Process Pop-Up: Prayers for Mother Earth: Gratitude, Compassion, Repentance, and Guidance
Might awareness and a change of heart help us find the courage to open ourselves to deepening care for the planet?
Ancient prayer traditions and contemplation have been passed from generation to generation and are still alive today. Mary Jane Miller, author of Prayers for Mother Earth: Gratitude, Compassion, Repentance, and Guidance, believes that recitations of love and reflection, alone or in a group are powerful, nurture the soul, fuel the heart, and uplift the spirit.
While we tend to focus a great deal on human needs—the sick, isolated, aged, imprisoned, and those in peril—Miller tells us that it may be prudent to add our devotion and respect for the Sacred as revealed on the Earth. Our contemporary society generally does not allow us time to pause long enough to appreciate our delicate, at times imperceptible, relationship to the natural order that surrounds us.
In this Process Pop-Up, Miller will introduce us to her book Prayers for Mother Earth and reveal how it is designed as a resource and guide to focus the mind and heart on one another and Mother Earth as she speaks back to us. In an age of great fear and anxiety, resources like these may be a tool to help us slow down and reflect on how we have participated in the crisis we are in, our consumerism, our desire for more, and our total disregard for the earth that sustains our world.
Process theology and philosophy has long encouraged a reimagining of our relatedness to the Earth and to each other. Alfred North Whitehead described our bodies as lying “in the field of nature” and questioned the cultural bifurcation that continues to separate us from our earthly home. Miller argues that a powerful sense of grace is revealed as we gather for the sacramental petition, communal prayer, and a shift in our attitude toward Mother Earth: “The Earth is listening, she sees our human dilemma, and she is calling us to pay attention.” In this book, Mary Jane Miller has given us words to cry out and reflect, in unison with gratitude, repentance, compassion, and guidance for the Earth’s preservation.
“If we learn to treasure the wonder of humanity, we will love the natural world that surrounds us. If we treasure the natural world, we will love humanity in all its magnificent diversity.“
Mary Jane Miller
About the Speaker
Mary Jane Miller
Mary Jane Miller is an internationally recognized Byzantine-style iconographer and author living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She is a member of Women Iconographers in the 21st Century, who are preserving the ancient technique of iconography painting. Today, she continues to create, teach, and expand this sacred art using earth pigments as a spiritual visual language that leads to enlightenment. Miller especially focuses on biblical women and, through her hand, calls on their unheard voices to proclaim their wisdom and love. As an icon painter, her wealth of insight is shared through a tradition that has traditionally been male-dominated. “I have come to see the world as a metaphor, nearly everything which happens to us is screaming to be understood through the eye of the spirit, we just need to reflect long enough to hear the message”. Her dedication and lifestyle promote a trajectory through spirituality that becomes a visual manifestation of how she understands her own personal journey. Her work may be found at https://www.millericons.com/
Free Online Event
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