Our Ministries


Solidarity Day Prayer - March 2005
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Although precious and beautiful in God’s design,
the earth and its peoples exist today in a fragile,
divided, and fragmented condition. CALL TO TRANSFORMATION

Call to Prayer - Leader:
We pray with and about WATER in the spirit of Lent,
a season of repentance and forgiveness. All creation draws near to God, seeks refuge from the tightening grip of winter, the winter our destruction has wrought by our abuse of God’s creation. Listen now. Be still and hear water speak . . .

WATER’S PRAYER TO GOD - Reader:
We, the Waters come, O God, flowing to meet you,
as we have flowed through time,
sustaining the life of all creation.
We come, O God, from our rivers and lakes,
our seas and oceans.
We, come, O God, with our dead upon our waves.
Our living struggle against creeping filth
and our mighty creatures flee before
the fury of your people.
Can we ever recapture the purity of your will
in the brightness of our waters?
Stir up your people,
O God, to let waters flow with life everlasting.

Martin Palmer and Anne Nash Advent and Ecology,
World Wide Fund for Nature, 1988

POUR A GLASS OF WATER SLOWLY INTO A BOWL WHILE THE LEADER PRAYS: Precious water, as we listen to the music you make we praise and thank our Creator God for life force that you are: majestic, playful, powerful and soft. At our Baptism you flowed over us and we were born into a community of faith, hope and love, the Church of Christ here on Earth. It is the gift you are to us, water, that we celebrate today.

Sing the refrain or something similar: Water of Life, Jesus our Light, lead us from death to new life.

Reader: No element is mentioned more often in Scripture: water for cleansing, water for baptism, for refreshment and life, water for transition from one stage of life to another, water for blessing.
Repeat refrain
We claim the water of life, whose rush announces the birth of a baby, a water of life that nourishes seeds and plant roots deep in Earth. We celebrate water without which all that lives would shrivel and wither away, water of our life. Repeat refrain
“Come to me and I will give you living water, and you will never be thirsty again.” Today we pray that our thirst be kept alive, until the justice that we thirst for is realized. Today we celebrate our common thirst and the God who gifts us with water. Repeat refrain

From MORE THAN WORDS, Janet Shaffran, Pat Kozak

REFLECTION and SHARING
Scroll to the section below, after the dividing line, and spend some time with the thoughts and images that are there. How can we honor and care for Earth’s water? What are you willing to do?

INTERCESSIONS Pray prayers of petition and thanksgiving with the response being: May our thirst be kept alive, until the justice that we thirst for is realized.

CLOSING PRAYER:

IRISH BLESSING

May the blessing of rain be on you;
the soft sweet rain.
May it fall upon your spirit
so that little flowers may spring up
and shed their sweetness on the air.
And may the blessing of the great rains be on you,
to beat upon your spirit and wash it fair and clean;
and leave there many a shining pool
where the blue of heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.
May the blessing of Earth be on you,
the great round Earth; may you ever have a kindly
greeting for people as you’re going along the roads.
May God bless you and bless you kindly. Amen.

Irish Blessing All Year Round, British Council of Churches, 1987

USE THE WATER IN THE BOWL TO WATER PLANTS
The average life-span of a cloud is no more than ten minutes.

Water is a sacred common heritage to be worshiped, preserved and shared collectively, sustainably used and equitably distributed.
Vandana Shiva, Indian environmental activist

1,100 million people in the world are without access to a safe water supply, 693 million of whom are in Asia, 300 million in Africa.

A water molecule spends 4,000 years in the ocean, 400 years on land, and 10 days a vapor in the atmosphere.

Two French transnational conglomerates, Vivendi and Suez, own or control water companies in 150 countries, and distribute water to 200 million people.

From 1972 to 1996, floods affected 65 million people, more than any other type of disaster including war, drought and famine.

As we have within us a pool of blood,
wherein the lungs as we breathe expand and contract,
so Earth has its ocean, which rises and falls every six hours with the breathing of the world.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
slightly tweaked for inclusive language

A drop of water. A pearl. Which is more precious? The water of course, whose beauty the pearl tries to evoke. A pearl may be infinitely rarer, but even at its best it is a pale imitation. As rain, as ice crystal, as snow-flake, as spray, the drop without which all life on earth would cease is a pearl beyond price.

From 1972 to 1996, floods affected 65 million people, more than any other type of disaster including war, drought and famine.

Within a year of the privatization of water services in Buenos Aires (1993), the number of workers was reduced from 7,600 to 4,000 while the price of water rose by 13.5%

Water powers our minds and bodies more elementally than any other substance. Thousands of years ago, humankind understood that without water, there will be nothing. Nothing flowing throughout the intricate networks of veins and arteries in the earth’s body, lubricating its soils, shaping its cavities and depressions, and fueling its inner store of fertility. Without water there will be nothing to quench thirst, nothing to bathe in, nothing to wash away impurities. No green shoots, no animal or insect life, no fish nor fowl, no milk, no blood, no semen. No shelter, tools or bricks; no pots, fabrics or artistic life. No mines, boats, trains, books.

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