- Jun 28, 2018
- 24 min read

Environment and Climate Challenges, Advocacy, and Response

Updated: 2 days ago

Prayers

Saving the planet Earth.

Let the students march and speak, Let the youth protest and cry, Let the day of justice roll on, May they change the world with truth and confound the lie. The world is heating, we are cooking ourselves to death, We are burning coal and oil and everything we can, We are the arsonists of this planet and will bring it to an end, We will soon return to the primeval state from where we first began. So raise your banner and join the march, Let your voice be loud for all to hear, There is nothing more important than we stand, As one against the intimidation and the fear. The climate is a changing, the forests are burning and falling down, The oceans are filled with plastic and the earth is turning from green to brown. We must challenge the politics and the powers, The tycoons of industry and corruption all around, We must cry foul, to save the Earth, The climate is changing for the worst, that is the greatest threat. I see the hope in the voices of the youth, That demand with Greta that change must come I feel the strength and the mighty power of honesty and the truth, The people are on the move, the children and the old, The brave and courageous youth. They will change the minds and hardened hearts, they will restore the Planet green and blue, They will live and fight for what is so right, good and true. by Father Shay Cullen Profiles in Catholicism

A prayer to protect the environment

“Incorporation”

Dear Lord, you grew from the gift of your nourishing mother, Mary,

Who had drunk from the water and eaten from the food of the land:

What splashes of light, dazzled, broke and burst from the jars, as they

Filled to the brim, were scooped off to drink and poured off to wash.

What sounds of work, whether choosing and carrying the wood of a

Carpenter, toiling in the heat and sheltering in the shade of the foliage.

What contrasts in the flowers, colored shadows, coolness in the night, Nurturing listening, listening again, and again talking with the Father.

Oh Creator-God, how amazing are the atomic particles which glue As water whooshing, swirling and umbrelling into flowing shapes

Challenging us to think liquid, droplets, vapour and solid as the Rise and fall of heat transports a “sticky” flow from state to state.

Dear Lord, you were baptised by the Baptist, in the Jordon waters off mountains, passed by the land, into the liturgy of entering the Church:

What numberless times you healed broken hearts and bodies in Israel So tendrils of praise reached, like in a lightning storm, to your Father.

What skies shone in the firmament, showing through from the Beginning, the out of reach splendour of colouring swathes of heaven.

What time you gave to giving us a whole life, unhampered in the Giving, taking into life all who came and did come and are coming.

Oh Creator-God, how human you have made us, making us to be Among each other, like the community that you are, giving each One of us a unique identity, conceived-in-relationship, raised in relationship, ready to meet you and us in this “place of meeting”.

Dear Lord, you were born into a family, extended over time by the welcome of others, whether their parents died or were too ill to care.

What gathering of others and being gathered, whether walking and Working with Joseph, helping to bear the load of low-income living.

What is left of your garments, woven from plant threads, fibre science Passed from generation to generation, woven well into a single whole.

What everyday delights in the spaces between home and being away, In the fruit of the land, in the Synagogue and in the singing of psalms.

Oh Creator-God, how many gifts you poured into men and Women, from the use of human hands to shape and write, sing, invent, to philosophise, to understand, like good doctors, how to work with the grain of growth and to give a word from you to help.

Dear Lord, you took to yourself the goodness of creation and there, beheld, that wheat and grapes, worked by human hands, are changed:

What hours of work, from preparing the ground to planting, to Carefully picking off the slugs and bugs and giving them another diet.

What suffering as a blight takes hold and defeats the ingenuity of man,

Who bleeds from his heart as the earth’s yield diminishes and drops.

What hope arises with the help of God to persevere and plant again, Joined in so many ways to the help of others, sending grain-as-gifts.

Oh Creator-God, how intricately woven are the tiny organs, Encased within seeds, embryonic unfolding of plants, shooting Down and rising up, twirling around sticks, flowering orangy-red, Hosting insects, losing colour and growing beans and flowering.

Dear Lord, how we wrought a thorny crown out of what had grown, nails and hammer out of the ore of the earth and a cross from a tree.

What mangling of the human body we have practiced, especially Upon the innocent, the vulnerable, the undefended, in denial of death.

What freezing, experimentation, plans of torment we have explored In the flesh of the living, imagining we will not answer to our Maker.

What hidden wounds we have inflicted on ourselves at each turn of The pain that wells up, when we are addressed by our very actions.

Oh Creator-God, how beautiful is the recreation of the lost, the Poor and poor of heart, the broken and abandoned, the renewal of Planet home, the replanting, recycling, revisiting the places of Hatred with songs of reconciliation and understanding of wounds.

Dear Lord of the Resurrection, let us rise with you in time, hoping to begin the transfiguring ascent, taking what love everlastingly does!

by Francis Etheredge Profiles in Catholicism

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