Prayers
Touching the Earth for Our Adversaries
By Joanna Macy
You, who deliberately engage in the destruction of the environment
for your own profit,
you show me how much I value what is honest, what is generous,
what has been clearly thought through,
what is expressive of love for this planet home
and our human and nonhuman fellow beings.
So I bow to you in gratitude
and touch the Earth.
You bring forth in me the passion and love I feel
for this life-bearing land, its soil, air and waters,
and the beings they nurture;
the passion I feel for integrity and strong, sustainable community.
Because of the strength with which I resist your actions,
I have seen how strong my love and passion really are.
I bow to you in gratitude
and touch the Earth.
Because the pain I feel when I allow myself
to witness the pain of the world is no less than your pain--
you, who perpetuate destruction
and cut yourselves off from needs of the present
and the generations of the future,
I bow to you in compassion
and touch the Earth.
Because the pain of greed, alienation and fear
are no less than the pain of sorrow and mourning for what is lost,
I bow to you in compassion
and touch the Earth.
For the power of my anger, transforming itself
into love for the beauty and integrity of all life-forms,
and for the bright energy of my passion for justice
and the health of all beings,
I bow to you in gratitude
and touch the Earth.
Because we all want to be happy, to feel ourselves
intact and part of a single whole, for that shared longing,
I bow to you in compassion
and touch the Earth.
Because you challenge me by your actions, demanding
that I release my attachment to the belief
that my view, my understanding, is the only correct one,
I bow to you in gratitude
and touch the Earth.
For you who teach me that the mind is a limitless source,
a miracle capable of manifesting as love,
as greed, as fear, capable of clarity or delusion,
blind to the consequence of action
or open to the boundless coherence
of all that we do and experience in life.
For you who show me what I myself am capable of
when I let my life be governed by fear and greed,
great awesome teachers,
I bow to you in gratitude
and touch the Earth.
In awe of the mind's capability for delusion and alienation
that calls me so insistently
to understanding and joy,
I bow to you
and touch the Earth.
With the understanding that all this will pass
and with love in my heart,
I bow to you
and touch the Earth.
-- submitted by Rev. Vail Weller
| 
