BLESSED EARTH DAY

Snippet

Each soul must meet the morning sun, the new sweet earth, and the Great Silence alone. (The Gospel of the Redman Ernest Thompson Seton Pg. 18

Scripture

You will go out in joy

    and be led forth in peace;

the mountains and hills

    will burst into song before you,

and all the trees of the field

    will clap their hands.

 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,

    and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.

This will be for the Lord’s renown,

    for an everlasting sign,

    that will endure forever.”

Isaiah 55:12,13

Song

Calling out your name

Rich Mullins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaNwTYJrYtA

Well the moon moved past Nebraska

And spilled laughter on them cold Dakota Hills

And angels danced on Jacob's stairs

Yeah, they danced on Jacob's stairs

There is this silence in the Badlands

And over Kansas the whole universe was stilled

By the whisper of a prayer

The whisper of a prayer

And the single hawk bursts into flight

And in the east the whole horizon is in flames

I feel thunder in the sky

I see the sky about to rain

And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

I can feel the earth tremble

Beneath the rumbling of the buffalo hooves

And the fury in the pheasant's wings

And there's fury in a pheasant's wings

It tells me the Lord is in His temple

And there is still a faith

That can make the mountains move

And a love that can make the heavens ring

And I've seen love make heaven ring

Where the sacred rivers meet

Beneath the shadow of the Keeper of the plains

I feel thunder in the sky

I see the sky about to rain

And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

From the place where morning gathers

You can look sometimes forever 'til you see

What time may never know

What time may never know

How the Lord takes by its corners this old world

And shakes us forward and shakes us free

To run wild with the hope

To run wild with the hope

The hope that this thirst will not last long

That it will soon drown in the song

Not sung in vain

And I feel thunder in the sky

I see the sky about to rain

And I hear the prairies calling out Your name

Sentence Prayer

O GOD,

we thank you for this earth, our home; for the wide sky and the blessed sun, for the ocean and streams, for the towering hills and the whispering wind, for the trees and green grass.

We thank you for our senses by which we hear the songs of birds, and see the splendor of fields of golden wheat, and taste autumn's fruit, and rejoice in the feel of snow, and smell the breath of spring flowers.

GRANT US a heart opened wide to all this beauty; and save us from being so blind that we pass unseeing when even the common thornbush is aflame with your glory.  (http://www.appleseeds.org/earthday.htm)