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Interfaith Services
THE NORTH
Peter Brinkman
We greet you, Spirit of the North. You are the cold, biting wind that blows across our land, that strips the earth of all that is dead and decayed, that robs us of the false securities, so easily blown away.
Teach us to plant our feet securely on the earth and to see things as they really are, that the coming of your spirit may find us standing firm in integrity.
It is your Spirit whose winds bring the snows of winter, with their fury and their solitude. It is your Spirit who blankets the earth for sleep.
Teach us, Spirit of the North, in the solitude of winter, to wait in darkness with the sleeping earth, believing that we, like the earth, already hold within ourselves the seeds of new life.
THE EARTH
Dawn Shegonee
We greet you, Great Spirit of the Earth.
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It was from you we came as from a Mother; you nourish us still and give us shelter.
Teach us to walk softly on your lands, to use with care your gifts, to love with tenderness all our brothers and sisters who have been born of your goodness.
And when the day comes you call us back to yourself, help us to return to you as a friend, to find ourselves embraced, encircled, enfolded in your arms.
OFFERING OF THE FOUR ELEMENTS: EARTH, AIR , FIRE, WATER.
(CONGREGATION SEATED)
[The elements are brought one after the other by the readers from the four corners of the chapel and placed on the central table. First, earth (a pot of flowers) is brought from the east by John-Brian Paprock, then Dini Dutta brings fire (a candle) from the south, Eunice Chagnon brings water from the west, and last, Peter Brinkman brings air(incense) from the North. While these offerings are made, George Hinger invites a bell to sound.
After the incense has been placed on the table and as the sound of the bell dies away, Georgia Gómez-lbáñez recites the Zuni prayer.]
RECITATION (from a Zuni offering prayer]
Georgia Gómez-Ibáñez
This is what I want to happen: that our earth mother may be clothed in ground corn four times over; that frost flowers cover her over entirely; that the mountain pines far away over there may stand close to each other in the cold; that the weight of snow crack some branches! In order that the country may be this way I have made my prayer sticks into something alive.
- (tr. Robert Bly)
-145
