Our Entire Life Is an Earth Prayer

Photos are by Molly

 

 Our Entire Life Is an

Earth Prayer

Earth Prayer begins with our intuition of the oneness of life. We recognize that our identity is inextricably entwined with lives beyond our own. This sense of expanded identity goes beyond human relationships. We depend upon trees, trees depend upon grasses, grasses depend upon animals, mountains depend upon oceans, the dolphin depends upon the farthest star. Physically and spiritually, we are all woven into the living processes of the Earth. We take part in — as science now tells us — a planet-sized living system. Our breathing, our acting, our thinking arise in interaction with our shared world. Our own hearts constantly beat out the cosmic rhythm within us. We cannot escape our involvement any more than we can escape breathing the air that has traveled from plants thousands of miles away.

The mountains, I become part of it ...

the herbs, the fir tree, I become part of it.

the morning mists, the clouds, the gathering

waters, I become part of it.

— Navajo chant

When we ground our spiritual awareness in this ecological context, then the strength and wisdom of the living Earth, in all its manifestations, flows through us. Our Earth Prayer becomes a means of acting upon ourselves. It helps us to empty the self and to open or hearts to be filled with empathy and creativity.

The ecological self, like any notion of selfhood, is simply a metaphor, but it is a dynamic one. It involves our choice. We can choose at different moments to identify with different aspects of our interrelated existence — be they hunted whales, or homeless humans, or the planet itself. The prayers in this chapter remind us of this deep kinship — our bondedness with all of creation.

Look deeply. I arrive in every second

to be a bud on a spring branch,

to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,

learning to sing in my new nest,

to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,

to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone ...

Please call me by my true names,

so I can wake up,

and so the door of my heart can be left open,

the door of compassion. 

— Thích Nhất Hạnh

These prayers seek to heal the division that has grown between us and the rest of nature. They tell us: Pay attention. Attend to the relationships alive among all forms of life. Use imagination to explore the binding curved that joins us together.  Seek to know the other. Join with it. Care for it as for yourself. When the human spirit is understood in this sense, as the mode of consciousness in which we are all connected to the planet as a whole, it becomes clear that our entire life is an Earth Prayer.

From Earth Prayers From Around the World:

366 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations For

Honoring the Earth