Seeing westerly clouds gather you declare, “Rain is coming”; and it does.
And as southern winds arise you say, “It will be hot”; and so it is.
Luke 12:54-55
Seeker,
Where do you see possibilities for peace in lives possessed by violence?
Tilting toward solstice,
reading gathering clouds
that announce a warming season,
let us lean into the light,
away from death-dealing destruction
that soaks soil red,
and heed instead
urgent pleading from earth’s children
to root our lives in reverence.
May this ageless blessing song
lead us back around
to love’s own holy home ground.
Deep peace of quiet earth.
Blue-green mother of pearl, planet home,
your blessed bedrock, stony summits, rolling hills,
tilly fields, forests, and wetland moors,
deserts and dusty plains,
hold every growing thing.
The earth is our origin and destination.
John O’Donohue
Deep peace of running wave.
Blessed ever-flowing streams, wellsprings, falls,
pools and ponds, rolling rivers, limpid lakes,
churning surf and salty swirling seas,
all you holy waters that rise and rain down again,
sustaining bodies, refreshing spirits.
It is a curious situation that the sea,
Rachel Carson
from which life first arose
should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life.
Deep peace of flowing air.
Blessed ceaseless wind,
breezes soft and stirring,
gusting fresh and howling furious
that blow through every breathy being.
Praised be thee,
Francis of Assisi
through Brother Wind,
air, cloudy and serene, and every form of weather.
Deep peace of creature kin.
Blessed earthlings all, who climb and creep,
gallop, fly, slink, and swim.
And blessed every family of people
who upright wander, worry and wonder
at the tragic beauty of life’s tapestry.
Compassion can be lost as easily as species,
Charlie Elder
and when it goes, then plants and animals are sure to follow.
Deep peace of dark and day.
Blessed burning light-bringer,
our ever-glowing giver.
And blessed waxing-waning moon,
constant companion,
wave ruler, weaver of dreams and nightly lantern.
I will love the light for it shows me the way,
Og Mandino
yet I will endure the darkness because it shows me the stars.
Deep peace of shining stars.
Blessed diamond constellations,
pilgrim planets, scintillating galaxies, billowing nebulae,
a wondrous window to infinity that decorates timeless dark.
Let the waters settle and you will see
Rumi
the moon and the stars mirrored in your being.
Deep peace of the font of life.
Sacred Source of chaotic creativity,
infusing compassion into every spiraled helix,
whose blessed boundless presence,
with benevolence universal,
bestows upon troubled times enduring peace.
For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day.
Evelyn Underhill
In our language
one day we have named for the moon,
another for Saturn,
and the sacred day of rest
we dedicate
to our daystar.
What if we turned every Sun-day
into Earth-day,
and gave our holy home a weekly sabbath?
The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy,
Wendell Berry
and after all, our most pleasing responsibility.
To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
joe
Joe Grant is a seer and a sayer, a prophet and a poet. He divines the divine in the everyday stuff of life and speaks the essential truth that every place can be a thin place, every time Kairos time. Scratchings is Joe at his alliterative best, offering us a beautiful sacramental vision in which Spirit weaves us into a great, timeless community with each other and with the more-than-human world. This quiet, gentle, but powerful book is absolutely necessary medicine for our troubled times.
- Kyle Kramer, Executive Director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center
In the Storm Still 