19 May Laudato si weeK efforts/usa
Here is our modest response to your question about participation in Laudato Si Week activities:
To be in solidarity with Laudato Si Week, we are saying prayers sent from the Vatican and from Global Catholic Climate Movement originating in our country. In order to increase our solidarity with the reverence for earth felt by persons of other beliefs, in particular those less familiar to us, we have been reciting daily a Grace before Meals that expresses the concerns of these sisters and brothers for the planet. The prayers are not necessarily contemporary: they could be a prayer of hundreds of years ago. Here is one from the UTE Nation of Indigenous peoples of North America:
Earth, teach me stillness as the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth, teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth, teach me humility as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth, teach me caring as the mother who secures her young.
Earth, teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth, teach me limits as the ant which crawls on the ground.
Earth, teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth, teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth, teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth, teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth, teach me to remember kindness, as dry fields weep with rain.
In a small gesture of care for our Common Home and toward the simplicity of reuse, we have planted bulbous flower gifts received for Easter, that formerly we may have thrown out.
We continue to advocate online through groups with thousands of petitioners not only for endangered areas and species of the Northern Hemisphere/ Just within the week, (May 11-18, 2020) we heard of and responded to the pipeline oil spill which is disastrous for indigenous peoples of the Peruvian Amazon.
In order to continue our ecological conversion, we watched the feature film (Malawi language, English subtitles) The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind [Netflix]. We recommend it. The systemic oppression and lack of access to basic education is hard to watch. Yet the amazing triumph that results when a persistent youth seeks the unorthodox help of educators in his primitive village is worth a confirming YES!
Kathleenjoy Cooper acj
on behalf of the Wyncote community, USA
