Emmaus Lutheran Church

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A Letter From Chief Seattle

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~We celebrated Earth Day this morning in our service. Continuing with the theme of honoring God’s creation, we wanted to share the following passage. This is an excerpt from a letter attributed to Chief Seattle of the Duwamish Tribe to Franklin Pierce, President of the United States, in response to an offer to purchase the Dwamish lands in the North East of the US, currently Washington State. This may be a later version of the original letter, but it captures the essence of Chief Seattle’s words, which explain the Dwamish peoples’ relationship to the earth.~

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“Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.”

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Another Earth Day Reflection and Prayer

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“A sixth-century rabbi wrote, ‘God, from the very beginning of creation, was occupied before all else with planting, as it is written, ‘And first of all, the Eternal God planted a Garden in Eden.’ Therefore, occupy yourselves first and foremost with planting.

Lord, give us humility to remember that we are made from dirt so that we might till the dirt and love it as we love ourselves. Amen.”

— Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, p. 249.

A Prayer for the Earth

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This prayer is from Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’. It feels good and right to pray with all who pray for our home, Earth, and who inhabit it.

A Prayer for Our Earth

All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures.
You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.
Pour out upon us the power of your love,
that we may protect life and beauty.

Fill us with peace, that we may live
as brothers and sisters, harming no one.
O God of the poor,
help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth, so precious in your eyes.
Bring healing to our lives,
that we may protect the world and not prey on it,
that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction. Touch the hearts
of those who look only for gain
at the expense of the poor and the earth.
Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,
to be filled with awe and contemplation,
to recognize that we are profoundly united
with every creature
as we journey towards your infinite light.
We thank you for being with us each day.
Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle
for justice, love and peace.

Amen.

Reduce Stress with ‘Scheduled Worry Time’

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From LearnToLive: an independent company offering online cognitive behavioral therapy programs and services.

Worry has many faces and it is common for each of us to experience it differently. The common trait of all worry is the “what-if” concern about the future, the churning over of unhelpful thoughts that produce no solutions. Whether your worry is something you have always had with you or a more recent addition to your life due to the coronavirus, there are several research-based tools you can use to get some relief. One of the tools is called Worry Time. It may sound strange, but it is surprisingly effective. Here are the basics:

1. Worry serves a function
It might feel like worry just happens, but research has shown that we often worry for a reason. Maybe we hope to find a solution to our problem, or we might feel like we are doing the responsible thing by worrying, or maybe we are trying to keep our mind off a more troubling concern. If we can find a reason to worry, maybe we can find a reason to not worry.

2. Put worry on a schedule
One way to worry less is to schedule 15-30 minutes of Worry Time each day during which you will focus only on your worries. If a worry shows up outside of your Worry Time, you simply make a note of it and get back to your life, reassured that you will get to the worry at the scheduled time. Then when the clock strikes Worry Time, you take out your list and focus on worrying.

3. It is okay to use a Worries List
Jotting down each worry on a list is a helpful exercise. The act of putting a concern on a list reassures your mind that it is not being neglected, that it WILL be taken care of during Worry Time. You will not forget it since it’s on the list. It takes the urgency out of worrying once you have reassured yourself that you can deal with it later.

4. It can serve as Solutions Time
Sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between trivial worries and worries that really require our attention. Worry Time allows us to evaluate our concerns, to get a sense of whether a worry is important or not. For worries that would benefit from our immediate attention, worry time can become Solutions Time. The feeling of accomplishment at having resolved a worry serves as a kind of reward, one that makes us more likely to commit to the next Worry Time.

5. The feelings might not show up
You might find that Worry Time comes but your worries do not. It is ok if you are no longer troubled by the things that seemed so concerning earlier in the day. That is quite common. If this happens to you, just smile, and move on. Worry often works that way.

Pandemic Easter Litany

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Pandemic Easter Litany — by Rev. Melissa Reed

 

This year

we couldn’t kneel down

and wash one another’s feet

but parents kneel by the tub and wash their babies

before bed and pray for another day

and we wash our own hands lovingly, thoroughly

for our neighbors and strangers we will never meet.

Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!

 

This year

we couldn’t break bread with friends

and pass the cup of blessing

but grocery store clerks stock the shelves

and healthcare workers suit up,

giving their bodies

so that we may eat and live.

Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!

 

This year

we couldn’t walk the stations of the cross together

through our sanctuary or neighborhood

but a father waits in line for food,

carrying the cross,

and a teacher works endless hours from home,

carrying the cross,

and a sanitation worker still wakes before the sun,

to carry away our trash,

carrying the cross.

Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!

 

This year

we couldn’t share the emptiness of the stripped altar,

waiting and praying in the silence,

but the whole world now holds vigil moment to moment

as bodies are taken from respirators and

wait to be buried without ritual –

not buried alone,

but with Jesus,

like seeds in the ground.

Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!\

 

This year

we couldn’t share God’s big stories

in the way we are used to – not from a page and pulpit –

and stay up all night to light the holy fire,

but as the holy breath brooded over the chaos,

we discover our shared breath in a way we can no longer deny

and as the dry bones came together,

we are learning to come together in the way you made us

and as our ancestors were liberated from Egypt,

so our Earth gasps deeply in her liberation from our oppression

and our cities are lit, once again, by the holy fire of the stars.

Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!

This year

we couldn’t fill our sanctuaries with lilies

and lift our voices together — not in the way we are used to —

but this Easter morning we wake and walk with Mary in fear and trembling

to the edges of the tomb

and find a crack –

the promise of the tulips’ opening,

the strangers’ smile on the street,

the announcement of a babe born —

“we are being made new,” she cries —

the breath of life in our lungs that MUST proclaim with each

in and out:

Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Your Love always finds a way, O God. Alleluia!