This is a Visio Divina lament. It can be used for individual or communal lament reflecting ecological grief and our role in it. Participants are invited to pray. The Visio Divina practice guides participants through seeing, noticing, lamenting, and responding to God, drawing on biblical language of lament and creation care.
Pick any one of the artworks above for this exercise. You could do them all but please focus on one artwork at a time. Go through all the steps before you move to the next if you should choose to.
Visio Divina: An Earth Day lament
Instructions:
Move slowly through each section. Read aloud or silently.
Pause at each “Gaze instruction.” Let silence be part of the prayer.
Step 1 – Look:
Gaze instruction: look at the image. Don’t try to interpret (this takes practice). just look
Read: O God who walked in the garden before the heat of the day,
We/I turn our eyes toward what Your hands have made.
We/I look upon this image before us.
Step 2 – Notice
Gaze instruction: What is a tree, and what is reflection? What do you see? What recognizable objects have lines over them?
Read: We see the trees, the waters, the creatures of sky and sea—
all held together in fragile, repeating breath.
And we wonder:
Is this how it was meant to be?
Step 3 – Confession
Gaze instruction: Look again. Where do you notice care or neglect in relation to creation? What are the things you have taken for granted?
Read: We confess we have not tended what You entrusted.
We have admired the world without protecting it.
We have traced beauty without guarding its life.
We have taken more than we returned.
The earth groans beneath what we have done.
The rivers carry what should not have been carried.
The soil remembers what we have tried to forget.
Step 4 – Naming the Lament
Gaze instruction: Look again at the image and name what is missing. Are there types of birds or animals missing? What comes to your mind?
Read: How long, O Lord, will creation groan beneath our hands?
How long until what is wounded is made whole?
Step 5 – pray
Read as you Gaze instruction:
Yet, You are still near.
Still speaking through the wind in the branches,
still holding what we have forgotten.
Turn us again.
Teach us to see.
Teach us to tend what is Yours.
Amen.
Beautiful and needed in my life/ can you share with me more like this for my women’s retreat June 1
I would be happy to. Please would you email me at artresponses@gmail.com or fill out the “connect with me” form on the home page or respond to this message with possible themes you are interested in for the women’s retreat in June.