Gathering Song:  We Are One from My Heart is Moved: Carolyn McDade & Friends
(We are one, one human family, one earth community, a common destiny for all) or song of your choice.

Reflective Reading 1: “A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe’, a part limited in time and space. (We) experience (ourselves), (our) thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of (our) consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty”   Albert Einstein

Reflective Reading 2: “An absence of a sense of the sacred is the basic flaw in many of our efforts at ecologically or environmentally adjusting our human presence to the natural world. It has been said, ‘We will not save what we do not love.’ It is also true that we will neither love nor save what we do not experience as sacred.”        
                            Thomas Berry

Litany of Gratitude
We give-away our thanks to the earth which gives us our home
We give-away our thanks to the rivers and lakes, which give-away their water
We give-away our thanks to the trees, which give-away their fruit and nuts
We give-away our thanks to the wind, which brings rain to water the plants
We give-away our thanks to the sun, who gives-away warmth and light
All beings on earth: the trees, the animals, the wind and the rivers give-away to one another so all is in balance
We give-away our promise to begin to learn how to stay in balance with all the earth.
        DOLORES LA CHAPELLE   from Earth Prayers from Around the World  239

All: We join with the earth and with each other
Side 1: To bring new life to the land, to restore the waters, to refresh the air
Side 2: To renew the forests, to care for the plants, to protect the creatures
Side 1: To celebrate the seas, to rejoice in the sunlight, to sing the song of the stars
Side 2: To recreate the human community, to promote justice and peace, to remember our children                
All: We join together as many and diverse expressions of one loving mystery for the healing of the earth and the renewal of all life.               
           Adapted from: U.N. ENVIRONMENTAL SABBATH PROGRAM

“If the Dynamics of the Universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the sun, and formed the earth,- if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being this unnumbered variety of living beings and finally brought (us) into being and guided (us) safely through the turbulent centuries, there is no reason to believe that this same Guiding Process is precisely what has awakened in (us) (our) present understanding of (ourselves) and (our) relation to this stupendous process. Sensitized to this guidance we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human venture”           Thomas Berry from The New Story

The International day for the Eradication of Poverty is October 17
This year is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/

THE FACTS: Human activities are causing unprecedented environmental deterioration

• Every second more than 200 tons of carbon dioxide is emitted, contributing to global warming, while an estimated 1 billion people worldwide breathe polluted air that does not meet minimum standards set by WHO;
• Every second some 750 tons of topsoil are lost;
• Each day some 47,000 hectares of forest are destroyed, 346,000 hectares of land are turned to desert.
• Each day an estimated 100 to 300 species become extinct.

Environmental degradation and poverty are inextricably intertwined, resulting in a vicious cycle in which poverty causes environmental stress and, in turn, perpetuates more poverty, spreading it around the globe. Poverty puts pressure on people and nations, especially in the developing world, to engage in unsustainable and ecologically damaging practices. The poor, in an effort to survive, and impoverished nations, in an equally pressing attempt to service their debts, turn to exploitation of their own natural resources.
         United Nations Department of Public Information * DPI/1783/POV

THE CHALLENGE
In Toward a new Consciousness: Values to Sustain Human and Natural Communities
http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=5907

James Gustave Speth, Dean, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies states,
“Many of our deepest thinkers and many of those most familiar with the scale of the challenges we face have concluded that the changes needed to sustain human and natural communities can only be achieved in the context of the rise of a new consciousness. For some, it is a spiritual awakening – a transformation of the human heart. For others it is a more intellectual process of coming to see the world anew and deeply embracing the emerging ethic of the environment and the old ethic of what it means to love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Beatrice Bruteau in THE HOLY THYRSDAY REVOLUTION  posits: “The difficulty is that this exhortation flies in the face of everything else that our culture encourages and that our worldview sees. If we cannot love our neighbor as our self, it is because we do not perceive our neighbor as our self.”  Our call is to move from a worldview of domination to one of communion.

Sallie McFague in Life Abundant proposes, “…the one thing needful in a theology for twenty-first century North American middle-class Christians is an alternative view of the abundant life from that of our consumer culture…If one believes that ‘the glory of God is all creatures fully alive,’ then our current worldview and its lifestyle are wrong. It is more than that: it is sinful and evil, for it is contrary to God’s will for creation.”

“How are the values, habits of thought, and world views dominant in our culture at variance with nature’s reality
and basic human needs?

One way of describing the values that are needed is to identify the transitions that are required to move successfully from today to tomorrow. I would describe one of these transitions as follows:  from seeing humanity as something apart from nature, transcending and dominating it, to seeing ourselves as part of nature, offspring of its evolutionary process, close kin to wild things, and wholly dependent on its vitality and the finite services it provides.”   James Gustave Speth

Prepared by SUNSEED Eco-Education Staff, Wisconsin