A prayer for our Earth and her gifts

Happy Earth Day 🪱

The home I grew up in is perched on a lush, green hill on Osage and Monongahela land. These days it looks a lot less lush, a lot less green, than it did in my youth. As I processed a recent visit, memories of my inner child playing with the natural world poured out of me.

In honor of the passing of another Earth Day, I’m inspired to share this little prayer for our beloved Earth. May it bring a smile to your face and deepen your devotion to our shared planet, its gifts, and the possibility of its future.

Little Alyssa on the Osage land that raised me

The land I love is disappearing.

Every time I visit, fewer trees.

This land, not mine. Not ours.

Disappeared by driveways.

And yet it’s the only land

I’ve known, really known.

I wandered and walked and explored,

played with reptiles and worms,

saw a brown bear,

fed hummingbirds,

shrieked at possums,

giggled at chipmunks,

ducked under the rapid wings of bats.

I gazed at the fawn in wonder,

woke to the moos of the cows,

waited to spot the blue jays and robins, 

fought off the crows,

made a home for the tadpoles and even

momentarily adopted a box turtle.

I hosted storytime with the ants,

stayed calm among the bees,

climbed the trees.

I lovingly surveyed the stars

until I saw one shooting, 

fizzling into stardust.

I laid in the grass,

balanced on the fallen trunk,

rolled down the hill,

lived that land.

Drank its once-fresh spring waters

and ate its once-abundant blueberries.

I yearn for the end of its destruction–

All of it. Osage land, Lenape land, Turtle Island. Palestine.

I look the future in the face and demand:

Quando è troppo è troppo! Enough is enough!

Indigenous LANDBACK now!

Dusk reflected on a pond I visited frequently as a child

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