Lamentation Prayers
The following prayers are particularly appropriate as lamentations:
This litany is intended for use in services or on occasions relating to grieving or lamenting climate change and environmental degradation. Feel free to use some or all of it with credits (see the end of this post) and to adapt it. I’d appreciate it if you do adapt it, if you’d email to me the adaptations for interest and to aid further development of the resource -potentially by adding them (with ackowledgement, of course), to this post in an appropriate way.
Andii Bowsher
A Lament for the Climate and Ecological Emergency
Father of Creation,
God of Compassion
You created a world of wonder,
Of possibility and potential.
You declared it to be good.
For this we give thanks.
To you be praise, honour and glory.
For this we give thanks.
To you be praise, honour and glory
Father of Creation,
God of Compassion,
This world is no longer as you intended it to,
Humanity has betrayed its calling,
To tend and keep,
Creation groans.
For this we weep,
Lord have mercy.
For this we mourn,
Christ have mercy.
On our watch,
We reap what we have sown,
On our watch,
Sea levels rise,
For this we weep.
Lord have mercy,
For this we mourn,
Christ have mercy.
On our watch,
Forests destroyed,
On our watch,
Locusts Swarm.
For this we weep,
Lord have mercy,
For this we mourn,
Christ have mercy.
And so now with tears in our eyes we look to you,
With regret,
With repentance,
Knowing the difficult decades that we face,
As temperatures rise,
Extinctions increase,
As we come to terms with our existential plight.
For our children,
Lord have mercy.
For our Grandchildren,
Christ have mercy.
For the worlds most vulnerable,
Christ have mercy.
Father of Creation,
God of Compassion,
Wake us from our slumber,
Equip us afresh to be the justice shaped people of God.
Father of Creation,
God of Compassion,
Wake us from our slumber,
Equip us afresh to our priestly and prophetic calling.
That we would speak truth in a culture of denial,
That we would enact hope in a culture of despair,
That we would face what will be with love filled action,
That in humanity’s darkest hour you would would enliven us so ,
We would bandage the wounds of those caught beneath the wheels of climate injustice,
That in humanity’s darkest hour we would have the courage,
to drive a spoke into the wheel of climate injustice itself.
Father of Creation,
God of Compassion
You created a world of wonder,
Of possibility and potential.
You declared it to be good.
In our grief,
In our mourning,
We give thanks.
To you be praise, honour and glory.
Rev’d Jon Swales (2021)
A Light Landing
Luke 12.22-34
Creator Spirit
out of nothingness
no thingness
a cosmos of intricate harmony
and elegant balance emerged.
How is it that we can walk past butterfly wings –
our minds filled with weightier matters –
and not drop to our knees
in reverie?
In this season of confusion,
blow us about in the winds of Spirit,
that we might catch a ride and land
on the green leaf of your choosing…
There to nothing more,
and nothing less,
than enjoy the sheer miracle
of being…
Alive
and awake
to the gift of our existence
and the love that fashions butterfly wings.
Help us to rest in this grace,
Amen.
adapted with permission from If Darwin Prayed
Prayers for Evolutionary Mystics, Bruce Sanguin, 2010
Do Not Walk Proudly On The Earth
(A meditation based on sura 17:37 of the Qur’an)
“Do not walk proudly on the earth…”
Remember that we are her children, born of her
forests, plains and seas.
“Do not walk proudly on the earth…”
Remember that her rivers give us life, flowing from
white mountains and green hills to water our fields and our cities.
“Do not walk proudly on the earth…”
Remember her offspring, sharers and partners with us
in the web of creation, manifestations of the infinite variety.
“Do not walk proudly on the earth…”
Remember her people, our sisters and brothers in
humanity, yearning for peace and plenty, life and liberty
May there be balance and harmony on the earth,
and may we not walk proudly upon her.
(from The Way of the Pilgrim, Cliff Reed (1993), with permission).
Holy Spirit, making life alive,
Moving in all things, root of all creative being,
Cleansing the cosmos of every impurity,
Effacing guilt, anointing sounds.
You are lustrous and praiseworthy life.
You waken and re-awaken everything that is.
(from the 12th-century mystic, Hildegard of Bingen)
Hope, a state of mind, not a state of the world
Lord,
Forgive us that in your name, so often,
we seek the joy of success and are
only willing to invest in enterprises
that are obviously headed to an early success.
Instead, fill us with your sort of deep and powerful hope,
which rejects a fragile optimism that things will turn out for the best
and replaces it with the conviction that our journey with you makes sense
regardless of how it seems to turn out.
Walton (no copyright)
based on words from Havel, 1990, Disturbing the Peace: A Conversation with Karel Huizdala, Havel, 1990 New York: Nation Books.
Prophetic weeping
No wonder the prophet weeps yet –
We begin again, but not innocent…
As we begin, the powers of globalization surge;
there are victims, but we are mostly beneficiaries.
There are wars and rumours of wars,
there are victims, but we are likely perpetrators.
There is violence, towards women and children, towards the poor
violence which refuses to forgive,
and we are a mix
of victim and perpetrator.
The democratic process continues
but it is mostly devoid of gravitas.
and our alarm is modest.
No wonder there is fear, reams of despair, and acres of weeping!
And we feebly watch for you and wait.
Teach us how to weep while we wait,
and how to hope while we weep,
and how to care while we hope… Amen
from Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Prayers of Walter Brueggemann, Fortress Press, 2003, with permission.
The Journey
When the earth is sick and dying,
There will come a tribe of people
From all races…
Who will put their faith in deeds,
Not words, and make the planet
Green again…
Cree Prophecy
Earth Prayer
Earth teach me freedom
as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth teach me regeneration
as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
as dry fields weep with rain.
Apache Blessing
May the sun bring you new energy by day,
may the moon softly restore you by night,
may the rain wash away your worries,
may the breeze blow new strength into your being,
may you walk gently through the world and
know it’s beauty all the days of your life.
(from World Healing prayers (http://www.worldhealingprayers.com)
Eternal God
out of your great generosity
you brought the world into being
and gave it life.
Then you gave it yourself,
on the cross of human suffering.
Such priceless, painful, giving!
Did you invite us here to show us that?
Then show it to us once more, O God!
Show us a different kind of world,
a different cost of living,
where the pain will not be eased
by the money we spend on ourselves,
but by the way we spend ourselves for others,
and the way we value life.
Eternal God,
out of your great generosity,
make us generous; bring us into being.
Amen
© The Iona Community, Iona Abbey Worship Book (2001),
Wild Goose Publications, Glasgow, p.156. www.ionabooks.com
Next: A Prayer for Extinction Rebellion
Previous: Prayer Resource Books – a list
Comments on "Lamentation Prayers"
Ruth Jarman:
Thank you for your prayers, Jill.
Jill:
Sitting / praying / weeping ... outside Parliament today, Wed 10 July, grateful for this resource (and the GC Prayer Diary (Thank you Andii and Emma) So glad to be alongside the faithful pray-ers who are here every Wed.
marisa mann:
A lot to think about and carefully collected
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