Opening words:	Again did the earth shift
	Again did the nights grow short,
	And the days long.
	And the people
	of the earth were glad
	and celebrated
	each in their own ways.
		-Diane Lee Moomey
Song:	"Spring"
	The seasons are shifting, The winter shades lifting,
	The springtime is filling
	Earth's children with mirth.
	The daffodil yellow, The south wind so mellow,
	The gentle rain falling,
	Upon the green earth.
	The song sparrow singing, New life quickly springing,
	All nature is telling
	A tale of rebirth:
	The deep wells of being, Beyond each day's seeing,
	O'er flowing with new Life,
	Restoring the earth.
		-David E. Bumbaugh, 1998

All: We come this day to honor our mother, the Earth.

First let us establish the four corners: Turning to the East, whence dawns the day and year,

We honor mother earth as the source of spring and rebirth,

Turning to the South,

We honor mother earth as the source of fire and energy, of spirit and youthful activity.

Turning to the West, where drowns the sun when day is done and life ebbs annually with the fall,

We honor mother earth as source of water and reflection, of endings that support beginnings.

Turning to the North, midnight of light and winter-pause of life,

We honor mother earth as source of dark, enriching soil, of winter-enforced rest and the wisdom borne of potential.

And turning last to the center, symbol of the interdependent web of all existence

All: We honor mother earth who encompasses us always in a circle that is complete.

-Beverly Bumbaugh

Green Onion

Like a slender, green exclamation point rising out of a sleeping earth,
the wild onion announces the arrival of spring.
The onion is an ancient symbol of mystery.
If you peel an onion,
removing layer after layer of transparent tissue,
when you get to the center of the onion,
there is nothing there.

An apple grows around a core
where seeds of future trees lie hidden and safe;
the peach grows around a pit
as hard and as solid as a rock.
But the onion grows around a mystery,
an empty center.

And yet, every spring,
in meadows and unmowed yards,
out of that empty center,
the wild onion sends up its green spikes
to welcome the reborn sun.

When I was a little boy,
living in a city apartment,
away from fields and meadows and wild onions,
we knew when spring had come.
We could taste it at breakfast. nibbling at everything fresh and new and green
got the news from the wild onion
and passed it along to us
in their milk.

Egg

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Some ancient traditions insist
the entire world and everything in it But some wiseguy asked, "Who laid the egg?
It must have been a cosmic hen!"
and the question of priority returns.
But it doesn't matter how you answer it;
in culture all around the earth
the egg,
plain or colored,
laid by a hen or brought by a rabbit,
reminds us that
beneath the fragile shell of things,
new possibilities are always waiting to come to birth.

Water

Life on earth was born in water;
the warm, salt seas of our ancient planet
were our nursery and our first home.
And life remained in the sea
until a way was found to enclose salt water
in a membrane of skin
so we could take the ancient salt sea
with us onto land.
We are still mostly water;
while we can go for a while, perhaps weeks, without food;
without water we die in a matter of hours.
We carry the seas in which life was born
with us and throughout our lives --
in our blood and in our tears.
Water, as a source and as a necessity
unites us with all that lives and moves and has being on the earth.
In the spring, it is water,
warm rain that awakens new life and refreshens the earth.
In truth, April Showers bring May flowers.

Soil

Dirt -- we fuss and complain about it;
we sweep it out of our homes
and dust it off the furniture;
we wash it out of our clothes
and from the faces of our children.
And yet, we are drawn to soil, to the dirt.
Is there anything more satisying
than the feel of warm mud between the toes?
Is there anything more gratifying than digging in the dirt --
planting and pruning and weeding
and sometimes even harvesting?
Is there anything more rewarding
than the sight of new green life
breaking through the crust of soil,
reaching toward the sun,
uniting earth and sky in its living form?
We are of the earth;
we grow out of the soil --
out of the dirt created
by wind and water moving across rocks
and by generations of living things
giving back to the earth
the elements of their lives.
We are of the earth,
we grow out of the soil,
and in the end, we too
shall return to the dirt
to the soil,
to the earth from which we came.

Every year, at the Seder,
a cup is set aside for one who is not present
but is always expected.
In Africa and in many earth centered traditions,
on important occasions
a cup is poured out
to invite the spirits of those who have traveled
this path before us
to invoke their blessing upon
the present generation.

Tonight, as part of our ceremony,
we set aside this Cup of the Generations,
as a reminder of those who have preceded us
across the generations
as reminder of those who are
important to us
and who are not here tonight,
and as a welcome
to all those who are yet to join us.

-David Bumbaugh, 1998

From Hindu scriptures
...the golden person in the Sun...
is the same who enters within the inner
lotus of the heart to feed upon
the transient images of the world...
and is the same whom in the sky
as Fire of the Sun, we call "Time"
the unperceived devourer
of all transient beings.

-Maitri Upanishad

See "Spring," by Rumi, The Essential Rumi, pg. 33-34, published by Harper, 1995.

From France

On certain mornings, as we turn a corner,
an exquisite dew falls on our heart
and then vanishes.
But the freshness lingers, and this, always,
is what the heart needs.
The earth must have risen in just such a light
the morning the world was born.

-Albert Camus (1913-1960) SONG: Standing Like a Tree

Naturalist, Essayist
I have an appointment with the Spring.
She comes to the window to wake me
and I go forth an hour or two earlier than usual.
What is the use of a house
if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

-Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

Astronomer, Educator
...small as is our whole system
compared with the infinitude of creation,
brief as is our life compared with cycles of time,
we are so tethered to all by the beautiful dependencies of law,
that not only the sparrow's fall is felt
to the uttermost bound by the vibration set in motion
by the words that we utter reach through all space
and the tremor is felt through all time.

-Maria Mitchell (1818-1889)

Minister
There is a serenity that comes
only in the high hills;
there is a force of peace, a center
where the human heart gathers its strength.
When I am beset, I seek the mountain --
to wonder at it.

-Thomas Starr King (1824-1864)

Poet, Essayist
I wonder what spendthrift chose to spill
Such a bright gold under my windowsill!
Is it fair gold? Does it glitter still?
Bless me! It's a daffodil!

-Celia Thaxter (1835-1894)

See "Balloonman," by e.e. cummings, Selected Poems by e.e. cummings, pg. 5, published by Grove Press, 1926, 1959.

Statesman
We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.

-Adlai Stevenson (1900-1965)

Minister
A young woman could not go to her mother's funeral
because she was giving birth to a baby daughter.
Her name was Spring.

Kenneth L. Patton (1911-1994)

Poet, Diarist
Help us to be the always hopeful
Gardeners of the spirit
Who know that without darkness
Nothing comes to birth
As without light
Nothing flowers.

-May Sarton (1912-1995)

Minister

Whatever life may be
resembles nothing quite so much as Spring
which wanders with arms full of blossoms
while the petals spill.
We live by losing what we are
as when a moon is tumbling out of mist
wonderingly
to look in a dark lake,
we scoop the light up in our hands
how carefully, it isn't there.

We'll learn at last to let light go
and dreams grow old to spill
in suddenness
and reappear
impossibly
like crocuses.

-Raymond Baughan (1913-1993)

Ministers There's something pagan in the way I feel. It's almost as if I could believe as ancient people did, that along in March or April, Winter fought with Summer for the earth, and finally compromised with Spring.

-Max Coots (1927 -)

In this, the season of steady rebirth,
we awaken to the power so abundant, so holy,
that returns each year through earth and sky.
We will find our hearts again, and our good spirits.
We will love, and believe, and give and wonder,
and feel again the eternal powers.
The flow of life moves ever onward
through one faithful spring,
and another,
and now another.

-Jane Rzepka (1950 - )

We call upon the earth, our planet home, with its
beautiful depths and soaring heights, its
vitality and abundance of life,
And together we ask that it Teach us and show us the way.

We call upon the mountains...
the high green valleys and meadows filled with
wild flowers, the snows that never melt, the summits of intense silence,
And we ask that they Teach us and show us the way.

We call upon the waters that rim the earth, horizon to horizon,
that flow in our rivers and streams,
that fall upon our gardens and fields,
And we ask that they Teach us and show us the way.

We call upon the land which grows our food, the nurturing soil,
the fertile fields, the abundant gardens and orchards,
And we ask that they Teach us and show us the way.

We call upon the forests,
the great trees reaching strongly to the sky
with earth in their roots and the heavens in their branches,
the fir and pine and the cedar.
And we ask them to Teach us and show us the way.

We call upon the creatures of the fields and forests and the seas,
our brothers and sisters the wolves and deer,
the eagle and dove, the great whales and the dolphin,
the beautiful Orca and salmon
And we ask them to Teach us and show us the way.

We call upon all those who have lived on this earth,
our ancestors and our friends,
who dreamed the best for future generations,
and upon whose lives our lives are built.
And with thanksgiving, we call upon them to Teach us and show us the way.

All: And lastly, we call upon all that we hold most sacred,
the presence and power of the Great Spirit of love and truth
which flows through the universe...
to be with us to teach us and show us the way.

May you be blessed with an awesome case of Spring Fever.
May the variegated holiness of the season claim your body,
heart, mind and spirit and bless you again and again.
May your spirit quicken with the awakening earth.
May you sing your own psalm
with the cardinal and the chickadee.
May you disintegrate into laughter.
May your soul stream merge...
into the great ocean of Love and Life.

-Ann Tyndall