#Me Too and #Mother Earth Too.
What we have done to women's bodies and been silent about, we have done to the earth.
Our ecologic crisis and the sexual abuse of woman are connected. They both are an invitation to break the silence of the suffering of women and men who have been exploited by power over relationships as well as the ways in which this has been accepted as normal in our culture. We have different experiences of sexual abuse, as victim or perpetrator, or both, but all of us have lived in a culture that has treated it as if it was normal and been silent about it. We all agree that sexual abuse must stop. Everyone is complicit in abuses of the earth and many of us are just beginning to wake up to the fact that it is not normal and we want to do everything we can to not be silent about it and to make it stop. It is human to go into denial about painful truths. Just as woman have courageously come forward this past year breaking the silence of sexual abuse, the Earth has broken her silence of the abuse we have done to her body with droughts, floods and fires. It is time to have a kind of Truth and Reconciliation for sexual abuse for woman and men, as well as for people and Mother Earth and all her creatures…. massive forums for truth telling, “for the truth will set us free.” (John 8:32) The Earth is also a body, a planetary body and we are a part of her body and what we do to her, we do to ourselves. Ecology now awakens us to an ancient religious idea from many wisdom traditions that all life is sacred and we are all interconnected. It is time we listen to the cries of suffering women, animals and plants, oceans and the earth, to make amends, ask for forgiveness and change the way we live. We must break the silence of the wailing of mother and baby whales who are being tortured to death from having their ear drums explode with the sounds of sonic blasts from under water weapons testing and fracking as well as plastics and toxic waste. #The Whales Too!
I invite you to walk in solidarity with Mother Mary in prayer this Christmas, for she is one of the most important Divine Feminine Faces of God in our western consciousness and she is here if we call upon her. She wants to give us strength.
Dear Mary, May we commune with you this Christmas, you who were an unusually brave women of history, as well as someone who became a mythic symbol and saint. You who are the divine mother of our Christmas story, you followed in the tradition of Isis the divine mother of ancient Egypt and all those mother goddesses before Christianity. You who are more than myth, for you were an actual woman who lived in the first century, two thousand years ago, a young, poor, pregnant, Jewish, living in Palestine, a refugee, and a woman who communed with God and gave birth to a rabble rouser, Jesus, who taught that love is more powerful than torture and death. We want to become like you, to mystically connect to you, as we break the silence of praise and thanksgiving to God for all of creation and our part in it. You who mothered one of the most influential religious leaders of human history, may we follow humbly in your footsteps. May we emulate your courage as we dare to hope to give birth to love, like you, in a world of danger, violence and injustice. Amen
Let us pray in the words that Mary taught us, “My soul gives glory to my God. My heart pours out its praise. God lifted up my lowliness in many marvelous ways. My God has done great things for me: Holy is her Name. All people will declare me blessed, and blessing they shall claim.
From age to age to all who fear, such mercy Love imparts, dispensing justice far and near, dismissing selfish hearts
. Love casts the mighty from their thrones, promotes the insecure. Leaves hungry spirits satisfied, the rich seem suddenly poor.
Praise God, whose loving covenant supports those in distress, remembering past promise with present faithfulness.” Gospel of Luke adapted by Miriam Therese Winters
Dear God/dess
Gracious God we give thanks for Mother Mary and all the saints, for the Christmas story, for winter and all the sacred cycles of seasons. Thank you for the gift of dreams when you come to us and show us how to bring the sacred to birth within us and amongst us. You who are Emmanuel, the God who is with us, we are frightened of massive injustice, nuclear war and ecologic catastrophe and all the ways we go into denial and have been silent. We need your help to tell the truth. We give thanks for all the ways God that you give us courage as you pour your love into our hearts and the world in more blessings than we can name, despite the harm we do, knowingly and unknowingly. May we lift our hearts in prayer with Mother Mary and Mother Earth to break both the silence of thanksgiving and praise to you who are our God of love, as well as break the silence of suffering to Mother Earth and all living creatures . Guide us in your wisdom that we may dedicate our lives to making the sexual abuse and abuse to our earth stop. Our souls give glory to you. Amen
Love and blessings always,
Rev. Bonnie
Church for Our Common Home, #Me Too and #Mother Earth Too.
P.S. Wanted to hire computer person. Any ideas?
