September 16

 

Ps 104:27 All of these look to you

to give them their food in due season.

28 You give it, they gather it up;

you open wide your hand, they are well filled.

 

Binsey Poplars: felled 1879 (Hopkins)

My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled,
Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun,
All felled, felled, are all felled;
Of a fresh and following folded rank
Not spared, not one
That dandled a sandalled
Shadow that swam or sank
On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank.

O if we but knew what we do
When we delve or hew—
Hack and rack the growing green!
Since country is so tender
To touch, her being só slender,
That, like this sleek and seeing ball
But a prick will make no eye at all,
Where we, even where we mean
To mend her we end her,
When we hew or delve:
After-comers cannot guess the beauty been.
Ten or twelve, only ten or twelve
Strokes of havoc unselve
The sweet especial scene,
Rural scene, a rural scene,

Sweet especial rural scene.

Meditation

If human beings were to treat one another’s personal property the way they treat the natural environment, we would view that behavior as anti-social and illegal. We would expect legal sanctions and even compensation. When will we learn that to commit a crime against the natural world is also a sin? (Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I)

Musical Selection (Doxecology)

If the fields are parched
and the trees are felled
will the rocks cry aloud on their own?
If the birds are starved
and the beasts are killed
will the bones in the dust lift a song?

Have mercy, Lord,
have mercy, Lord.
Forgive our broken ways.
Have mercy, Lord,
have mercy, Lord.
Renew the world you made

As the oceans rise
and the wells run dry
do we care if disaster is near?
If our children starve
will they cry to God?
Will they curse us for closing our ears?

Still a day will come
when the Lord returns
and the earth will be perfect again
No more greed or war,
no more tooth and claw,
for the wolf and the lamb will be friends.

Prayer