This litany is intended for use in services or on occasions relating to grieving or lamenting climate change and environmental degradation. Feel free to use some or all of it with credits (see the end of this post) and to adapt it. I’d appreciate it if you do adapt it, if you’d email to me the adaptations for interest and to aid further development of the resource -potentially by adding them (with ackowledgement, of course), to this post in an appropriate way.

Litany of climate grieving

Bearing on our hearts and in our understanding the dynamics of power and wealth, fears and loyalties that brought Christ to the cross, we are constrained to pray. Recognising that in our world these forces run and scheme still and continue to bring harm to people and planet, we dare to bring our concerns to God with fear and trembling.

Woe to us because humans are trespassing the created boundaries: exploiting natural systems faster than they can regenerate.
Now our souls are troubled
What should we say?

Woe to us because human enterprise is financing its growth and development by liquidating the biophysical resources essential to our own existence.
Now our souls are troubled
What should we say?

Woe to us because our ways of life are dumping waste faster than nature can absorb and recycle them.
Now our souls are troubled
What should we say?

Woe to us as we know species of creatures cease to exist and contemplate the damage to the web of life that each extinction represents.
Now our souls are troubled
What should we say?

Woe to us knowing that our children and grandchildren inherit from us more insecurity and troubles, precarity and grieving.
Now our souls are troubled
What should we say?

Woe to us for our studied ignorance and lack of curiosity about the effects of our lifestyles; for our reviling of the science and devotion to mammon.
Now our souls are troubled
What should we say?

Woe to us for assuming that nature would always bounce back and absorb our detritus and our emissions with no cost to ourselves.
Now our souls are troubled
What should we say?

Bewailing and lamenting the saws at the trees, the fires of fossil carbon, droughts growing more frequent and storms more tempestuous, we return with meekness of heart to our Creator and Upholder.
May those who make mammon a guide to live by and who serve profit and celebrity be challenged and repent.
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

May all who overturn the godly wisdom of our forebears be convicted of their sin.
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

May protections against exploitation and greed grow and be upheld
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

Bring into the light those who employ algorithm or trick of mind to the detriment of the vulnerable and frustrate their ‘knavish tricks’ with a blossoming of truth-telling and self awareness
Now is the judgement of this world;
God, draw all things to yourself

May harm to people and planet by unseen pollutants be turned back and prevented.
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

Send away empty those who seek profit in fouling the land or sea or air.
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

May those who take reward to mislead by greenwash be defunded and exposed in their wrongdoing.
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

Frustrate the plans of those who take reward from injury to the integrity of nature
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself O God,

Turn back the influence of those who devise laws which harm God’s good earth and its living creatures
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

Send away empty those who finance the extraction of fossil carbon and its emission into the air
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

Frustrate the efforts of those who delay collective effort to reduce atmospheric carbon.
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

Cast down the mighty who make no provision for the refugee whom they unhome by finance, policy or neglect of charity
Now is the judgement of this world;
draw all things to yourself, O God

———————

Jesus says: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.”

———————

Hearing again the baleful consequences as we humans err and stray from the ways of wisdom; being mindful that tipping points into runaway environmental feedback effects glower above our heads, let us throw ourselves upon the mercy and grace of God.

when we follow the crowd in ways of living, moving and having our being that continue to dismantle and tear the fabric of life on earth,
Forgive us and recreate us as your true followers

when we are complicit with the greed, sloth, justifications and indifference which allow and support the diminishment and erosion of the means of life for all earth’s creatures,
Forgive us and recreate us as your true followers

when we fail to challenge those who advocate business as usual,
Forgive us and recreate us as your true followers

when we leave unopposed the mindset of those who belittle the importance of prompt and sufficient action to mitigate climate heating,
Forgive us and recreate us as your true followers

when we balk at undermining the power of those who continue to drive environmental degradation by finance, action or advocacy,
Forgive us and recreate us as your true followers

when we make little effort to interact compassionately with those who oppose us, leaving little or no room for repentance,
Forgive us and recreate us as your true followers

when we concern ourselves with the speck in others’ eyes and fail to deal with the beam in our own,
Forgive us and recreate us as your true followers

O Lord, save your servants;
For we put our trust in you.

Send us help from above.
And evermore mightily defend us.

Help us, O God our Saviour.
And for the glory of your Name deliver us; be merciful to us for your Name’s sake.
O Lord, hear our prayer.
And let our cry come to you.

 

-Andii Bowsher,

  2021 (Creative Commons licence BY-NC-SA). You may share this work with attribution for non-profit purposes. For inclusion in commercial work, please contact the author: pneumaculturist@gmail.com and if you adapt or use part of this as part of another work, you are kindly asked to let the author know for archival purposes.

Sources
Adapted (heavily) from The Book of Common Prayer, Commination service,

Using biblical phrases from John 12:27 & 32 and  Luke 6:24-26