Saint Francis of Assisi challenges us to hold on to life with gentleness. The sacredness of all life is observed among the birds of the air, the sea creatures, and the beauty of our faces. Our work toward caring for all creation begins in prayer. We surrender to such beauty so that God’s face may be revealed in our world. We seek the Kingdom of Heaven even in the chaos of how we have treated our earth. We surrender to the joy of God’s Kingdom, since God desires us to create our earthly home in reflection of what is to come in heaven.

We are not creators of the earth. We do not own our environment. We cannot possess its complexities or fully comprehend the interdependence of all life. All life comes from God.  Our place is to bask in the joy of the earth and find our ways to sustain life.

In this collage, I use the juxtaposition of trash and the beauty of zebras to illustrate how we either share in our earth’s future or help to diminish our resources. Saint Francis of Assisi may help us understand our place upon the earth and to honestly care for everything that keeps us alive. This litany reflects on the gift of water as miracle to renew our generations.

Saint Francis of Assisi: Inspire Our Praise to God Among Droplets and Seas

From dew drops on spring grass…From deep wells of drinking water…From pools of rain on country roads…From blue seas and rocky shorelines…From rain-soaked clothes on children at play…

From droughts and storm flooding…From melting snow to high blizzard drifts along a fence…From a drinking fountain near the school gym…From bottled water carried in a brief case…  

From dams that hold back spring flooding…From fountains in the town square…From forest streams creating their own paths…From country lakes where children learn to swim…From youth drinking from a hose in summer shade…From filling a carafe with cool water from a tap for first morning coffee…

From animals corralling their young aside a spring stream…From a barefoot mother balancing water jars on her shoulders…From rushing mountain streams melting into spring…From reservoirs relinquishing their levels in summer heat…

From our plastics washing ashore along powerless countries…From trash heaps that keep creatures from sipping or surviving…From factories pumping waste into streams…From rivers that flow into unknown places that silence our conscience …From Zebras searching for clean drink…From dirty waters that reveal our uncaring stripes…

From initiating waters that flow at baptism…From sprinkles of baptismal renewal at Easter Masses…From baptismal fonts where water and Trinity merge…From the droplets of holy water that mark our gravesite…   

Amen