Meeting ID: 815 0755 1772
To connect by phone dial: 1-301-715-8592
Welcome: We hold our prayer service today as part of the ecumenical Season of Creation, a season of prayer and action for our common home that takes place every year from September 1 to October 4. The theme for the Season of Creation this year is “ Living Water,
Opening Prayer
In the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters.
And God called them good.
All: Come Holy Spirit and cleanse the waters.
The prophet saw a river flowing from the Temple,
and wherever the river flowed, everything lived.
All: Come Holy Spirit and renew the face of the Earth.
Jesus cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me... Out
of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.”
All: Come, Holy Spirit and heal your people.
Song: Waterfall by Chris Williamson
https://youtu.be/ix5_TBUxSJ4?si=9K9XJegLQ68OmCUA
Reading 1: Ezekiel 47:9 and 12
Every living creature that wanders upon the face of the earth will be drawn to the river and will find refreshment there. There will be an abundance of fish, for
wherever these waters flow and everything they touch will be renewed.
Fruit trees of every kind will grow along both banks of the river. Their leaves will never wither and their fruit will never fail. They will produce fresh fruit, for they will be nourished by the waters flowing from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be food, and their leaves will be medicine.
Priests for Equality. The Inclusive Bible: The First Egalitarian Translation (p. 325). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Reading 2: The Quiet Pool by Joy Crowley
There is within each of us a quiet clear pool of living water
fed by one deep source and inseparable from it,
but so hidden by a tangle of activity that we may not
know that of its existence.
We can spend the proverbial forty years wandering
in strange deserts, sinking unrewarding wells,
and moving on, driven by our own thirst, but when we stop
long enough to look inside ourselves, really look
beyond our ideas about water and what and where it should be,
we discover it was with us all the time,
that quiet clear pool, which is ageless,
the meaning of our existence and the answer to all wanderings.
And as we drink, we know what Jesus meant when he said
we’d never be thirsty again.
(Everything ‘Round Us Is Praise, Joy Cowley, Ave Maria Press)
Petitions:
Reader: We pray for places where plastics, toxins, and oil spills blacken creeks and wetlands, for communities whose fishing waters are contaminated and whose children drink from polluted streams.
Heal what has been poisoned. Bring justice where profit has
silenced truth.
All: Where water flows, Lord, let everything live, trees for food and leaves for healing.
Reader: We pray for all rivers dammed without the consent of the
vulnerable; for farmers whose soil dries seasonal flood; for indigenous peoples whose sacred waters are engineered for distant cities and data centers; for the suffering of communities whose livelihoods are stolen by corporate greed, and whose health is sacrificed for global consumption.
Free what has been unjustly controlled. Let rivers flow again with
dignity and life.
All: Where water flows, Lord, let everything live, trees for food and leaves for healing.
Reader: We pray for oceans burdened by plastic and chemical waste; for coral reefs bleached by warming seas; for great whales navigating through labyrinths of nylon and ghost nets; for the microscopic life, the plankton and the krill, now mingling with the invisible dust of synthetic waste; for the rivers that carry our runoff — the fertilizers, the dyes, and the heavy metals.
Turn our guilt into grace and our apathy into action. Make us a people who live justly and bring healing to every shore and stream.
All: Where water flows, Lord, let everything live, trees for food and leaves for healing.
Reader: We pray for communities where rising seas claim communities and ancestral lands, where saltwater invades freshwater wells, where graves are washed away with memory and belonging; for those who have contributed least to climate change, yet suffer first and most.
Hold them in dignity and strengthen global resolve for justice.
All: Where water flows, Lord, let everything live, trees for food and leaves for healing.
Reader: We pray for informal settlements and rural villages where taps run dry or water is unsafe to drink; for children walking miles to collect water or women burdened by scarcity; for those whose sickness is caused by contaminated supply.
We pray for those whose lives are closely intertwined with water - coastal peoples, fisherfolk, marine biologists, water engineers - who can teach us wise ways to live with water. We pray for people to be moved to action and use their inherent or entrusted power to create change. Stir governments, corporations, and communities to protect and share water justly.
All: Where water flows, Lord, let everything live, trees for food and leaves for healing.
(Methodist Church of Southern Africa)
Song: Water is Life by Sara Thomsen video by Denise
https://youtu.be/5rkDa7-vQvQ?si=Gimiyd3RJfpIM5tU
Closing Prayer:
You who hold all of creation in your womb and spring us forward onto the Earth at birth. Spirit of Tides, remind me of the rise and fall of your rhythms so that I may discover them deep within my own being. Spirit of Greenness bring moistness and vigor to my life so that I might savor the experience of your energy moving through me out into the world. Blessings of water be upon me.
“May we be carried by the flow of the great river of life.
May we discover a hidden spring within, gushing forth.
May we be carried to the shores of the sacred and renewed.” Amen.
(Trinity wall street Lenten reflections based on St Hildegarde of Bingen)
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