earth

A Prayer For Our Beloved Earth

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T. Thorn Coyle blogs at Thorncoyle.com on her thoughts on practice, philosophy, politics and love. She wrote A Prayer For My Beloved in response to the catastrophe in the Gulf. Here are excerpts from it. To read the entire prayer, click here.

You have carried us, these long millions of years,
We beasts, we leafy fronds, we crouching walkers.
The ice has come, the ice has gone again.
Your crust has softened, hardened, cooled, and warmed…


Oil gushes from your sandy floor, betrayal.
Chemicals suffuse once fertile soil.
Holes are rent above your southern quadrant,
Mountains blasted open, or felled clear.


Your oceans saline quick, flow in our blood.
Lover, forever we can say, “I’m sorry,”
But actions speak far louder than strong words,
And we, though brave and brash, are also feeble.

Lover, I fall now to my knees before you.
I will not beg forgiveness, not just yet.
My good friends shall be gathered all around me,
Holding hands, we will make better still, amends

image copyright Conor Ashleigh 2008

Our Beautiful Planet, A “Mote of Dust Suspended in a Sunbeam”

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The Pale Blue Dot is a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by Voyager 1 from a record distance, showing it against the vastness of space.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar”, every “supreme leader”, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

~ Carl Sagan, Scientist and Writer

For more, you can watch this video narrated by Sagan, to hear him and see more pictures of this beautiful planet:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g]


Beautiful Earth

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“Bella Gaia” is a project by director and violinist Kenji Williams in collaboration with NASA. The stunningly beautiful  “Living Atlas” multimedia presentation combines music performed by Williams and other musicians with a backdrop of orbiting visualizations of Earth from space, simulating space flight. Bella Gaia expresses the deeply moving beauty of planet Earth as seen through the eyes of astronauts, and serves as a reminder of the fragility and beauty of the planet we all  inhabit.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiI7vMbSpn8&feature=player_embedded]

Go to BellaGaia.com for more.

A Prayer for the Earth

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21 days left before world leaders meet in Copenhagen for UN Climate Talks.

As today is Sunday, I thought I would share an excerpt from A Prayer for the Earth, written by Tim Costello of World Vision Australia and Brian McClaren, a speaker, writer, and contributor to Sojourners “God’s politics” blog.

A Prayer for the Earth

Most gracious God, creator of all good things, we thank you for planet Earth and all creatures that share it.

Have mercy on us, Lord. Through ignorance and carelessness we have poisoned clean air and pure water. For monetary gain we have reduced verdant forests to barren wastes. In our craving for more we have plundered your beloved creation and driven many of our fellow creatures to extinction. Only recently have we begun to realize the dangerous future into which our current patterns of consumption and waste are driving us, especially in relation to Earth’s climate. Only recently have we begun to see our need to find a wiser and better way of life in the future, before it is too late and our choices are limited by the consequences of inaction.

We who join in prayer today believe the time has come, Lord. Please guide us now, our God, at this critical moment in history, to better fulfill our role as stewards of this fragile planet. Guide the leaders of nations who will gather in Copenhagen on Dec. 7. Give them courage to set noble goals that reach beyond short-range political expediency, short-term economic profit, and short-sighted self-interest. Impress upon their conscience our sacred duty to bequeath to our children and grandchildren a healthy and thriving environment rather than a world in climate crisis.

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