either Red or White, can be apart.
We ARE all brothers and sisters after all.”

-- transcribed from remarks made by Chief Si'ahl (Seattle; baptismal name Noah Sealth; ca 1780-1866), to Governor Isaac Stevens of Washington in 1854. Si'ahl was a great Suquamish and Duwamish leader. The image above is the only known photograph of this great man.

Located from https://www.dominicancenter.org/indigenous-peoples-day-liturgy/

A Drop of Water: Opening Acclamation

A drop of water.
Insignificant in isolation.
When dropped in a pool
The ripples move out into infinity
The water is changed
By one drop of water.

A drop is falling
Now
Into the pool of our spirit.
The water begins to ripple...

Holy God,
as we consider the magnitude of a drop of water
to touch and change the pool,
may we hear the power of your touch in our lives,
the potential for our lives to touch others. Amen.

--Katherine HawkerSelf, member of the UCC, posted on Liturgies Outside. http://liturgyoutside.net/CPr5.html

The Creation

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely—
I'll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That's good!

Then God himself stepped down—
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas—
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed—
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled—
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

Then God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That's good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I'm lonely still.

Then God sat down—
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in is his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.




--James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938), poet, journalist, NAACP activist, who wrote the words to the "Black National Anthem" "Life Every Voice and Sing" set to music by his brother.

Scripture reference: Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Trinity Sunday Year A

Veni Creator

Come, Holy Spirit,
bending or not bending the grasses,
appearing or not above our heads in a tongue of flame,
at hay harvest or when they plough in the orchards or when snow
covers crippled firs in the Sierra Nevada.
I am only a man: I need visible signs.
I tire easily, building the stairway of abstraction.
Many a time I asked, you know it well, that the statue in church
lifts its hand, only once, just once, for me.
But I understand that signs must be human,
therefore call one man, anywhere on earth
not me—after all I have some decency—
and allow me, when I look at him, to marvel at you.

-Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004), Nobel Prize winning Polish poet, exiled to the US

Messenger

My work is loving the world.

Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
   equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; There the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect? Let me
   keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
   astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
   and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
   to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
   that we live forever.


--Mary Oliver (1935-2019), American poet, teacher, writer and treasure, from Thirst: Poems, 2006

Image: Anemones in the Augustinian nunnery ruins, Iona, 2018.

Eucharistic Prayer from Salal + Cedar

God be with you.
And also with you.
Lift up your hearts.
We lift them up to God.
Let us give thanks to God our Creator.
It is right to give our thanks and praise.

We give thanks to you for Jesus, whose first bed was a feed trough. He was baptized in the Jordan, tested in the wilderness, he traveled in fishing boats and told parables of farmers and seeds, labor and wages, yeast and bread.

We praise you here in the Bow and Elbow River watersheds, where both city and farm, wilderness and industry are side by side. We praise you at a time when the body of earth is broken again and again.

We give thanks for our place in the story of salvation. Our ancestors journeyed with you in creation and migration. They depended on the land, were displaced from the land and displaced others from their lands. They knew you in tents and cities, on mountains and by wells, in families and in dreams, and through wilderness prophets who spoke of lodgepole pines and listened to crows.

Together with angels and ancestors, chickadee and magpie, bear, moose and trout, aspen and larch, we join our voices with all creation in this ancient honour song (said):

Holy, holy, holy Lord,
God of power and might
Heaven and earth are full of your glory.
Hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is the One who comes in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

On the night before he died, Jesus took bread, food of the poor, the work of field and hearth, he gave thanks, broke it and gave it to his friends saying: Take and eat, this is my body, given for you, do this to remember me.

Again after supper he took the cup of wine, fruit of the land, gave thanks and gave it to his friends saying: This is my blood, which is shed for you. When you do this, do it in memory of me.

Remembering Jesus’ life, death and resurrection and awaiting his coming kingdom, we offer you this bread and this cup.

Creator, send your Spirit on these gifts so that we know Jesus in them and are gathered together with everyone who shares this sacred meal of justice and community. Fill us with the courage and love of Jesus that we may strive for justice and peace, respect the dignity of every human being, and safeguard the integrity of creation. All honor and glory are yours, Creator, Christ and Spirit, now and forever. Amen.


--Eucharistic Prayer adapted from Salal + Cedar, Anglican Diocese of New Westminster. Salal + Cedar's website is here.

Easter Week

See the land, her Easter keeping, 

Rises as her Maker rose.
Seeds, so long in darkness sleeping,
Burst at last from winter snows.
Earth with heaven above rejoices;
Fields and gardens hail the spring;
Shaughs and woodlands ring with voices,
While the wild birds build and sing.

You, to whom your Maker granted
Powers to those sweet birds unknown,
Use the craft by God implanted;
Use the reason not your own.
Here, while heaven and earth rejoices,
Each his Easter tribute bring-
Work of fingers, chant of voices,
Like the birds who build and sing.


-- Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), English priest and poet

The Pulley (For All Clergy During Holy Week)

     When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
‘Let us’ (said he) ‘pour on him all we can;
‘Let the world's richest, which dispersed lie,
     Contract into a span.’

     So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flow’d, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that alone of all his treasure
     Rest at the bottom lay.

     ‘For if I should (said he)
‘Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature:
     so both should losers be.

     ‘Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
     May toss him to my breast.’

--George Herbert (1593-1633), Welsh-born Anglican priest, parson, preacher, and poet.

Image: Jesus Prays in Gethsemane, David Popiashvili, Georgian artist based in Tbilisi.

Sparrows

Little birds sit on the telegraph wires,
   And chitter, and flitter, and fold their wings;
Maybe they think that, for them and their sires,
   Stretched always, on purpose, those wonderful strings:
And, perhaps, the Thought that the world inspires,
   Did plan for the birds, among other things.

Little birds sit on the slender lines,
   And the news of the world runs under their feet,--
How value rises, and how declines,
   How kings with their armies in battle meet,--
And, all the while, ‘mid the soundless signs,
   They chirp their small gossipings, foolish sweet.

Little things light on the lines of our lives,--
   Hopes, and joys, and acts of to-day,--
And we think that for these the Lord contrives,
   Nor catch what the hidden lightnings say.
Yet, from end to end, His meaning arrives,
   And His word runs underneath, all the way.

Is life only wires and lightning, then,
   Apart from that which about it clings?
Are the thoughts, and the works, and the prayers of men
   Only sparrows that light on God's telegraph strings,
Holding a moment, and gone again?
   Nay; He planned for the birds, with the larger things.


--Adeline Dutton Train Whitney (1824-1906) American author and poet

A Prayer in Spring

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers today;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure and the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy and the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And to make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
To which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends he will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

--Robert Frost (1874-1963), much-lauded American poet, including four Pulitzer Prizes.

A Bright Field

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Anglo-Welsh poet and Anglican priest

Scripture references: Matthew 13:45-46; Exodus 3:1-17

Magic Words

In the very earliest time,

when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen–
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That's the way it was.


-- Anonymous Inuit; translated by Edward Field

The Pine Forest Calls Me

I remember how it has grown these years.
Yet the spring pinecones are still young,
soft and gentle as skin to the touch.
It is always the green season here, even with future amber
formed golden from bark
with the scent of animal life that passed through.
If a traveler should pass by, it summons,
Stop, come in, stay.
I remember one poet taking a branch of pine
from the winter forest to his dying sister.
It was all she wanted in her last moment.
I have never forgotten the snow dripping
from that branch to the floor.
It is what I want, too,
not so much to have a branch taken away,
but for myself to be taken to this world 

my own life passed through as it does now in the shadows
where sun filters in
to melt snow, quench earth,
that water dripping from trees.
You smell it, too, so let’s remain a while in its shade.
How I love this forest,
where the hieroglyphs of insects
work the inner layers of bark
like monks writing unseen in deep silence,
and if you know the true secret of falling
you might summon that magic language.
I know prayers rise with smoke
the way some people
are so perfectly uplifted
from their first roots.
But when this life of trying is finally over,
bring to my bed a small branch
smelling of green forest,
the melting pure water of snow,
these mysteries discovered
one more time.



--Linda Hogan (1947- ) Chickasaw poet, teacher, novelist, and environmentalist, Writer in Residence of the Chickasaw Nation, from A History of Kindness

Red

In his new poem

the red autumn woods

are a metaphor

for leftist martyrs

We are traveling east through a maple forest

that blazes the hillsides on both sides of this winding

back-country road Look at the trees I want to tell him

Listen The trees have their own stories to tell

like the story of fire deep within the heart They too

have been martrys in the long war against the land, a nation

cut down, children denied

A hundred years ago these hills were bare of trees

the stone walls that wind through them

the illusion of ownership Now the hills are red with maples

My heart is leaping out to meet them, my eyes

cannot be full enough Though acid falls from the clouds

maples have gathered on the hillsides

in every direction See how they celebrate

They are wearing their brightest dresses

Come sisters, let me dance with you

I offer you a song

Let me paint

it red with 

passion 

You are

all the women

I have ever loved

-- Cheryl Savageau (1950- ), Abenaki/French-Canadian poet and nominee for the Pulitzer Prize from Mother/Land (2006)

Canticle of Creation

O Most High, all-powerful, good Lord God,

   to you belong praise, glory,
   honour and all blessing.
Be praised, my Lord, for all your creation
   and especially for our Brother Sun,
   who brings us the day and the light;
   he is strong and shines magnificently.
   O Lord, we think of you when we look at him.
Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Moon,
   and for the stars
   which you have set shining and lovely
   in the heavens.
Be praised, my Lord,
   for our Brothers Wind and Air
   and every kind of weather
   by which you, Lord,
   uphold life in all your creatures.
Be praised, my Lord, for Sister Water,
   who is very useful to us,
   and humble and precious and pure.
Be praised, my Lord, for Brother Fire,
   through whom you give us light in the darkness:
   he is bright and lively and strong.
Be praised, my Lord,
   for Sister Earth, our Mother,
   who nourishes us and sustains us,
   bringing forth
   fruits and vegetables of many kinds
   and flowers of many colours.
Be praised, my Lord,
   for those who forgive for love of you;
   and for those
   who bear sickness and weakness
   in peace and patience
   - you will grant them a crown.
Be praised, my Lord, for our Sister Death,
   whom we must all face.
   I praise and bless you, Lord,
   and I give thanks to you,
   and I will serve you in all humility.

--attributed to St. Francis of Assisi (ca 1181-1226)

The Way Prayer Rises

 

The way the air holds warmth 

like a brimming teacup, tenderly
lifting the turkey vultures so high
their grace is all you see, as they trace
lazy lemniscates 
                     forever,
                           forever,
                               forever,
balancing on a thermal delicately,
black-winged angels gravely waltzing 
           atop the head of a pin

The way the painted sunflower bows
her head under the weight of the bumblebee
and the tickseed heads bristle with hyphenated seeds
that will scatter their blessings over 
the living earth
     and prepare a table before the goldfinch
        in the presence of those who treasure her

The way September’s grasshopper
rasps his way from ditches to gravel roads
his battered wings extolling his travels even as
newborn monarchs iron their wings
     under a radiant, dog-summer sun
          and shadows with edges like knives

The way the redbud leaves dance–
a line in the canopy shifting green to citrine
affirming the beauty of repair, healing, and resilience
like a vein of gold repairing a broken pot
      made more beautiful
            for the continued life it offers

is the way prayer rises and falls

-- This was first published at Episcopal Journal's Speaking to the Soul on September 8, 2022.