2nd Sunday of Easter/Earth Day

Liturgy: Acts 2:14a, 22-32; Psalm 16; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

Five Spiritual Practices for Earth Day

 1. Attention

The great Catholic writer Ernesto Cardenal in Abide in Love observes: “Everything in nature has a trademark, God’s trademark: the stripes on a shell and the stripes on a zebra; the grain of the wood and the veins of the dry leaf; the markings on the dragonfly’s wings and the pattern of stars on a photographic plate; the panther’s coat and the epidermal cells of the lily petal; the structure of atoms and galaxies. All bear God’s fingerprints.” Go for a walk and look for God’s trademarks. Better still, use a camera to document evidence of God’s fingerprints in the nature.

2. Being Present

Annie Dillard has written: ‘My God, what a world. There is no accounting for one second of it.” Get personal with one small piece of the Earth. Sit in the dirt in your backyard. Play in the sand at the beach. Roll in the grass. Stand under a waterfall. Sense the Earth as an animal senses it. Be really present with your planetary host.

3. Joy

Listen to Three Dog Night’s classic rock song Three Dog Night: Joy to the World with the lyric “Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea.” Imagine all the other gifts of God in the plant and animal kingdom that give you pleasure and fill your heart with joy.

4. Openness

Embrace your environment. Walk around the perimeter of your home. Explore it as if being there for the first time. What do you see, feel, hear, smell? Continue this process as you move further out into your community. Make a list of things you discover that you have never seen before.

5. You

Rededicate yourself to the live lightly and respectfully on the planet. Repeat this vow:

We join with the Earth and with each other.

To bring new life to the land

To restore the waters

To refresh the air

We join with the Earth and with each other.

To renew the forests

To care for the plants

To protect the creatures

We join with the Earth and with each other.

To celebrate the seas

To rejoice in the sunlight

To sing the song of the stars

We join with the Earth and with each other.

To recreate the human community

To promote justice and peace

To remember our children