Lenten Journey With the Earth Through the Stations of the Cross

March 3, 2022March 11, 2022 Claudio Carvalhaes 554 Views

Lent – The Stations of the Cross and the Earth

By Cláudio Carvalhaes

Friends,

This is a Lenten journey through the Stations of the Cross. It was done in 2021 with folks at Ghost Ranch. I am making it available for everyone who desires to use it. It was focused on the issues of climate disaster and the lives and death of so much around us: people, animals, bioregions, diversity. COVID was all upon us fully! This year we have another war in front of us and you can add whatever your community is going through to your meditations as well. Do what you want need and/or feel inclined. At the end there are resources for each week.

The magnificent painting of this Lent was done by the Jewish liberation theologian and artist Marc H. Ellis.

I pray you will be blessed through this journey Let me know if you have any question.

Cláudio Carvalhaes

March 2022

General Instructions

Throughout our time together this Lenten Season, you will be sent rituals each week to follow. You can follow the directions exactly as they are or you can also change, move things, add or do what you and/or your community need or can do. Know that the directions might challenge you. They might frustrate you but this is also part of the process. And we will talk about the process every Monday.

You might choose to do both stations each Friday OR you might spread them out to two days.

So, are you ready?

Before you start… Go to the outdoors and choose a tree to companion you on this journey. When possible, you will be doing your stations of the cross with/near this tree. The tree can be in your backyard, on your street, in a park. If it is too cold and/or you have lots of snow stay home and do it with a plant. Or you can do it at your window looking at the tree you will be with.

Adapt the prayers and rituals according to your proximity to the tree or the plant.

LET US BEGIN!

FIRST STATION – JESUS IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE – JESUS IS SUFFERING

Theological theme:

Jesus is condemned to death. Jesus is suffering.

Theological insight

The same way Jesus was condemned to death we are also sentencing so many people to death and also we are condemning so much of the earth to death: animals, soil, oceans, air, water.

Once you find a tree, seat and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. At every breathe you say:

I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived

Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water next to the tree and say:

With this water I bless you.

Prayer

God of love I’ve come to you in this lonely hour to listen and to pray. I come to you to walk with Jesus in his path to the cross ~ paying attention to the earth, your body, your gift to us. I pray to be one with you and the earth. I pray to be able to listen to you as I listen to the earth! I pray that the cross will remind me of your love given to me through the earth. Today, I come to you to remember Jesus Christ in his last hours. God we are reminded that Jesus was betrayed and will suffer. He was condemned to death and his soul is shaking. We listen to Jesus prayer. God have mercy.

Pause – 1 minute

God of the wee hours, there are so many people right know suffering and feeling lonely and afraid. I pray for those whose prayers are not heard, for those who are so weak they can’t pray. I pray for them. For those who are stuck in places where they cannot be visited and can’t feel the human touch. Those with COVID. God I pray for those uttering sounds of sorrow and pain to you just like Jesus did. God have mercy.

Pause – 1 minute

God of the trees I pray for all animals suffering right now. For the waters suffering right now, for the trees being ripped apart mercilessly everywhere, for animals dying because of human violence right now. God, I listen to their cries. God have mercy. Amen.

Reader: Matthew 26:36-41 – Jesus Prays in Gethsemane

Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, ‘Sit here while I go over there and pray.’ He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. Then he said to them, ‘I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.’ And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.’ Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, ‘So, could you not stay awake with me one hour? Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.’

Ritual Gesture:

Put your back on the tree. Look around, pay attention to everything around you: people, cars, trees, grass, light, clouds, heaven, stars, crickets…. Pay attention to what is around you and feel you are a part of it all. It is a ritual gesture of attention and amplification!

Meditation

Think with these questions:

What was Jesus feeling that night?

How do we relate our loneliness and the loneliness of the world with Jesus loneliness?

Jesus suffering reminds us of the suffering of the world.

Who is suffering today that I need to remember? Raise their names and say a prayer: “Andrea I pray for you now.”

As you look around, pray for other forms of life around you. How Jesus suffering can be related to the sufferings of the earth? Can Jesus painful words be related to the unspoken painful words of the earth? As the Apostle Paul reminds us that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.

Can we hear the pain of Jesus’s suffocating words in the voice of the earth suffering? If so where? Name some places near your house and elsewhere where mountains, rivers, animals are suffering.

Meditate – Pray

Silence

Ritual of naming the tree

Dear tree, I don’t know your name… But I will search for your history. I will try to find how long you’ve been here and how much you have witness to God’s creation. But for now, I want to say I am so grateful you are here near me. if you allow me, I will give you a name that I will call you from now on.

I name call you … (Choose a name: joy, wonder, peace, Ana, Esther, John…)

My name is… I live here near you. I hope we can become friends.

. Put your forehead into the trunk of the tree and say both names:<your name> and <your tree’s name> Example: Cláudio and Wonder

Prayer for your tree

God of love I am grateful for <insert the name of your tree>.. I pray for her roots, for strength and healing. I also pray for all the trees on earth. May they continue to live in peace. May we humans change our way from seeing places as profit to see places where God lives through trees, plants, animals, rocks.

Prayer

God of loneliness and those abandoned.

We, me and <insert your tree’s name> want to listen.

We listen to Jesus pain

We listen to people’s pain

Those with COVID

Those losing beloved ones (including me…)

We pray for your presence where they are.

We pray

for those in jails,

for those without a home,

for those going hungry,

for those without health insurance,

for those in despair,

for those without means

Add your prayers…

We together, <insert your tree’s name> and I will pray

For this grass, for the sound of the rivers, for the clouds and starts above our heads, for the crickets and every other creature around us. May we feel the fulness of your presence through it all right now.

Amen.

Blessing

Stretching your arms above you, say:

I send a blessing to all suffering right now.

I bless you, you bless me.

May we hear each other’s sufferings,

May live in harmony and mutual kindness

May all who are dying feel the embrace of love and kindness.

Amen.

Pour the rest of the water next to the tree (or on the plant) and say:

I bless you with this water

Touch the tree one more time.

Suggestions:

Make the sign of the cross

Honor your tree with a bow.

Recite Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon to your tree (prayer on p.4)

Write/journal about your experience

Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon – St. Francis of Assisi

Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord, All praise is Yours, all glory, all honor and all blessings.

To you alone, Most High, do they belong, and no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.

Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,

Who is the day through whom You give us light.
And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor,
Of You Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
In the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all weather’s moods,
by which You cherish all that You have made.

Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water,
So useful, humble, precious and pure.

Praised be You my Lord through Brother Fire,
through whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong

Praised be You my Lord through our Sister,
Mother Earth
who sustains and governs us,
producing varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial.

Blessed are those who endure in peace, By You Most High, they will be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord through Sister Death,
from whom no-one living can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Blessed are they She finds doing Your Will.

No second death can do them harm. Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks,
And serve Him with great humility.

SECOND STATION – JESUS IS BETRAYED AND ARRESTED

Theological theme

The theme for this cross is Jesus’s betrayal and arrest.

Theological insight

The same way Jesus was betrayed, we have betrayed the earth. The earth gives us all we need in plentiful ways and we don’t reciprocate. We betray God’s gift to us. The injustice of Jesus arrest and betray is mirror in our days. The same way that Jesus was arrested, we are arresting thousands of innocent people and putting them in jail and death roll. Our jails public and private are packed. Animals have been arrested in overfishing, over hunting. We put animals in cages without any conditions for a dignified life.

Instructions

Bring a cup of water with you.

Seat or stand next to your tree. Pause and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. Slow breaths in and out. At every breathe you say:

I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived

Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water next to the tree and say:

With this water I bless you.

Prayer

I pray to be able to listen to you as I listen to Jesus being betrayed and arrested.

I pray to be able to listen to you as I listen to those who have been arrested and betrayed.

I pray to be able to listen to you as I listen to the earth who has been betrayed and arrested!

I pray that the cross will remind me of your love given to me through the earth.

Pause – 1 minute

May I remember Jesus feeling betrayed unjustly.

God of the scary hours, so many people have been betrayed (I have too). The taste of bitterness stays in our mouths and linger there for so long… Today I pray for those who were betrayed. I pray for healing, for some kind of wholeness again. And I pray for those who betrayed. I pray for awareness and repentance. God have mercy of us all for we are so confused.

Pause – 1 minute

God of reconciliation, we have betrayed each other and we have betrayed the earth. Our betrayal begins with our lack of consciousness of our deepest belonging with the earth. And because of that, we see the earth as resources for our living only. We don’t pay attention to the life of the earth. We have turned everything into consumerism. We have made the earth private property. We forgot that we are the earth and we keep betraying ourselves as we betray the ways the earth cares for us. God of forgiveness, have mercy on us.

Pause – 1 minute

Jesus taught us that we came to set us free. We pray for those who have been arrested. Any one that has been arrested, especially the children in private borders between Mexico and US. We ask forgiveness for creating jails to exist and for making it be a natural institution in our society as if punishment is the way to handle our sins. Help us treat each other better. We pray for an abolitionist revival in our country where everyone will be set free! And we will not fear! God of those arrested, give them sustenance, have mercy on them, set them free!

Pause.- 1 minute

God of all animals and species, we pray for all non-human life who have been locked, fished, hunted, experienced, caged, killed. We have lost our humanity. Help us turn our ways and see animals and species having equal worthy as us humans. Change our ways oh God, change our ways we pray.

God have mercy.

Amen.

Bible Reading: Mark 14: 43-46 – The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus

Then, while [Jesus] was still speaking, Judas, one of the Twelve, arrived, accompanied by a crowd with swords and clubs, who had come from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. His betrayer had arranged a signal with them, saying, “the man I shall kiss is the one; arrest him and lead him away securely.” He came and immediately went over to him and said, “Rabbi.” And he kissed him. At this they laid hands on him and arrested him.

Ritual Gesture:

Put your back on the tree and put your arms back as if you are shackled with the tree. Feel the body of the tree in your back. Let Wonder connect with you and you to Wonder.

Pause

Meditation

Think with these questions:

How did Jesus received the news of his betrayal and arrest?

How can we find ways out of betrayals? OF feeling betrayed?

Some people are proposing to abolish jails and create other forms of relation. What do you think of a world without jails?

We are so disconnected from the earth we don’t see that we are betraying the earth by consuming everything!

Can we accept the ways we are treating animals? Arresting them for our desires, for our unattended destructive patterns?

Meditate – Pray

Silence

Ritual of talking to the tree

Dear <insert the name of your tree>,, I am glad we are becoming friends. If I may here is what I have been thinking about the stations of the cross, about Lent, about life…

At the end, touch your head to the trunk of the tree and say both names: <your name and your tree’s name>

Prayer

God of loneliness and those abandoned.

We, me and <insert your tree’s name> want to listen

We want to listen to Jesus pain

We want to listen to people’s pain

Those with COVID

Those losing beloved ones (including me…)

We pray for your presence where they are.

We pray

for those in jails,

for those without a home,

for those going hungry,

for those without health insurance,

for those in despair,

for those without means

I now pray for <insert your tree’s name>

I pray for her roots, for strength and healing

We together will pray

God I have been frail, please listen to my cry.

Amen.

Blessing

Stretching your arms above you, say:

I send a blessing to all feeling betrayed right now.

I bless you, you bless me.

I send a blessing to all arrested right now, for those at the count jail (name) near me.

I bless you, you bless me.

I send a special blessing to all children arrested at the borders right now.

I bless you, you bless me.

I send a blessing to all the earth being betrayed by us humans.

I bless you, you bless me.

I send a blessing to all non-human beings being arrested right now.

I bless you, you bless me.

May we hear each other’s sufferings,

May we live in harmony and mutual care

May all who are dying feel the embrace of love and kindness.

Amen.

Pour the rest of the water next to the tree (or on the plant) and say:

I bless you with this water

Touch the tree one more time.

Suggestions:

Make the sign of the cross

Honor your tree with a bow.

Recite Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon to your tree (prayer included with Station 1, p.4 resources)

Write/journal about your experience.

THIRD STATION: JESUS IS CONDEMNED BY THE SANHEDRIN

The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

General Instructions

During this time you will have this ritual to follow and you can go through it the way it is. But I hope you will change, move things, add or do what you and/or your community need or can do. Know that it might challenge you, it might frustrate you but this is also part of the process. And we will talk about the process every Monday.

Before you start…

I hope that by now you are able to go visit your tree if you haven’t done that yet. The stations of the cross will always happen near this tree you chose and gave a name. It can be in your backyard, in your street, in a park. If it is too cold and/or you have lots of snow stay home and do it with a plant. If it is a plant relate to the plant the same way. Adapt the prayers and rituals according to your proximity to the tree or the plant.

. Bring a cup of water with you.

LET US CONTINUE!

Theological theme

Jesus is condemned. Jesus comes to the Sanhedrin, which was a council of elders that functioned as a court to decide, in this case, about Jesus fate. As we see, the Sanhedrin is a set up for Jesus’ accusation. The hearing is non-existent, the questions only show their intentions and the conversation has only one goal: to condemn Jesus.

Theological insight

The earth is trying to show us what we the human species are doing. Geologically, scientists are saying we are moving from the Holocene epoch to the Anthropocene epoch. Our anthropocene time is marked by the ways humans are changing the earth way more than the earth’s natural processes. We are affecting so many patterns and forms of life around the earth. We are shifting land, air, water, animals, causing the earth and the air to lose its balance. We are moving fast to a place of suffering and unknowns with climate change. However, many nations around the world are acting like a Sanhedrin to the earth: politicians and big corporations are only worried about money and don’t want to listen to the earth, they are denying global warming, calling what scientists are saying “fake news,” confusing weather with climate, saying we can have a sustainable development and so on. This all serves to condemn the earth and all who live in it to death.

Arrival:
1) Go to your tree/plant and bow to her, greeting <insert your tree’s name> with a smile.

Say, I am happy to be here with you.
2) Sit near tree/plant and breathe in and out for 5 minutes.

At every breathe you say: I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived
Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water next to the tree and say:

With this water I feed you, I care for you, I honor you.

Prayer

God of love, I’ve come to you in this lonely hour to listen and to pray. I come to you to walk with Jesus in his path to the cross – paying attention to the earth, your body, your gift to us. I pray to be one with you and the earth. I pray to be able to listen to you as I listen to the earth! I pray that the cross will remind me of your love given to me through the earth.

Today, I come to you to remember Jesus condemnation. Jesus didn’t have a fair hearing and was at the mercy of merciless powers. Jesus was condemned to death unjustly. Our hearts are torn apart with this ruthless, unfair and evil judgement. God have mercy.

God of the wee hours, across the world there are so many people being condemned to death and to very difficult ways of living. We pray for the people in Texas who are struggling for water and warmth. We pray for the people of Colorado City, TX, who heard from their mayor, an elder of the Sanhedrin saying that “The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING!… Only the strong will survive and the weak will [perish].”

God we are angry and tired of this kind of rhetoric and behavior. We pray that political leaders care for people and not corporations. We pray for mothers and fathers who can’t afford food during this pandemic and are feeling condemned to hunger. God have mercy.

Pause – 1 minute

God of healing, we have reached a half million people dying of COVID. We pray for those condemned to death by this virus and our lack of care. God have mercy of those lost beloved ones.

Pause – 1 minute

God of <insert your tree’s name>, we pray for every place where the earth has fallen due to the burden of us humans. We haven’t heard the voice of the earth. We have not considered the earth carefully. We have carried the pretense that we are above the animals and above the earth. We have not equated our living with the living of other species. Help us find better awareness of who we are in relation to your creation. God have mercy.

Amen.

Biblical Text: Luke 22: 66-71

When day came, the assembly of the elders of the people, both chief priests and scribes, gathered together, and they brought him to their council. They said, ‘If you are the Messiah, tell us.’ He replied, ‘If I tell you, you will not believe; and if I question you, you will not answer. But from now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.’ All of them asked, ‘Are you, then, the Son of God?’ He said to them, ‘You say that I am.’ Then they said, ‘What further testimony do we need? We have heard it ourselves from his own lips!’

Meditation

Think with these questions:
How do you think Jesus felt about his trial?
What do we see in our world that relates to unjust trials and unfair hearings?
Who are we condemning to death mercilessly? The poor, the children, the refugees. Whom else?
What parts of the earth are we condemning to death?
How our politics condemn the earth to death?
How deregulation of energy in Texas is creating this nightmare?
How can we gain awareness of these larger issues while composing our faith in God who cares for the earth? How can we turn from condemning to working with earth in mutual care?

Meditate – Silence

Ritual with your tree/plant

Place your two hands in your tree and say: Dear <insert your tree’s name>, we humans have been in an uneven relationship with you. Through you I want to say we are sorry for what we are doing to the earth. We are condemning all of us to death and we hope we will change that. I want to restore my relationship with the earth as I restore my relationship with you. I pray you will live a long life, that you will find good soil and care to grow. In God’s love.

. Put your forehead into the trunk of the tree and say both names: <your name> and < your tree’s name>,

Blessing

Stretching your arms above you, say:
God of love I bless the earth as I bless <insert your tree’s name>,. I send words of love and kindness to the earth as ways to restore all of the condemnation we have done to other humans, animals, and all other forms of life.
God of those condemned we pray for release for all condemned. Set all prisoners free! Set all animals free! Set the earth free! Set myself free!
In Jesus name: the one who was free even when condemned.
Amen.

Pour the rest of the water next to the tree (or on the plant) and say:

I bless you with this water

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross
Honor your tree with a bow.
Recite Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon to your tree (prayer on p.4 of Station 1) Write/journal about your experience

FOURTH STATION: JESUS IS DENIED BY PETER

General Instructions

Before you start…

. Bring a cup of water with you. LET US CONTINUE!

Theological theme

On top of betrayal and condemnation, Jesus is also denied by one of his beloved disciples.
Peter’s denial is both shocking and somewhat reassuring and that is because it expresses our human desires and limitations. On the one hand, we want to follow Jesus in the best way we can and yet we fail so miserably. I often have two feelings about this Peter in this passage: Out of my righteousness, I feel outraged about what Peter did. After all they lived together, how could he do that? On the other hand, I see myself in him too. How could he not be scared? Everything was rising in unpredictable ways, and there were threats to his life. In sum, Peter helps us see our full humanity, our good and bad ways of being, feeling, desiring and relating to God.

Theological insight:

The same way Peter denied Jesus, we keep on denying the earth. We deny the earth in so many ways, here are some:

Forgetfulness: we live as if the earth is a given;
Unawareness: we don’t realize we are from the earth; we don’t realize everything we have comes from the earth: internet, cloths, Bible, rings, pens, phones, books, everything IS earth!
Ownership: we think we own the earth when in fact we are part of the earth; we have turn the earth into private property;
Belonging: the earth doesn’t belong to us; we belong to the earth;
Theologically: we humans are the pinnacle of God’s revelation and the rest of it (animals, plants, trees) is there for our pleasure;
Eschatology: we think that the world is just a brief moment in our lives and that heaven is our most important goal;
Spirituality: we live as if nothing around us is alive.

Instructions

Bring a cup of water with you.

Seat or stand next to your tree/ plant. Pause and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. Slow breaths in and out. At every breath you say:

I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived
Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water next to the tree/plant and say:

With this water I bless you.

Prayer

God of love, I’ve come to you in this lonely hour to listen and to pray. I come to you to walk with Jesus in his path to the cross paying attention to the earth, your body, your gift to us. I pray to be one with you and the earth. I pray to be able to listen to you as I listen to the earth! I pray that the cross will remind me of your love given to me through the earth.

Today, I come to you to remember that Jesus was denied by Peter, the one who loved Jesus so intensely.

Pause – 1 minute

God of the wee hours, we are just like Peter. One moment we are courageous and in the next we are so fearful. One day we cut somebody’s ear and the next we are just afraid of what we did. We come to you asking for mercy. We carry with us our good and not so good angels. God of our mornings and evenings, we are capable of building beautiful things and also of destroying precious things. Have mercy on us.

Pause – 1 minute

God of our angels, we pray for those suffering with all sorts of mental illness these days. With COVID, so many people have lost structures of sustenance, places to hold them, people to care for them. So many people are dealing with depression, and abuse, and fear and anxiety. Children and adults. God have mercy.

Pause – 1 minute

God of <insert your tree’s name>, we pray for every place where the earth has been denied freedom, proper care and due provision. We have been like Peter saying we don’t know the earth is suffering, we have nothing to do with species being extinct, we have no business with deforestation and animals’ treatment. We deny life to earth when we can’t hear its voice. We repent, God, we want to change our ways of being, of relating, of believing, of engaging with the earth. Amen.

Pause – 1 minute

God of change, we want to be transformed:
Where there is forgetfulness about the earth, may I be a remembrance of your love for the earth.
Where there is unawareness of relationship with the earth, let me remind people we are the earth.
Where there is only talk about private property may I remind folks that the earth belongs to You.
Where there is a sense of ownership when we think we own the earth let me say out loud that we belong to the earth.
When we only talk and preach and pray about humans, let me pray with animals and plants, trees and rivers and mountains.
Where there is only talk about heaven, let me speak about the earth hurting right now.
Where there is a spirituality of words, only, may I touch the ground, lean on a tree, hold a plant, touch the water, breathe a long breath and listen to the birds.

Biblical Text – Matthew 26: 69-75

Now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard. A servant-girl came to him and said, ‘You also were with Jesus the Galilean.’ But he denied it before all of them, saying, ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’ When he went out to the porch, another servant-girl saw him, and she said to the bystanders, ‘This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.’ Again he denied it with an oath, ‘I do not know the man.’ After a little while the bystanders came up and said to Peter, ‘Certainly you are also one of them, for your accent betrays you.’ Then he began to curse, and he swore an oath, ‘I do not know the man!’ At that moment the cock crowed. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: ‘Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly.

Meditation

Think with these questions:
Have you ever felt denied by a friend or someone you love?
When do you feel you have been like Peter?
What do we see in our world that relates to forms of denial to the poor?
How are we denying life to earth?
What parts of the earth are we denying life?
How do we deny animals rights?
How do our politics deny life to people and the earth?
How does deregulation of energy in Texas create this nightmare?
How can we gain awareness of these larger issues while composting it all with our faith in God who cares for the earth?
How can we turn from denial to affirming life on earth?

Meditate – Silence Ritual Gesture:

Put your forehead on the tree. Or touch your plant carefully. Close your eyes and listen. Listen to what your tree/plant is telling you. Then you say:
I don’t want to deny your existence.
I don’t want to deny your suffering.

I don’t want to deny my forgetfulness.
In God’s name I will care for all God’s creation. Amen.

It is a ritual gesture of tuning, listening, repenting and preparing for new ways of living!

Blessing

Stretching your arms above you, say:

God of love I bless the earth as I bless <insert your tree’s name>. I bless the earth with affirming words of life in fulness!
I affirm the rights to animals to live in honor.
I affirm the rights of rivers to be clean.
I affirm alternative forms of energy.
I affirm full life to the oceans.
I affirm the New Green Deal as a way to start thinking about a new world.
I affirm the life of Jesus to the world as I remember Jesus denial.
In Jesus name who was affirmed even when denied. Amen.

Pour the rest of the water next to the tree (or on the plant) and say:

I bless you with this water

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross
Honor your tree with a bow.
Recite Francis of Assisi’s Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon to your tree (prayer on p.4 of Station 1) Write/journal about your experience

FIFTH STATION: JESUS IS JUDGED BY PILATE

Theological theme

Jesus is judged again and condemned again. After the Sanhedrin, Jesus is sent to Pontius Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Judaea. Pilate asks Jesus many questions but Jesus doesn’t respond much. Perhaps he knew this judgement was not fair and wouldn’t mean anything for him to speak. The politician Pilate guides Pilate the judge. He wants to satisfy the crowd, not to act justly. That is why Pilate chooses Barrabas to set free. Pilate also wanted to set an example to his people about what might happen to them in case anyone wanted to create social upheavals.

Theological insight

The injustices of our world are reflected in the ways many politicians and judges are using the law for everything: judging the poor, supporting big corporations, and keeping corruption in place. For instance, the prison system is in itself a system of punishment that intends to destroy people’s lives and not regenerate. Most of the imprisoned people are poor, mostly blacks, but also brown, indigenous and poor whites. To put people in jail is to condemn them to death and destruction of entire families and communities As we gaze at the cross as a symbol of salvation, we also must look for what Prof Cone said “ongoing suffering and oppression of human beings, Ignacio Ellacuría, the Salvadoran Martyr, called ‘the crucified peoples of history.’” (James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree).

This week in Brazil, the Mayor “Pilate” of a big city called Porto Alegre said: “Please give your life for the sake of the economy.” We can’t fall prey to these forms of discourses. We can never give our lives for the economic sector which are often many of those who own and oppress other people’s bodies.

The same way, the earth is suffering because politicians and judges are not paying attention to anything the earth has to say. We are all like Pontius Pilate, not paying attention to anything besides our desires and entitlement to have all we want. We are judging the earth without knowing it. And without knowing it, we are condemning to death the earth and all who lives in it.

Arrival:
1) Go to your tree/plant and bow to her greeting <insert your tree’s name> with a smile.

Say I am happy to be here with you.

2) Seat near tree/plant and breathe in and out for 5 minutes.

At every breathe you say: I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived.
Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water next to the tree and say:

With this water/soil I feed you, I care for you, I honor you.

Prayer

God of all the wretched of the earth, I’ve come to you in this lonely hour to listen and to pray. I come to you to walk with Jesus in his path to the cross and to pay attention to the earth, your body, your gift to us. I pray to be one with you and the earth. I pray to be able to listen to you as I listen to the earth! I pray that the cross will remind me of your love given to me through the earth.

Today, we come to you to remember Jesus’ judgement. Again, Jesus didn’t have a fair hearing by Pilate and he was convicted. Oh God we ask, “what was he convicted of? For speaking the truth? For looking at the marginalized people? For restoring people’s dignity?” We saw Pilate with no mercy, no way of searching for justice. Pilate’s judgement was Jesus’ death. We look at Jesus history and feel the weight of wrongs done to Jesus and his absurd death sanctioned by the government of this time. God have mercy.

Pause – 1 minute

God of the forgotten, we pray for historical wrongs done to so many people ~ Indigenous people, the black people, the brown people, the Palestinians, and all who lost their lives to governments’ power and their laws of death. God have mercy.

Pause – 1 minute

God of the imprisoned, we pray for the county jails near my house (add their names). I pray for each person locked there. So many precious people robbed off their lives and never offered possibility to live free again. Bless them! We also pray for those who actually leave prison. When they leave the have to carry a heavy stamp: convicted. With that label, they often cannot get jobs or have people trust them again. They lose essential rights and are tossed in the margins of society. Oh God, we follow a convicted savior, a God who was label CONVICTED! Help us love and fight and be in solidarity with all people convicted. God have mercy.

Pause – 1 minute

God of healing! Death, pain and suffering are everywhere with COVID. We pray for those convicted to death by this virus and our lack of care. God have mercy of those who lost beloved ones.

Pause – 1 minute

God of <insert your tree’s name>, we have used our laws of development and economic growth to relate to the earth only as resources. The earth and all the living beings the soil, the air only serve as resources not neighbors. Like Pilate, we have judged the earth, your body. We have not listened to the earth, we have not related with the earth as a living being. Like Pilate, we have instead set free our desires, having Barrabas as the free economic growth and search for profit. God the creator, we pray for every place where the earth has fallen due to the burden of us humans. We have not considered the earth carefully. We have carried the pretense that we are above the animals and above the earth. We have not equated our living with the living of other species. Help us find better awareness of who we are in relation to your creation. In your mercy, hear our prayers! Amen.

Biblical Text: Mark 15: 1-5, 15

The chief priests with the elders and the scribes, that is, the whole Sanhedrin, held a council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate. Pilate questioned him, “Are you the king of the Jews?” He said to him in reply, “You say so.” The chief priests accused him of many things. Again Pilate questioned him, “Have you no answer? See how many things they accuse you of.” Jesus gave him no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed…. Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barrabas… [and] handed [Jesus] over to be crucified.

Meditation – Think with these questions:

What was the spirit of Jesus as he was being interviewed by Pontius Pilate?
Personally, when was it that you felt so unfairly judged? Do you still carry these wounds? How can you let go of that hurt? Can you hear your body telling you how you feel? Can you tell your body: “it is time to let go and not be held by its power anymore. I release myself from this pain and I ask God’s grace for healing.”
What do we see in our world that relates to unjust trials, unfair hearings and denied paroles?
How can we turn from convicting people from their mistakes to multiple programs of restoration?
Do you think prisons are wrong? What can we do to start thinking about ways to substitute prisons which are colonial unjust institutions? How can we think of other forms of society?
In what ways can we relate prisons for humans to prisons for animals? In many cases, Zoos are prisons for animals but in some other cases zoos serve as protection. Do you agree?
Wouldn’t animal slaughterhouses be also forms of imprisonment and death?
What parts of the earth and what species are we condemning to death?
How politics and laws condemn the earth to death?
Should we engage a change of heart regarding prisons and forms of human animal and wildlife destruction? How can the cross help us in changing our minds, hearts and practices?

Meditate – Silence

Ritual with your tree/plant

Place your two hands in your tree/plant and say: Dear <insert your tree’s name>, we humans have considered ourselves the supreme species of the earth. We have ruled everything about all of the other lives of the earth. As a result, we are condemning all of us to death. Now holding you, I want to change my heart, my mind and my attitudes. Here with you and before God, I want to committee myself to pay attention to all who are imprisoned in some way or another: people, animals, fishes, species, land, forests, oceans. I want to restore my relationship with my fellow humans, animals and the earth as a whole bountiful relation of freedom and mutuality! So that, we can start ways of mutual restoration and care. In God’s love.

Put your forehead into the trunk of the tree of the leaves of your plant and say both names: <insert your name> and <insert your tree’s name>

Blessing

Stretching your arms above you, say:
God of love I bless the earth as I bless <insert your tree’s name>
I send energies of love and kindness to the earth as ways to restore all of the condemnation we have impinged other humans, animals, and all other forms of life.
God of the cross, you who came to release the captives, I send the good news of your love to the world now as seeds of freedom!
May all who are imprisoned be set free! May all humans may set free! May all animals be set earth free! May all the earth set free!
In Jesus name who is our freedom. Amen.

Pour the rest of the water or soil next to the tree (or on the plant) and say: I bless you with this water

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross.
Leave with an open heart for everyone who is suffering, human and non-human beings. Write/pain/photograph your experience.

SIXTH STATION: JESUS IS SCOURGED AND CROWNED WITH THORNS

Theological theme

Jesus suffered not only the psychological abuse diminishing his humanity and ripping away his honor. He also suffered a psychological torture. The mockery: “Hail, King of the Jews!” was aimed at making him a joke, a farce, a ridicule. The level of sarcasm and disdain was aimed to strip away any possible worth of his life. Also, the attack continued by hitting the body, abusing and battering the body. The destruction of the mind and the body was a complete attack on Jesus’ integrity. The attacks aimed at inflicting pain, destroying the mind and eviscerating the body. The scourge and the crown of thorns were aimed at making Jesus feel the weight of the power of violence and an attempt to traumatize his body and mind.

Theological insight

Torture! Jesus was tortured psychologically and physically. The means of torture during that time has been carried through history. The same scourge used with Jesus was also used by slave owners to inflict pain to black bodies. The brutality of slavery was the same as Jesus suffered. Nowadays, prisons are the new sanctioned form of torture. “For a crime he did not commit, Albert Woodfox would spend more than four decades in solitary confinement: 23 hours a day in a 6-by-9-foot cell. He recounts consistently brutal treatment by guards, rats and vermin, deadly heat and no way out of solitary for good behavior. His memoir is the story of how he survived.”[1] Torture is everywhere in our world:

Patriarchalism is both a psychological and bodily attack on women!
Racism is both a psychological and bodily attack on black and brown folks!
Colonialism is both a psychological and bodily attack on indigenous people! Heterosexism is both a psychological and bodily attack on the LGBTQA+ people! Neoliberalism is both a psychological and bodily attack on all of us, especially the poor! Ableism is both a psychological and bodily attack on people with physical challenges!

The same way, we have perpetuated all kinds of tortures against the earth! The machinery to handle the earth are like scourges and crown of thorns on earth, on trees. Brutality and torture are everywhere in the extracting activities of our capitalist societies.

Instructions
Bring a cup of water/soil with you.

Seat or stand next to your tree/ plant. Pause and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. Slow breaths in and out. At every breathe you say:

I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived
Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water/soil next to the tree/plant and say:

With this water I bless you.

Prayer

God of love, I’ve come to you in this lonely hour to listen and to pray. I come to you to walk with Jesus in his path to the cross and to pay attention to the earth, your body, your gift to us. I pray to be one with you and the earth. I pray to be able to listen to you as I listen to the earth! I pray that the cross will remind me of your love given to me through the earth.

Today, I come to you to remember the torture Jesus went through. Pause – 1 minute

God of kindness and compassion, Jesus was abused psychologically and physically. They put him to shame and scourged his body. They ashamed him with a crown of thorns. Violence was everywhere: in symbols, in the mind and in the body of Jesus. Wounded by public attacks, he was already depleted from his strength. God have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

God of Jesus the tortured one, we pray for those who have been tortured throughout history. We pray for indigenous people who had to go to schools and embarrassed because of their language, their clothes, their thinking. They had their lands stolen, confiscated and their ways of being ashamed. We pray for black folks who were turned into slaves. Their bodies used by slave owners for work and sex and shame. They are still tortured today by many police officers, by racism and various forms of societal exclusion. We pray for women everywhere being prey of men. We pray for children abused. And for all tortured we pray: GOD HAVE MERCY!

Pause – 1 minute

God of healing, we pray for those suffering with COVID. Sometimes we feel our body in pain like a torture. We pray for those who are exhausted. Those whose mental battle is hard to win. Renew their minds and their bodies. God we pray: have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

God of the earth, the earth has been tortured and brutalized. We have made weapons of mass destruction against the earth but we think it is all natural.
For trees who take so many years to grow and then hear the sounds of chainsaws that destroy them in seconds we pray;

For fishes caught in nets of big boats of mass destructions;
For whales mercilessly killed and tortured by death instruments such as blubber mincing knife, boarding knife; monkey-belt; wooden toggle; chain-strap, throat-chain, fin toggles, head-strap and blubber hook. And more, whales are subjects of violence done with harpoons to ensnare them, and then kill them with high-powered rifles. We humans also use penthrite bombs and black powder to kill them.
Oh God we can say anything anymore. Have mercy of the whales, on every animal being brutalized everywhere.
Have mercy God, please mercy, we pray.

Pause – 1 minute

Biblical Text – John 19: 1-3

Then Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. And the soldiers wove a crown out of thorns and placed it on his head, and clothed him in a purple cloak, and they came to him and said, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they struck him repeatedly.

Meditation

Think with these questions:
Torture is a very hard thing to deal with.
As Christians we must take heart and listen to those suffering. We are called to offer compassion and solidarity. How can we do that when the pain is such we can’t even bear to hear it?
Have we found the compassion of God in our hearts?
What are the weight on our hearts that make it difficult to have solidarity and compassion for others? How can we move our fears away so love can come in?
How can we provide compassion to ourselves as a way to offer compassion to others?

Our ability to offer a Christian heart to the world must be the work of God’s grace within us to help us pray with those suffering, praying with every heart of every human being but also every other being, every other sentient being, every plant and animal and vegetable that breathes and moves and have life!
How can we open our hearts to those being tortured? Human, animals, trees, rivers, whales, and offer compassion?

Meditate – Silence Ritual Gesture:

Put your forehead on the tree or touch your plant carefully. Close your eyes and listen. Listen to what your tree/plant is telling you. Then you say:

With you I offer compassion with those tortured.
With you I cry with the pain of people imprisoned, abused, enslaved, ashamed, bodily and psychologically tortured.

With you I cry with the pain of trees being ripped apart.
With you I cry with the pain of whales massacred.
With you I bring lightness and healing to all living beings on earth. In God’s name we care for all God’s creation. Amen.

Blessing

Stretching your arms above you, say:

God of love I bless the earth as I bless <insert the name of your tree>.
I bless Jesus as he is tortured! And in the name of Jesus I say: TORTURE NO MORE!
I bless those tortured with healing and promises of freedom!
I bless those who are incarcerated and those in all forms of prisons with solidarity and freedom. May they all be set free!
I bless the trees who are decimated right now! May they receive our compassion!
I bless the earth with compassion! May the earth receive our compassion!
I bless the earth with the love of God!
I bless the earth with the healing of all the nations!
I bless the earth with the healing of the Balm of Gilead!
I bless the earth with the life of God in the midst of death!
I bless the earth with love that restitutes, restores and renews!
Amen.

Pour the rest of the water or pout soil in your tree/plant and say:

I bless you with this water/soil

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross
Leave with an open heart for everyone who is suffering, human and non-human beings. Write/pain/photograph your experience.

SEVENTH STATION: JESUS BEARS THE CROSS

Theological theme

This station carries three different events: the crowd crying “crucify him;” Pilate saying: I find no guilt in him;” and Jesus bearing his cross for the first time. After a succession of traumas, Jesus’ judgement comes to an end. He had the fury of the people, the careless act of the governor and the religious elite composing with these political actors. There was no way out it seems like. Jesus has to carry his cross. A cross of shame. A cross of embarrassment. A cross of cruelty. A cross of injustice. A cross of death.

Theological insight

Everywhere there are people carrying crosses of shame, embarrassment, cruelty, injustice and death. We feel the weight of these crosses across the world today. Sometimes, we hear the cry of the people. Instead of a response of “Crucify Him!” what if are voices cried out “Get the cross off of their shoulders!” “No more immigrant deaths in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico and Texas!”

In the same way, the earth is carrying the cross by our ways of living and consuming. The earth is carrying many crosses today: the cross of poisoning, the cross of plastics flooding the oceans, the cross of the death of Coral Reef and Seaweed who are responsible for producing most of the oxygen we breathe, the cross of drilling the earth, the cross of fracking, the cross of fossil fuels, the cross of animal slaughtering, the cross of animals extinction, the cross of unbalancing the climate, the cross of death to our collective future.

Instructions

Bring a cup of water/soil with you.

Seat or stand next to your tree/ plant. Pause and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. Slow breaths in and out. At every breathe you say: I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived

After your breathing meditation, pour a little water/soil and say: With this water I bless you.

Prayer

Today, I come to you to remember the weight of the cross on Jesus back. Pause – 1 minute

God of Jesus who felt heavily the weight of the cross, we feel the weight of the world today and it feels unbearable. So much pain, so many disasters, so much poverty, so much suffering, so much sadness… We feel the weight of the world as Jesus felt the weight of the cross; all marked by injustice, violence and carelessness. God Have Mercy.

Pause – 1 minute

God of Jesus who felt heavily the weight of the cross, we pray for those carrying crosses that they can barely hold. Immigrants, sole mothers, unemployed people, people suffering with mental illness, we pray for them! We stand with them! We cry for and with them! God Have Mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

God of lightness, we remember those suffering with COVID, a cross so hard to carry. We pray for nurses, doctors and everybody who is caring for another human being. We pray for those who harvest our food and provide for our lives as we stay home. Oh God, visit each person suffering. We pray: God have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

God of the earth, the earth is being brutalized and heavy crosses are weighting on your body: the earth. For animals in slaughter houses;
For the earth receiving tons of poison to produce more;
For the oceans engulfed in plastics and fishes eating and dying from it;

For Coral Reef and Seaweed
For oceans losing their lives;
For the earth being ripped apart with extractivism, fracking and exploitation For the air being filled with CO2
For animals being extinct,
For the critical zone that regulates our climate being dissipated.
For the whole earth we pray: Have mercy oh God, hear our prayer!

Biblical Text – John 19: 6, 15-17

When the chief priests and the guards saw [Jesus] they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him. I find no guilt in him.” … They cried out, “Take him away, take him away! Crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your king?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, and carrying the cross himself he went out to what is called the Place of the Skull, in Hebrew, Golgotha.

Meditation

Think with these questions:
Where do we see ourselves mirroring the people who shouted “Crucify him!”?
When do we see ourselves going careless saying “he has no guilty” but saying what can I do?
When do we feel like the weight of the world is in our shoulders?
This station is not an easy station. We are eager to get out. We can’t deal with too much pain. We already have ours. Can we stay a little longer?
Can we remind ourselves of the healing that God has in store for us and for the world as we go through this suffering?
Can we find the lightness of God’s love in us so we can sustain those who are suffering with the weight of injustice
Can we hold on to God’s life while we feel the presence of death around us?

Meditate – Silence Ritual Gesture:

Put your forehead on the tree or touch your plant carefully. Close your eyes and listen. Listen to what your tree/plant is telling you. Then you say:
With you I listen to the pain of others.
With you I pay attention to the suffering of others.

With you I bring lightness and healing to all living beings on earth. In God’s name we care for all God’s creation. Amen.

Blessing

Stretching your arms above you, say:
God of love I bless the earth as I bless <insert your tree or plant’s name>. I bless Jesus as he carries his cross!
I bless the earth with lightness when everything feels heavy!
I bless the earth with the healing of the God who heals all nations!
I bless the earth with the healing of the Balm of Gilead!
I bless the earth with the life of God in the midst of death!
In Jesus name who was convicted, abused and now has to bear his cross. Amen.

Pour the rest of the water or pout soil in your tree/plant and say:

I bless you with this water/soil

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross
Leave with an open heart for everyone who is suffering, human and non-human beings. Journal/create some artistic expression/photograph your experience.

EIGHTH STATION: JESUS IS HELPED BY SIMON THE CYRENIAN TO CARRY THE CROSS

Theological theme

This station brings an unexpected turn. The guards/torturers of Jesus see that Jesus can’t carry on with the cross. He falls several times. He is weak, his head goes to the ground and his mouth tastes the dust. He feels his life going away from him. Somebody is called to help him. Simon is a foreigner, somebody from Northern Africa. We don’t know much about him or how this event affected him. Perhaps we can make a connection with Jesus saying when he said that anyone who wanted to follow him would have to “take up their cross and follow me” (Matthew 26: 24).

Theological insight

In our journey we also have unexpected people coming to help us, to offer a hand, offer company, listen deeply or take up our cross just for a moment. This allows us to have a breather, recollect ourselves, figure out ourselves and our situation so we can keep on going. Perhaps for this station, one of your tasks is to name the encounters where you were visited by a Simon from elsewhere who came to help you.

Also, Simon could be the presence of plants, animals, rivers, forests who come to your rescue when you least imagine. Just now, your tree could be your Simon. Once a foreign presence to you, now your tree is part of your life and has expanded you in so many ways. Your tree helped you to broaden and deepen your spirituality, your relation to God and the earth.

Instructions

Bring a cup of water/soil with you.

Seat or stand next to your tree/ plant. Pause and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. Slow breaths in and out. At every breathe you say: I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived

Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water/soil and say: With this water I bless you.

Prayer

Today, I come to you to remember the weight of the cross on Jesus back.

Pause – 1 minute

God of our journey, Our precious Jesus is exhausted. He is wiped out from any physical and emotional strength and he falls time and again. His body can’t bear this pain anymore. Torture has a way to take away people’s spirit and our Jesus is feeling his life is moving away from him. Our precious Jesus felt heavily the weight of the cross. We feel the weight of the world today and there is nothing much we often feel that we can do. Today we are grateful for a stranger: Simon, a Cyrenian from North Africa. We don’t know anything about him but it was him, a foreigner, who was recruited to offer relief to Jesus. God we are grateful today for Simon, may his memory be blessed.

Pause – 1 minute

God of unexpected visits, you have visited my life in so many ways I can’t even count. So many known and unknown people who came to my life and blessed me in clear and in hidden ways. I am grateful. God of life, so many crucified people are carrying crosses of violence, injustice, exploitation and death. May I be like Simon to those suffering. Amen.

Pause – 1 minute

God of lightness, we pray for those suffering with COVID without respite, without any Simon near them. People who cannot afford medicine, specialized care and hospital. May you send your angels, the Simons of heavens to visit suffering people right now! May they can offer a healing touch, a prayer of transformation, a presence of healing. Oh God may your Spirit be like Simon to the world today! God have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

God of the earth, the earth has been carrying a cross of exploitation, destruction and death. The earth is exhausted too. May we be like Simon to the earth! May our communities offer healing, reciprocal love and transformation. May I start today by loving my precious tree, may I feed the birds, may I visit a river near my house and offer a blessing, may I join a group who cares for the earth. I want to be a Simon to the earth, so help me God!

Biblical Reading – Mark 15: 21

“They pressed into service a passer-by, Simon, a Cyrenian, who was coming in from the country, the father of Alexander and Rufus, to carry his cross.”

Meditation

Think with these questions:
Who are the forms of Simon visiting you and your family today?
Who are the Simons who have helped you carry the cross along your journey?
Can you be a Simon?
Can you offer your love to others and help lift up their burdens?
Can you be a Simon to the earth? Holding on to the places being destroyed?
Can you hold on to the pain of the earth and help sustain the earth as it responds, heals and is transformed?

Who is the crucified people and species around you that you can be Simon? Pause with this question

Can you be a Simon to the rivers near your house? Who are them? Do you know them? Can you be a Simon to the birds near your house? Who are them? Do you know them? Can you be a Simon to the sharks and whales?
Can you be a Simon to the insects?

Can you be a Simon to the forests? Can you be a Simon to other trees? Can you be a Simon to the mountains? Can you be a Simon to the oceans?

Meditate – Silence Ritual Gesture:

Put your forehead on the tree or touch your plant carefully. Close your eyes and listen. Listen to what your tree/plant is telling you. Pause. Listen. Then you say:

With you I listen to the pain of others.
With you I pay attention to the suffering of others.

With you I bring lightness and healing to all living beings on earth. You have been a Simon to me.
I want to be a Simon to you.
In God’s name we both will be Simons for all God’s creation. Amen.

Blessing

Stretching your arms above you, say:
God of love I bless the earth as I bless <insert your tree or plant name>.
I bless Jesus as he falls!
I bless precious Simon the foreigner!
I bless every person who is caring for others suffering!
I bless every Simon caring for the bees!
I bless every Simon caring for the forests!
I bless every Simon caring for the soil!
I bless every Simon caring for the earth of God, caring and mending and revitalizing and honoring God‘s body!
In Jesus’ name who was exhausted but had Simon who helped him.
Amen.

Pour the rest of the water or pout soil in your tree/plant and say:

I bless you with this water/soil

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross
Leave with an open heart for everyone who is suffering, human and non-human beings. Journal/create an artistic expression/photograph your experience.

NINTH STATION: JESUS PROMISES GOD’S HOME

Theological theme

Jesus’s crucifixion is now in full display for the tragic feelings and the obscene desires of the people. A show of horrors with a clear message by the state: you do what we do not want and this will be the consequence. A violent governing body selecting who can live and who can’t. next to Jesus two thieves. They represent our own humanity: one part of us made of changes and transformations, and a part of us that gets stuck in our death drive and cannot change; one part of us that are led by our best angels and another part of us that are led by our worst demons. They compose, along with Jesus, the possibilities of redemption and the disasters and failures of who we are. To one, God’s home is promised by Jesus. As for the other who diminishes and curses Jesus, silence.

Theological insight

This is a hard moment, but one that somewhat makes us feel good. There is at least some justice: the bad guy goes to hell and the good guy goes to heaven. To one, God’s home, to the other what? Would Jesus turn the bad thief away when he gets to the gates of Paradise? Would the ships of the left and right side still be the metaphor of our destiny? Is God’s home/bosom only for some? Are we always on the right side and our enemies are on the left side of God? At this moment, before Jesus and the two thieves, what do you make of God’s love?

Jesus still finds a moment of compassion to care for the thief. How hard it is to care for someone else when we feel we have nothing left to give.

Jesus’ body and soul are now hanging on a piece of wood. Dead wood to carry dead bodies. Discarded “things” by society and those who rule everything. People and the earth turned into garbage so we can dispose them without guilt or responsibility for them. For many, to kill certain people, animals and the earth, doesn’t matter much as long as we are safe and have what we want. In that process, we put walls for garbage people to be away from us, we create prisons to put garbage people also distant from our homes, we pollute rivers and the oceans with garbage because in fact, they are garbage too. The consequences are enormous. We destroy thousands of people’s lives. We destroy natural habitats. Birds feed their babies with plastic, our garbage, thinking that it is food. We are hanging so many forms of life and entire worlds in the crosses of the dead woods of our desires. We have created societies of dead wood where we crucify so people and species, wilderness and bio-regions. They are right there, hanging in front of our eyes, as a horror show.

Instructions

Bring a cup of water/soil with you.

Seat or stand next to your tree/ plant. Pause and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. Slow breaths in and out. At every breathe you say: I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived

Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water/soil and say: With this water I bless you.

Prayer

Pause – 1 minute

God of the crucified Jesus, I come to you to remember Jesus hanging on a dead wood. Have mercy on him!

Pause – 1 minute

God of thieves, good and bad ones, God of immigrants, God of refugees, God of imprisoned people, God of the poor, God of abandoned people, God of all garbage people, have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

Jesus was losing his breath in the cross. As the thieves were too. We lament those losing their breathing capabilities in hospitals, in waiting rooms, at home, on the streets. People losing their lives due to COVID. God have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

God of enough, we in the United States don’t know what enough to live means. We consume 44% of the world’s resources. We have everything, we must have everything and we always seem to want more. When we get bored, we go buy something. We demand everything. All for the sake of our happiness, or perhaps our emptiness. We are one of the biggest producers of garbage in the world. And our garbage goes to rivers, oceans, landfills and animals. Maybe we should pray: God do NOT have mercy on us until we change.

Pause – 1 minute

God of garbage,
We pray for all those hanging on the Golgothas of our world today For bio-regions, soil, species, destroyed by extractivism.
For animals crucified by ways of our consumption.
For fossils turned into combustion, fuel and CO2
For birds feeding their babies with plastic.
For polluted waters killing fish everywhere.
For coral reefs hanging on their last breaths.

For honeyeaters who are confused singing somebody else’s songs. For oceans dying on the crosses of plastics we keep piling up.
For all forms of life who are breathing their last breaths.
Oh God please have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

Biblical Text – (Luke 23: 39-43)

Now one of the criminals hanging there reviled Jesus, saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us.” The other, however, rebuking him, said in reply, “Have you no fear of God, for you are subject to the same condemnation? And indeed, we have been condemned justly, for the sentence we received corresponds to our crimes, but this man has done nothing criminal.” Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He replied to him, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.

Meditation

Think with these questions:

What kinds of crosses do we have in the world today? Who create these crosses?
Who die in these crosses?

Think of power and governments:
What crosses do they create? For what?

Think of patriarchy:
What crosses do they create? For what?

Think of racism:
What crosses do they create? For what?

Think of capitalism:
What crosses do they create? For what?

Think of the ways of the earth:
What are the crosses the earth is hanging on today?
What species are hanging on crosses today?
What parts of the animal, vegetable and mineral worlds are on crosses today?

Thinking about the thieves, who are we? The one allowing to be changed or the stubborn one not caring for anything?

Who are hanging on crosses near you?

Meditate – Silence

Ritual Gesture:

Put your forehead on the tree or touch your plant carefully. Close your eyes and listen. Listen to what your tree/plant is telling you. Give time to listen. Then you say:
I want to learn how to listen to you.
I need you to hold me today. For the world is going weary. So many crucifixions. I need grounding. Hold me tight!

(You can do two things: 1) hold on tight to your tree/plant. 2) Sit on the ground and touch the ground. While you do that, close your eyes and breathe slowly. Feel your breath coming in and out of your nostrils. Stay there until your anxiety washes away into the earth and the earth received it).

After this time say:

For this ground I am grateful. For you I am grateful.
For the earth, I am grateful. For peace, I am grateful.

Pause-Silence
(Now, look up to the skies and say:)

Psalm 121

I lift up my eyes to the hills— from where will my help come?

My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber.

He who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is your keeper;
the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night.

The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life.

The Lord will keep
your going out and your coming in from this time on and for evermore.

Blessing

With your back touching the tree or one hand holding your plant, stretch your arms above you and say:

Where there is crucifixion, I declare justice!
Where there is crucifixion, I declare freedom!
Where there is crucifixion, I bring life!
Where there is crucifixion, I bring my light!
Where there is crucifixion, I bring my prayers!
Where there is crucifixion, I bring my belief of a different world!
Where there is crucifixion, I say: I will stay in the struggle for I belong to God and I belong to the earth! In the name of Jesus who survived crucifixion! Amen.

Pour the rest of the water or pout soil in your tree/plant and say: I bless you with this water/soil

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross
Leave with an open heart for everyone who is suffering, human and non-human beings. Journal/create some artistic expression/photograph your experience.

TENTH STATION: JESUS SPEAKS TO BELOVED ONES

Theological theme

Jesus was not alone. Some of the people who loved him through his life was there. They had not left him. The women and the disciple whom he loved closely, they were there. They couldn’t do much but they were witness to Jesus’ suffering. The moment was too tragic, too desperate, and Jesus knew they were suffering. So he said:” take care of each other.”

Theological insight

To watch Jesus die on the cross was like watching a beloved person being executed by electrocution right before your eyes. No mercy! No care! Everything arranged by those who have power. We feel a feeling of impotency. We can’t do anything. Justice doesn’t exist. Only evil laws produced by the ones who hold power. It is this kind of law that is holding so many precious people within prison systems, a slowing form of crucifixion. It is this kind of law that privileges the ones with money and a certain belonging over others who continue to be on the crosses of poverty, of abuse, of shame, of lack of care, of no health system, of poor neighborhoods, of abandoned schools, of people without mental health treatment.

Oh, we see the earth dying right in front of our eyes. As somebody said last week: we have seen things that cannot be unseen anymore. And yet we were not ready for it! We feel overwhelmed by the violence that has always been already there but we found a way not to see, not to feel, not to be affected by it. But now we can’t help it. The cross and all the crucified ones are right in front of our eyes. Animals under the cruelty of our appetites, oceans losing its life, fish and birds eating and feeding their babies plastic, the warming up of the oceans, coral reefs who are responsible for our breathing dying at dismaying proportions. Ice caps melting, that is why we are going to have few summers of intense cold, until they are gone and increasing warmer temperatures coming up. Forests burning, wilderness decimated. Crucifixions all around! All too much!

But Jesus has a word for us! It is from Jesus that we learn how to deal with it. When Jesus saw the beloved ones who stayed there with him seeing all of these horrors, he said: “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” In other words, Jesus was saying: This is way too much for you, too much violence, too much trauma, too much pain! Your worlds have collapsed. So don’t go alone! Hold each other’s hand, care for one another! Remember how we did in our ministry: we always went out in groups, never alone! For alone we will fall, alone we will lose our strength, alone we will not be able to muster the courage to go on. Always have a hand or a voice near you! Somebody! Somebody to say hi, to say a prayer, to say you are not alone, and I am here for you! Then together, you will be able to see my death, to see hope gone, but also to see new things happening! Even new life! Even what you were never expecting! Perhaps even… resurrection! So go! Hold each other’s hand and go!

Instructions

Bring a cup of water/soil with you.

Seat or stand next to your tree/ plant. Pause and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. Slow breaths in and out. At every breathe you say: I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived

Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water/soil and say: With this water I bless you.

Prayer

Pause – 1 minute

God of the crucified Jesus, I come to you to remember those who didn’t leave Jesus alone. I have come to thank you for Jesus words, caring for them! Have mercy on Jesus and his beloved ones!

Pause – 1 minute

God of those mourning right now, we pray for them. Those who are seeing their beloved ones die in hospitals, in their homes, we pray for those whose losses are unbearable. God have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

God of those who bear witness to others suffering, those who serve the immigrants, the people in jail, the poor on the streets, those who feed the hungry, those who provide for those who can’t have; those who are fighting for just laws, for votes for all, for local policies to support the abandoned; those who are fighting against the rich who only serve the rich. For those witnessing those who are in crosses everywhere, God have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute
Go of those going through all sorts of trauma, have mercy on them! Pause – 1 minute

God of those bearing witness to the Golgothas of the world;
For those bearing witness to forests being decimated,
For those bearing witness to birds,
For those bearing witness animals who are being cruelly treated, For those bearing witness to rivers,

For those bearing witness to oceans,
For those bearing witness to whale being hunted mercilessly,
For those bearing witness to plants and biomes and every other form of life who don’t have a say in our society, For those bearing witness to precious species going extinct.

For those bearing witness to precious the earth in all its diversity. For all those seeing the sadness and pain of crucifixion everywhere We pray out loud: please God, have mercy on us!

Biblical Text – (John 19: 25-27)

Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.

Meditation

Think with these questions:

Who are you holding the hands right now?
Who are holding your hands?
Who are your beloved ones?
Who do you need to go to this week and say: “I am here for you.”
Who are the ones who you are expecting love from, but love is not coming?
Can you let go of that love not reciprocted? Can you find a way to not hang on that expectation and let yourself free? Is there any way you can let go of any bitterness?

Rely on the love of those who love you. Rely on God’s love.
Rely on your tree/plant and earth love.

What crosses are you witnessing these days? What crosses are unbearable for you to see?

Can you hear Jesus say: I know it is too much, go along with somebody else. Go with a community or many communities you can.
Go with the memories that kept you this far.
Remind yourself of lamentations 3: 21:

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope.

Keep caring for each other: people, animals, soil, rivers, plants, trees.

Meditate – Silence

Ritual Gesture:

Put your forehead on the tree or touch your plant carefully. Close your eyes and listen. Listen to what your tree/plant is telling you. Give it time. Then you say:

How are you doing?

With you, we hold the world in our hearts. I will hold your hand. You hold mine.

(You can do two things: 1) hold on tight to your tree/plant. 2) Sit on the ground and touch the ground. While you do that, close your eyes and breath slowly. Feel your breath coming in and out of your nostrils. Stay there until your anxiety washes away into the earth and the earth received it).

After this time say:

For you I am grateful. I am not alone!
We are not alone!

Pause-Silence

(Now, look up to the skies and say Isaiah 49:15)

Can a woman forget her nursing-child,
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?

Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.

Blessing

With your back touching the tree or one hand holding your plant, stretch your arms above you and say: I am with you who are suffering.
You are with me.
I will hold your hand.
You will hold my hand.
And together, we will go!
In the name of Jesus who told us to go together! Amen.

Pour the rest of the water or pout soil in your tree/plant and say: I bless you with this water/soil

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross
Leave with an open heart for everyone who is suffering, human and non-human beings. Journal/create some artistic expression/photograph your experience.

ELEVENTH STATION: JESUS DIES ON THE CROSS

Theological theme

The moment of Jesus’ death has arrived. The whole universe contorts itself for this moment, heavens and earth respond. In the Gospel of Luke, the sun is eclipsed. In the Gospel of Matthew 27, an earthquake coincides with the crucifixion: “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice… The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open.” Everything participates in this shattering moment! This is the time when God abandon Jesus, something is pulled off, distorted, broke, lost. It feels like death won. Jesus felt something happening and in Mark 15:34b, he said: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Jesus body and soul cannot hold it anymore. In John 19:30 he says: “It is finished. Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.” It’s over. There is nothing we can do besides close our eyes in silence or utter a raging scream. Jesus is dead.

Theological insight

After a painful path to the cross, Jesus dies. Right before, Jesus feels the weight of God’s abandonment. With the death of Jesus, God becomes estranged to Godself. Perhaps, Jesus death is God’s failure. On the other hand, the cross shows how God was deeply embedded into the life of the world. As theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said after the Shoah: “only a suffering God can help us now.”

The cataclysmic event in that moment shows how everything is interconnected and interrelated.. God, the universe, the earth, everything responds. The sun is eclipsed, the earth shakes, the rocks split, silence. What happens on earth changes the skies and vice versa. Davi Kopenawa, an Yanomami Shaman from the Amazon forest said: “the sky is falling.”[2] And that is because we are digging fossil fuels which is what holds the sky up. That ancient belief is what science knowns today: if we continue to drill the earth and take its riches, the CO2 that will go into the air will pollute the skies, hit the critical zone where the equilibrium of the earth happens and we all will get warm. The earth has already start acting up out of this unbalance. Something is already happening.

The animals on earth, the dying oceans, the places of natural refugee, forests, are all crying out: “Why have you forsaken me?” So many species are breathing their last breaths as we read this page. God’s estrangement from Jesus can also be shown in our estrangement from the earth. Our life with God never restored us to the earth and that makes it so difficult for us to the earth cry. Perhaps because we can’t hear our own cry? Perhaps because their voices do not matter? Perhaps because we don’t have ears to hear such cries? Should we ask ourselves: “why have we forsaken ourselves as we have also forsaken the earth?” Should we ask God: “why have we forsaken you in the earth?”

The earth is shattering right now under the crucified crosses of fossil, mineral, vegetal and animal extractivism. The sky will be eclipsed by our pollution. The sun will burn the earth. The earth is already shaking. In many places we can already hear: ‘It is finished.’ Is it time to bow our heads and give up our spirit?

Instructions – Bring a cup of water/soil with you.
Seat or stand next to your tree/ plant. Pause and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. Slow breaths in and out. At

every breathe you say: I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived
Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water/soil and say: With this water I bless you.

Prayer

Pause – 1 minute

God of the darkened skies, I come to you to remember Jesus giving his last words, crying out his abandonment and giving away his last breath and last words. Have mercy on him!

Pause – 1 minute

God of love, so many people feel the abandonment of their lives. People forgotten in prisons, people left at their own demise, people going hungry, poor people without shelter, without warmth, without care, without love. God of the abandoned, have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

God of those breathing their last breaths, so many people are breathing their last breaths due to COVID. So many people dying alone at home, waiting in lines for hospitals beds. So many people mumbling their last words while they are waiting… God have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

God of the darkened skies and the shattering earth, our planet is also breathing heavily and some places are breathing their last breaths. We are taking more than we should from the earth and we are crucifying the earth and ourselves. So many precious animals, minerals and vegetations are crying out why have you forsaken me? And we can’t hear it. Forests, the most diverse environments on earth, rich in so many forms of life, medicine and wonder, they are breathing their last breaths. God of the forests, forgive us for taking away the lives of those helping us to breathe. The wooden cross of Jesus are now the trees cut off and destroyed. And in the name of the cross of Jesus and in the name of all trees already destroyed on earth we pray: God have mercy!

Pause – 1 minute

Biblical Text – Luke 23: 44-46

It was now about noon and darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon because of an eclipse of the sun. Then the veil of the temple was torn down the middle. Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit”; and when he had said this, he breathed his last.

Meditation

Think with these questions:

What do Jesus last words mean to you today? “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” ‘It is finished.’

How Jesus death can be related to so many forms of deaths in the world today? What Bonhoeffer’s phrase means to you: “only a suffering God can help us now.”

Is this the end?
If everything is interconnected, death bequest death but also, life bequest life. Life carries death and death carries life. What forms of life are present in Jesus’ death on the cross?

How we can hear the voice of so many animals, minerals, vegetations, forests, oceans, mountains today? When they ask us: my kin, why have you forsaken me?” What do we say? How can we respond?

Meditate – Silence Ritual Gesture:

Put your forehead on the tree or touch your plant carefully. Close your eyes and listen. Listen to what your tree/plant is telling you. Give time to listen.

Today we won’t say anything but listen. Spend 10 minutes in silence next to your tree/plant, and listen to the wind, to the earth beneath your feet, to your body and to your heart.

Pause-Silence

(Now, continuing with your forehead on the tree or touching your plant say: Psalm 139: 11-12)

If I say surely the darkness shall cover me
Even the night shall be light about me…
The darkness and the light are both alike to Thee.

Blessing

With your back touching the tree or one hand holding your plant, stretch your arms above you and say: “My precious earth: I hear you!
“I will hold your spirit in me”
‘It is finished!’ But I pray it isn’t…

Pour the rest of the water or pout soil in your tree/plant and say: I bless you with this water/soil

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross
Leave with an open heart for everyone who is suffering, human and non-human beings. Journal/create some artistic expression/photograph your experience.

TWELFTH STATION: JESUS IS PLACED IN THE TOMB

Theological theme

Jesus body is now a disposable excrement. After crucifixion, bodies would be left hanging on the cross to be eaten by animals or get rotten. Some bodies were buried. We do not know what would happen to Jesus’ body if it was not for the presence of Joseph from Arimathea. But because of his presence, Jesus body was wrapped in linen and placed at a new tomb. Joseph placed Jesus’ body there and left.

Theological insight

Culturally we have a certain kind of repulse when we see a dead body. Fear, anxiety and horror is what some of us feel before such an abject presence. We can’t deal with breathless bodies. Culturally, we are educated to get rid of the body as soon as possible. Some funerals are done without the presence of the body. Against that background, what would it mean to wrap Jesus’ body in clean linen? Especially, to wrap the body of the one who promised life but it is now dead? Was Jesus’ dead body the sign of the end of all he said? In this station all we have is Jesus dead body pushing us to ponder about death. What does death mean? I urge you not to run towards resurrection but stay here, on Friday, and not rush to Sunday so as to make ourselves feel good. How do we handle Jesus death and our own death? Does it have to be scary? Does our story end with the end of our breathless bodies? What do we fear about dying? What does our culture teach us about death and dying? For some cultures, to die is to be absorbed by the earth or eaten by other animals so that the person can continue to live in the lives of its people when they plant or when they eat the plants and animals, forming a circle of life that never ends. When we know we are a part of a circle of life that keeps going, there is no oblivion but eternal remembrance as we die and continue to live. Our lives end where it started in the earth, in the hands of the God of life.

The presence of Joseph from Arimathea is very telling. The text says he was rich and it was because of his presence that Jesus had a dignified burial: clean linen and new tomb. To die in that time was very expensive, just like it is now. How is it that more or less money defines the honor of one’s life through the funeral? What happens to life when death is measured by money? Doesn’t it also show how confused we are about life and death?

If we pay attention, we can also see that Jesus burial was done just like most people are dying of COVID these days: no family around, no friends, no mourning. Only a stranger to take care of his body. Just like people are dying these days.

What if we think the tomb of Jesus as the earth and Jesus body as seed? Every death can be a seed for a new beginning. I hope you have heard of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of El Salvador and now a saint consecrated by Pope Francis. In a homily, Archbishop Romero preached when he was being threatened by the military he said: “If they kill me, I will be reborn in the Salvadoran people.” That is the meaning of Jesus body in the tomb: death that will be turned into life, life waiting to be born again. That is how we should think about our life and work on earth: we must keep on planting seeds of love, trees, cleaning oceans, show mercy, looking upon the least of these, protecting wilderness places, doing justice, fighting for animals, honoring the lives of those abandoned, protecting the bees, go against poison in our food, pray for all suffering and so on.

Another important aspect of Jesus’ death: Jesus didn’t die only for humans but for animals, vegetations, air, water, mineral, rocks, mountains and forests. And surely for trees! Jesus’ body in the tomb is like a seed of life waiting to be reborn and that is why we are planting a tree today or tomorrow. We will plant a tree as if we are Joseph from Arimathea. And as Joseph left, we will leave it to the earth to do the work. As the women who went to visit the tomb, we will keep watch on the tree to support it. Perhaps we will water it when there is no rain, we will provide better soil, or do whatever the new born tree needs. For resurrection is this: unless we work with the earth as Joseph put the body away and the women went to visit Jesus, we will see no resurrection! If we just wait for a spiritual resurrection, the earth, who is often not part of our spirituality, will continue to die. For resurrection to happen one needs to bury the body/plant a seed and watch for it adding balms in the body/care for the new tree. Only then, we will witness that, what was a dead body is now resurrected and what was once a damaged forest it will become again a new revitalized forest! This is the promise of Jesus death and his dead body: seed! Resurrection! To each one of us! To the whole earth!

Instructions

Bring a cup of water/soil with you.

Seat or stand next to your tree/ plant. Pause and breathe in and out for 5 minutes. Slow breaths in and out. At every breathe you say: I have arrived, by God’s mercy, I have arrived

Once you finish your breathing meditation, pour a little water/soil and say: With this water I bless you.

Prayer

Pause – 1 minute

God of death, I come to you to remember Jesus’ body being taken down from the wooden tree, wrapped in clean linen and placed in a new tomb. Have mercy on him!

Pause – 1 minute

God of strangers, we pray for all of the Josephs of Arimatheas of this word, the ones giving honor to people who were abandoned. Have mercy on them!

Pause – 1 minute

God of strangers, we pray for everyone wrapping up dead bodies due to COVID these days. Those who care for the bodies of those who have died and who nobody can touch. Give them strength. Have mercy on them!

Pause – 1 minute

God of the empty tombs and dead zones where life is mostly absent. We pray for tombs filled with dead bodies not cared for and for places filled with rich diversity being destroyed. We pray for forest being decimated, earth turned into fossil fuel, mountains becoming things to buy. We pray for all forms of life who were turn into objects, without honor so we can do whatever we want with them. In your mercy, hear our prayers!

Pause – 1 minute

Biblical Text – Matthew 27: 57-60

When it was evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph, who was himself a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus; then Pilate ordered it to be handed over. Taking the body, Joseph wrapped it [in] clean linen and laid it in his new tomb that he had hewn in the rock. Then he rolled a huge stone across the entrance to the tomb and departed.

Meditation

Think with these questions:

What the dead body of Jesus says to you?
What does it mean to die?
Are you afraid of dying? Why?
What do our culture teach us that we have become so troubled with dead bodies? How do you envision your own funeral?

What is your theology after this life?

If the tomb is the earth and Jesus’ body is a seed, how can we think about this connection? What can we do to support the earth in its resurrection?

Meditate – Silence

Ritual Gesture – Plant a new tree

Tell your tree or your plant that you brought her/him/they a new friend. Put your forehead on the tree or touch your plant carefully. Place the little tree you have in close contact with your tree for couple minutes. Introduce them to each other. Then get your new tree and go to the place you will plant it.

Before you start digging the soil, say a prayer:

Precious earth, you have so much life inside of you. We need resurrection everywhere in this crucified world. I ask you permission to plant this tree and pray that you welcome her/him/they in your womb. Amen.

Pause-Silence

Start digging – Listen to the sounds of digging and sing a song to this glorious being.

Once you place the tree inside, tell her/him/they the name you have for her/him/they. When you finish, say a prayer:

In life and death we belong to God! May you live fully! May you help us resurrect! Amen!

(Now, read this text John 1: 1-5)

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

Read this text: Romans 11: 33-36

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are God’s judgements and how inscrutable God’s ways! ‘For who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been God’s counsellor?’ ‘Or who has given a gift to God?,

to receive a gift in return?’
For from God and through God and to God are all things. To God be the glory for ever. Amen.

Blessing

Next to your new tree you say this blessing:

In life and death we belong to God. So many people and trees were killed today.
With you, we announce that in the midst of death there can be life and resurrection. You are a seed within the earth and life will overcome death.
May your presence be a sign of a new earth to us and to the future generations! Amen.

Go back to your tree and say this blessing:

My precious <insert name of tree/plant>: I am so grateful to you for your company during these weeks. Like Job, I had heard of you but I didn’t know you until few weeks ago. But now, I say that my eyes can see you, my hands touch you, my body feel you. You have come alive to me and you are part of me now. From now own I will take care of you! I will pay attention to you! I will greet you! I will come touch you and meditate and pray with you. I will honor you every day of my life. And with you I will remember all those suffering and pray for them. I will do all I can to go through the stations of the crosses of those suffering and learn and act. For now, accept my deepest gratitude for being with me and changing me during this season. We have begun a long friendship and I thank God for you! And as I said to you last week I say again:

“I will hold your spirit in me”
‘It is finished!’ But you know what? It isn’t!

Pour the rest of the water or pout soil in your tree/plant and say: I bless you with this water/soil

Suggestions:
Make the sign of the cross
Leave with an open heart for everyone who is suffering, human and non-human beings. Journal/create some artistic expression/photograph your experience.

************

RESOURCES

General Reading and video Suggestions

James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (New York: ORBIS, 2011).

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Milkweed Editions, 2015).

Cláudio Carvalhaes, Holy Infected Week – Our condition and the possibilities of earth’s resurrection

https://reimaginingworship.com/holy-infected-week-2020-claudio-carvalhaes/

Cláudio Carvalhaes, The Christian as humus: Virtual/real earthly rituals of ourselves. Liturgy, 35(4), (2020), 25–33. See it at the Ghost Ranch Website

This resource is from the World Council of Churches is fantastic to pray with waters during our Lenten practice:

https://www.oikoumene.org/events/seven-weeks-for-water-2021

Our Way of the Cross, a paschal structure. In each season, passion, death and resurrection occurs in miniature. Christ’s Way of the Cross concretizes the paradigm of each human existence on the way to its personalization. Leonardo Boff

Videos:

This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein, 2015

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, 2017

The New Green Deal

The Red New Deal

https://www.commonnotions.org/the-red-deal

This search engine replaces Google and plants trees as you use it.

https://www.ecosia.org

How Trees Talk To Each Other

Texts:

Book: Way of the Cross–Way of Justice, Leonardo Boff

How Texas’ Drive for Energy Independence Set It Up for Disaster. Texas has refused to join interstate electrical grids and railed against energy regulation. Now it’s having to answer to millions of residents who were left without power in last week’s snowstorm.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/us/texas-electricity-ercot-blackouts.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Why Texas Republicans Fear the Green New Deal. Small government is no match for a crisis born of the state’s twin addictions to market fixes and fossil fuels.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/opinion/green-new-deal-texas-blackout.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

. . . Incarnation (the belief that God is with us here on this earth) [goes] beyond Jesus of Nazareth to include all matter. God is incarnated in the world. . . . [This] suggests that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, for God is the breath or spirit that gives life to the billions of different bodies that make up God’s body. But God is also the source, power, and goal of everything that is, for the creation depends utterly upon God. . . . the universe as the body of God Sallie McFague, The Body of God An Ecological Theology

Friends, this week we are taking on Stations Five and Six. Please remember that Jesus’ tree carries the whole world in itself. These stations carry huge challenges for us. As you will see, there are many issues connected with these two stations. It is hard! It is really hard! Perhaps it will be too much for some people, perhaps you won’t agree with some connections. The stations of the cross are not aesthetically pleasing or easy to walk through.

Lent is not an easy time. This is a very hard path as the stations of the cross are easy or pleasing. The prayers and meditations are difficult. So, I ask you that you go as much and/or as further as you can or want. Also, I ask that you have an open heart to engage it. What you do with it is up to you. Please do not feel attacked. We are challenging each other during these weeks. Again, take only what you can and drop what you can’t or don’t want to take.

Please read the resources and watch the videos before Friday so the ritual will make better sense. Also, I added some resources that are for later if you want to take a look at it. Also, some liturgies might trigger some difficult issues. If that happens, you can do few things: drop it and move away; listen to your body and hear what you feel, then bring it to God and offer healing to yourself. You can pray: “God I bring Your healing to my body, mind and soul. Heal my wounds and give me strength.” If needed, look for a therapist, a counselor, a pastor, a friend to talk about it.

I pray for you as we do it together.

Resources:

To attend to the cross and to walk with it, one needs to lean towards those who are placed in the cross of our society. Our walking with the stations of the cross has to do with the attuning of our hearts and the clearance of our mind regarding those who would be like Jesus today. Remembering Jesus, we look to our society to see who are the cross of our times. The judgement of Jesus shows the unfairness of the whole justice system so enmeshed with politics. You can go through the stations of the cross without paying attention to the concrete ways our society puts people on so many crosses today. But we are called to think about jails and the whole penitential system of punishment. Can we at least begin to think about the possibility of abolition? Here are two paragraphs to help us pause:

Ponder what Angela Davis have to say:

continue

“DuBois pointed out that in order to fully abolish the oppressive conditions produced by slavery, new democratic institutions would have to be created. Because this did not occur; black people encountered new forms of slavery—from debt peonage and the convict lease system to segregated and second-class education. The prison system continues to carry out this terrible legacy. It has become a receptacle for all of those human beings who bear the inheritance of the failure to create abolition democracy in the aftermath of slavery. And this inheritance is not only born by black prisoners, but by poor Latino, Native American, Asians, and white prisoners. Moreover, its use as such a receptacle for people who are deemed the detritus of society is on the rise throughout the world.”

― Angela Y. Davis, Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture

“Forget about reform; it’s time to talk about abolishing jails and prisons in American society . . . Still— abolition? Where do you put the prisoners? The ‘criminals’? What’s the alternative? First, having no alternative at all would create less crime than the present criminal training centers do. Second, the only full alternative is building the kind of society that does not need prisons: A decent redistribution of power and income so as to put out the hidden fire of burning envy that now flames up in crimes of property – both burglary by the poor and embezzlement by the affluent. And a decent sense of community that can support, reintegrate and truly rehabilitate those who suddenly become filled with fury or despair, and that can face them not as objects – criminals- but as people who have committee illegal acts as have almost all of us.”

Arthur Waskow, institute for Policy Studies, In Angela Y. Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete?

Videos for this Week:

The same way, we have perpetuated all kinds of tortures against the earth! Look at these pieces of machinery used to cut trees. For me, they are scourges on trees and sheer brutality on trees.

The Secret Life of Trees / Unusual animals, birds, plants

Climate 101: Deforestation | National Geographic

Freed Prisoner Albert Woodfox on Transformation and Hope After Four Decades in Solitary Confinement

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xvcnqipX00 For later use:

This source blow is an artistic group called “The Church of the Stop Shopping.” In this podcast episode, they have songs and news and preaching about climate change.
Reverend Billy Radio – The Sixth Extinction Is Our Secret Kink
The accelerating Sixth Extinction is all around us. We sense it but don’t admit it. It is governing our behavior. We dare not speak its name.

https://revbilly.com/podcast/?link_id=1&can_id=742e2178307ed5c05e451efaa027df64&source=email-your- promised-land-or-mine&email_referrer=email_1090510&email_subject=the-sixth-extinction-is-our-secret- kink

Worship resources for Earth Day 2021

https://umcmission.org/worship-resources-for-earth-day-2021/?fbclid=IwAR1xf_jGOE29maNK7n6I- 4ClcEY9hXS_sieFBuGusPSmJafrAp_Z87Zg2Qs

Book Suggestion

Albert Woodfox, Solitary : Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope (Grove Press, 2019).

Gayle Boss, Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing (Paraclete Press, 2020). Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

One Word Sawalmem

https://www.rosaguayaba.earth/oneword

Consequently, the claim of the Bible’s eco-dimensions is a critical component of recycling Christianity. The Center for Theology, Science and Culture associated with the College of Divinity in Adelaide and the University of Flinders, in South Australia, initiated the Earth Bible Project and published five volumes. The project identifies the following six principles for ecological hermeneutics:

The intrinsic cost principle: the Universe, the Earth and all its components have an intrinsic cost / value.

(Main take on this principle: We cannot attach any value to the earth for this is an economic language. The value is incommensurable, beyond any value or cost.)

The principle of interconnection: the Earth is a community of interconnected living beings, mutually dependent on each other for life and survival.
The voice principle: the Earth is a subject capable of raising its voice in celebration and against injustice.
The purpose principle: the universe, the Earth and all its components are part of a dynamic cosmic conception within which each piece has a place in the overall objective of this project.
The principle of multiple custody: the Earth is a balanced and diverse domain, where responsible guards can function as partners, rather than rule over, so that the Earth sustains its balance and a different terrestrial community.
The principle of resistance: the land and its components not only suffer from human injustices, but also actively resist them in the fight for justice. (The Earth Bible Team, 2000, p. 38-53, apud YEE, 2010, p.56).

1 Kwok Pui-lan, A Visão Cosmológica De Ivone Gebara, Mandrágora, v.20. n. 20, 2014, p. 111-128 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15603/2176-0985/mandragora.v20n20p111-128

POEM

From the Hako (Pawnee, Osage, Omaha) : invoking the Powers

Remember, remember the circle of the sky the stars and the brown eagle
the supernatural winds breathing night and day
from the four directions

Remember, remember the great life of the sun breathing on the earth
it lies upon the earth
life covering the earth

Remember, remember the sacredness of things running streams and dwellings
the young within the nest
a hearth for sacred fire
the holy flame of fire

From the book The Magic World, American Indian Songs and Poems, Selected and Edited by William Brandon (Ohio: Ohio university Press, 1991).

The promise of Lent us that something will be born of the ruin, something so astoundingly better than the present moment that we cannot imagine it. Lent is seedbed with resurrection. The Resurrection promises that a new future will be given to us when we begin to be stripped of the lie of separation, when the hard husk suffocating our hearts opens and, like children again, we feel the suffering of any creature as our own. That this can happen is the wild, not impossible hope of all creation. If I had it to do it again (tell my children about Lent), I would tell my young sons about the suffering and deaths of the amazing animals they love. I would let their hearts be broken. Then I would tell them that hearts broken open in love create a new ark. That when they suffer in love together, a Suffering Love beyond us can birth, through us, a new world where “they will not hurt or destroy in all my body mountain.” This is what we and all creatures groan for – this more beautiful world that lies quietly waiting in every heart.

Gayle Boss, Wild Hope. Stories for Lent from the Vanishing

Videos: Two Heartbreaking Stories

An endangered bird is forgetting its song as the species dies out

You can read more here too:

How Does That Song Go? This Bird Couldn’t Say.
New generations of a critically endangered species of songbird are failing to learn the tunes they need for courtship. It could lead to extinction. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/17/science/bird-honeyeater-australia.html

Don’t go alone! Let us learn with the Whales!

Sperm whales learned to avoid whaling ships — and warned other whales

https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Technology/sperm-whales-learned-avoid-whaling-ships-warned- whales/story?id=76563260

Movie:
‘A Plastic Ocean’ on Netflix

5 Movies About Plastic Pollution That Will Make You Think Twice

https://plasticchange.org/knowledge-center/5-movies-about-plastic-pollution-that-will-make-you-think- twice/

Each one of us will plant a Tree

Get your tree seed here or anywhere you have access.

https://www.arborday.org

Meet the original eco warriors protecting the planet.

Indigenous people account for less than 5% of the world’s population – but they support or protect 80% of the planet’s biodiversity.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51806291

Meet the ‘Women Warriors’ Protecting the Amazon Forest

Meet the ‘Women Warriors’ Protecting the Amazon Forest

Amazon’s indigenous warriors take on invading loggers and ranchers

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/29/xikrin-people-fight-back-against-amazon-land-grabbing

Amazon indigenous leaders killed in Brazil drive-by shooting

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/08/amazon-indigenous-leaders-killed-in-brazil-drive-by- shooting

Resources
Judith Butler: Mourning Is a Political Act Amid the Pandemic and Its Disparities

https://truthout.org/articles/judith-butler-mourning-is-a-political-act-amid-the-pandemic-and-its-disparities/

Prayer (by Claudio Carvalhaes)

Dear Honeyeaters,

I have heard about you. How beautiful birds you all are! Far away from me, I also heard about your struggle Your struggle to survive
Your home being desecrated

Your refugia being erased
Your species dwindling down
I heard you couldn’t find your own singing
You are so few
You can’t find your elders to teach you your own songs
For they are all almost gone
So the few young ones are trying to learn your very songs
So you can mate and prosper and continue living
But no, that is not happening
Your existence and the existence of your generations depend on the songs passed on to each other Your singing comes from learning with your own people

How wonderful is that!
You are literally the songs of your fathers, mothers, great fathers, great mothers, great grandmothers and great grandfathers.
But how tragic it is:
They are not there anymore and they cannot teach you the songs you so desperately need
Without your own songs, you go on mimicking the songs of other birds.
In different places we hear different songs but they are only songs of other birds who live near you.
You are trying to survive learning other birds songs but these are not your songs.

Without your songs, your “warbly noises,” you can’t court the females They are not attracted to the unrecognizable songs you sing.
You sound metallic, too loud, or off your own tune.
You are there but at the same time you are not.

You exist yes, but for whom?
Your own people cannot come closer to you
For your songs are not recognizable
You are losing your own self because your own self is not your own!
You are not a lone ranger singer
Your self is collective, for your song is collective.
Your song belongs to generations, made by ways of learning and turning your song into a very distinct song. But you are losing that.
Your song doesn’t fulfill you as much as you try
As much as you listen
As much as you are eager and perhaps even desperate to sing
You try to court the females and don’t understand why they can’t get closer,
be a part of you,
continue your species singing
For you sing is a foreign song
It is not yours,
Fully sang by the strength of your lungs
But not fully yours
You are singing for somebody else who can’t or don’t desire to hear you.
You don’t understand how after a whole day singing
Nobody cares
Nobody approaches
Nobody listens
You are losing your complexity!
And without your song you lose your strength! Through the daily battles, you easily lose your fights, especially against the “noisy miners,” other Honeyeaters who are more aggressive.

I remember Chiilaphuchiassaalesh, or Bull Goes into the Wind, renamed as Plenty Coups, great Chief of the Crow Nation (Apsaalooké). He once said to a white man these piercing words:

“I have not told you half of what happened when I was young,” [Plenty Coups] said, when urged to go on. “I can think back and tell you much more of war and horse-stealing. But when the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened. There was little singing anywhere. Besides,” he added sorrowfully, “you know that part of my life as well as I do. You saw what happened to us when the buffalo went away.”

Like you, dear honeyeaters, Plenty Coups and his people lost their ways of being, feeling, living: when the buffalo went away the hearts of my people fell to the ground,
It is as if the erasure of your own refugia is like the buffalo going away.
the hearts of my people fell to the ground

As your heart keeps on trying not to fall yet as you sing and sing and sing somebody else’s songs. Plenty Coups people’s hearts fell to the ground.
As yours will soon too.
There was little singing anywhere

As there is very little singing of the Honeyeaters. Soon your species will go away.
And our hearts will once again, fall to the ground.

I have heard that Plenty Coups had a strategy to make connections to the white people so his people could survive. Such a great chief. And the Crows are alive! Not long ago some of their youth got a prestigious signing award! Supaman! Look at that! Chief Plenty Coups was right! They learned their own singing by the same and other ways. They re-existed once again. They are here!

As for you, there is little to say about your re-existence. I don’t know what will happen to the very few of you. What I know is that my heart falls to the ground and I haven’t been able to pick it up yet. With your loss I also die with you. I’ve been listening to your songs so I can keep it in my heart.

These are the histories of colonization and coloniality: destroy our languages, shut down our songs, do away with any form of diversity which is the only way life can happen.

I think it hit me so hard too because I am also trying to figure out my own singing. I am a foreign trying to sing somebody else’s song since I know myself. Did my great grandmother, an indigenous shaman I know nothing about… did she sing? I know she used to heal people. But I don’t know any of her songs. What I know are the hymns of my mother which sustains me to this day.

Once in the countryside of El Salvador, after a performance, an indigenous chief woman came to me, held my head and said: now you only need the sacred song. Oh my dear Honeyeaters, I’ve been searching for this sacred song all along. With the loss of your own songs, I realized that perhaps my sacred song has always been the songs of birds. But I feel like you now, singing foreign songs, metallic sounds, off tune, strange. I feel that the extinction of your song is my extinction.

I don’t know what to do, besides sit here and listen to you. And say a prayer of care, healing. I ask that God, all that is life, console your hearts and help you each day.

Introduction and Resources, Week 6 – Stations 11 & 12 – page 5

May your songs, dear Honeyeaters, stay with me, both the authentic and the mimicked ones. May I find a way with them, between them.
May my little singing grow!
May I learn with Chief Plenty Coups to keep singing in the midst of my own colonized heart.

Dear Honeyeaters, my heartbreaking song this morning goes to you,

All my love to you.

Cláudio

The Honeyeaters are losing their songs… Here is a prayer for them

Texts

I have begun to see more clearly hot the exclusion of the poor is linked to the destruction of their lands, to the forces that leave them no choice but to move from place in a ceaseless exile, to racism, and to the growing militarization of their countries.

I am creating an ecofeminism based on the experience of those who have diminishing access to green things and clean water; of those who breathe an even greater amount of the air pollution that has spread everywhere.

An earth where the number of displaced persons increases… of refugees, prisoners, and the homeless, of those who are hungry for love and for bread. An earth that is burned, .robbed, exhausted, devastated, divided up, and poorly loved. It is our land and a foreign land! A land of friends and enemies! A hostile earth and a mother earth, a homeland earth, a brother earth, a sister earth. A land of pain and hopeful longings… Our longings are expressions of our hope. Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 1999.

Luminous Darkness

En route to the floor of the ocean, the diver first passes through the ‘belt of the fishes.’ This is a wide band of light reflected from the surface of the sea. From this area, he moves to a depth of water that cannot be penetrated by light above the surface. Its dark, foreboding and eerie. The diver’s immediate reaction is apt to be one of fear and sometimes a sudden spam of panic that soon passes. As he drops deeper and deeper into the abyss, slowly his eyes begin to pick up the luminous darkness; what was fear is relaxed and he moves into… Howard Thurman, The Luminous Darkness (Indiana: Friends United Press, 2014), xvii-xviii.

To do on FRIDAY OR SATURDAY – Plant a Tree

Get your tree seed here or from a local nursery

https://www.arborday.org

Example

Why you should plant a native tree? Here is what an Oak tree can do! Create a Living Legacy: Plant an Oak http://backyardsfornature.org/?p=1

Videos:

The way to go and think more concretely beyond individual actions. Support the New Green Deal! Please watch this short video and get to know more!

Another ways to support Indigenous people and the earth – go against Embridge Line 3 Pipeline.

https://vimeo.com/351927944

This was just released: The Red Deal http://therednation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Red-Deal_Part-I_End-The-Occupation-1.pdf

the lower region with confidence and peculiar vision.

How do you talk to someone who doesn’t believe in climate change? Not by rehashing the same data and facts we’ve been discussing for years, says climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. In this inspiring, pragmatic talk, Hayhoe shows how the key to having a real discussion is to connect over shared values like family, community and religion — and to prompt people to realize that they already care about a changing climate. “We can’t give in to despair,” she says. “We have to go out and look for the hope we need to inspire us to act — and that hope begins with a conversation, today.” https://www.ted.com/talks/katharine_hayhoe_the_most_important_thing_you_can_do_to_fight_climate_ch ange_talk_about_it

Grieving orca still carrying her dead calf more nearly three weeks later

‘It’s heartbreaking’: Killer whale continues carrying dead calf for ‘unprecedented’ length of mourning

https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/10/us/orca-whale-still-carrying-dead-baby-trnd

The destruction of the Amazon, explained

Meet the Ranchers Who Claim the Brazilian Amazon is Theirs to Burn | The Dispatch

How the US poisoned Navajo Nation

Song of the Earth – Moses Bollan https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C6BN8fq2kE4woJW_Wjm6bIfKIGjZn_lW/view

Haiku – Stephen Picha

I hear a tree speak You and I are relatives Ancient ones rebirthed

Compassion, Peace & Justice Training Days April 7-9,2021

The Rev. Dr. Cláudio Carvalhaes used to approach walks like many of us — a time to reflect on his day, his family, and to process things that were on his mind. “Now, when I walk, I bow to the tree,” Carvalhaes says. “I stop and I touch, and it is almost like an awareness of myself and my surroundings in ways that are not only that I feel attached, but I learned to see them as myself. I went from this process of, for instance, listening to the birds — In every class that I teach, I always ask students to listen to the birds at the beginning — but I went from listening to the birds as a song that they have, and I listen now to the songs that they sing, and it is my song. They’re singing my songs. Their breath is my breath. And so, I’m listening while they’re singing about me. It is a different cognition. It is not in the brain; it is not in the mind. It is not as myself … that I only think about myself. But no, it’s more myself in relation to what’s around me. I can only understand myself if I listen to the birds, if I bow to the trees as my elders, and that is what has expanded enormously and helped me to go through this thing.”

CPJ Days speaker brings growing connection to Creation

Resources

There is no single institution able to cover, oversee, dominate, manage, handle, or simply trace ecological issues of large shape and scope. Many issues are too intractable and too enmeshed in contradictory interests. We have problems, but we don’t have the publics that go with them. How could we imagine agreements amid so many entangled interests? We will review several attempts to tackle ecological problems by connecting the tools of scientific representation with those of arts and politics and present the program of Experimentation on Arts and Politics which has been running at Sciences since September 2010.

Waiting for Gaia. Composing the common world through art and politics. Bruno Latour http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/446

Liturgy of Good-Bye – Saying so long to your tree

For those who need to cut your tree, here is a simple liturgy:

Bring incense and walk around your tree three times saying:

We have received you, we honor you, we bless you.

Round the ground, touch the tree and spend time touching and relating to your tree. Then you can stand before your tree and say a homily that you create. Something like:

My dearest <insert the name of your tree>, I haven’t noticed you for so long. But now I see you. It breaks my heart to see that non-local species have invaded your body and you are now dying. I am so sorry. My heart goes with you. Please forgive us for not noticing this earlier. Forgive us for not caring for you.

Pause

Dear <insert the name of your tree, I want to say that you brought so much life to my world and the worlds of those around you. You have sheltered birds, you have enriched the soil ,you have blessed other trees underneath. You have provided better air and have gave us shade. Your leaves were entire universes and every year you knew how to go through the seasons. You have lived your life in such beautiful ways and I thank you for all you are and have become.

With olive oil, draw the sign of the cross in the four corners of the tree and at each corner you say:

Thank you for your life.
May you resurrect in us again!

Blessing
And now my friend know that you are loved. GO in peace and may your memory stay with us forever. Amen! Sit with your tree for as long as you need, keep silence, talk to her/him/they. Leave when you are ready.

Poem by Thich Nhat Hanh

Please Call Me By My True Names

Do not say that I’ll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

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.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people,

dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

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.

Thich Nhat Hanh

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/books/review-solitary-albert-woodfox.html

[2] Davi Kopenawa, The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2013).

Lent – The Stations of the Cross and the Earth

By Cláudio Carvalhaes

FIRST STATION – JESUS IN THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE – JESUS IS SUFFERING

SECOND STATION – JESUS IS BETRAYED AND ARRESTED

THIRD STATION: JESUS IS CONDEMNED BY THE SANHEDRIN

FOURTH STATION: JESUS IS DENIED BY PETER

FIFTH STATION: JESUS IS JUDGED BY PILATE

SIXTH STATION: JESUS IS SCOURGED AND CROWNED WITH THORNS

SEVENTH STATION: JESUS BEARS THE CROSS

EIGHTH STATION: JESUS IS HELPED BY SIMON THE CYRENIAN TO CARRY THE CROSS

NINTH STATION: JESUS PROMISES GOD’S HOME

TENTH STATION: JESUS SPEAKS TO BELOVED ONES

ELEVENTH STATION: JESUS DIES ON THE CROSS

TWELFTH STATION: JESUS IS PLACED IN THE TOMB

************

RESOURCES

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