Opening Prayer
O God!
Refresh and gladden our spirits.
Purify our hearts.
Illumine our powers.
We lay all our affairs in Thy hands.
Thou art our Guide and our Refuge.
We will no longer be sorrowful and grieved;
We will be happy and joyful beings.
O God! We will no longer be full of anxiety,
nor will we let trouble harass us. …
O God! Thou art more friend to us than we are to ourselves.
I dedicate myself to Thee, O Lord.
Baha'i prayers - `Abdu'l-Bahá
Come Lord Jesus,
Be our guest,
And let thy gifts
To us be blessed.
Attributed to Martin Luther - 16th century
Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment, at this place,
The world of the flower, the whole of
the world is blooming.
That is the talk of the flower, the truth
of the blossom;
The glory of eternal life is fully shinning here.
Zenkei Shibayana
When Jesus spoke the whole world was hushed to listen. His words were not for our ears but rather for the elements of which God made this earth.
He spoke to the sea, our vast mother, that gave us birth. He spoke to the mountains, our elder brother whose summit is a promise.
And he spoke to the angels beyond the sea and the mountains to whom he entrusted our dreams ere the clay in us was made hard in the sun.
And still His speech slumbers within our breast like a love-song half forgotten, and sometimes it burns itself through our memory.
His speech was simple and joyous, and the sound of His voice was like cool water in a land of drought.
Once He raised His hand against the sky, and His fingers were like the branches of a sycamore tree; and He said with a great voice:
“The prophets of old have spoken to you, and your ears are filled with their speech. But I say unto you, empty your ears of what you have heard.”
And those words of Jesus, “But I say unto you,” were not uttered by a man of our race or of our world; but rather by a host of seraphim marching across the sky of Judea.
Again and yet again He would quote the law and the prophets, and then would say, “But I say unto you.”
Oh, what burning words, what waves of seas unknown to the shores of our mind, “But I say unto you.”
What stars seeking the darkness of the soul, and what sleepless souls waiting the dawn.
To tell of the speech of Jesus one must needs have His speech or the echo thereof.
I have neither the speech nor the echo.
I beg you to forgive me for beginning a story that I cannot end. But the end is not yet upon my lips. It is still a love song in the wind.
Kahlil Gibran
What if the “resurrection of the body” were not seen as the resurrection of particular bodies that ascend, beginning with Jesus of Nazareth, into another world, but as God’s promise to be with us always in God’s body, our world? What if God’s promise of permanent presence to all space and time were imagined as a worldly reality, a palatable, bodily presence? What if then we did not have to go somewhere special (church) or somewhere else (another world) to be in the presence of God, but could feel ourselves in that presence at all times and in all places? What if we imagined God’s presence as in us and in all others, including the last and the least?
Sallie McFague
The small plot of ground
on which you were born
cannot be expected
to stay forever
the same.
Earth changes,
and home becomes different
places.
You took flesh
from clay
but the clay
did not come
from just one
place.
To feel alive,
important, and safe,
know your own waters
and hills, but I know
more.
You have stars in your bones
and oceans
in blood.
You have opposing
terrain in each eye.
You belong to the land
and the sky of your first cry,
you belong to infinity.
Alla Renee Bozarth
Water Blessing –
Rechatz.*
The cleansing power of water.
Moisture.
The essence of life.
Washing away hurts,
ways of thinking,
ways of being,
the things we want to let go of right now.
Allowing through that which has yet to emerge.
Making the way
for sacred space.
*Hand-washing
From the Santa Cruz Haggadah
Great Spirit, Divine One, Creator
who is heaven earth rock wind insect tree fox
human of every size shape color
Holy are your infinite names chanted sung whispered
shouted in every language, tongue.
We will midwife the rebirth of Gaia
as best we can
restoring the Great Law of Peace.
Guide our hands to the soil and seed
honoring the alchemy of food.
Let us remember your abundance
and share the bread of life with any who hunger.
We are forgiving
and giving and giving.
We trust in the give-away.
We give and receive.
Let us be humble before the darkness and the light
walking in harmony amidst them.
Give us courage to know them intimately
both within and without.
For you have breathed it all---
the behind, the above, the below, the beyond.
Your awesome power courses in our veins
and animates our hearts.
You are the Great Drum.
We thank you.
Translation of the lord's prayer
from King James to Gaian - Claudia L'amoreaux
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