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Welcome to our living archive, documenting and drawing from diverse wisdoms in regards to today's environmental challenges. Hope you have a nice stay!

Verse 3, from "Touch the Earth Lightly"

Verse 3, from "Touch the Earth Lightly"

Verse 3, from Touch the Earth Lightly 
Hymn no. 739
From the hymnal Evangelical Lutheran Worship

 

V3. “Let there be greening, birth from the burning, water that blesses, and air that it sweet. Health in God’s garden, hope in God’s children, regeneration that peace will complete.”

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(Sung to the tune of "Morning Has Broken.") I found verses 2 and 3 particularly moving, especially as they were written by a woman in her 60s in the 1990s, making them prescient of today’s biggest environmental challenge: extinction debt. Also, inclusion of the ideas “regeneration, completed by peace," “we who endanger,” “gift of great wonder, ours to surrender,” and “Christ reconnect us,” are all deeply meaningful to me.
--ChrisS

From Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran's 2016 "Good Soil Service."

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V1.     Touch the earth lightly, use the earth gently, nourish the life of the world in our care: gift of great wonder, ours to surrender, trust for our children tomorrow will bear.

V2.     We who endanger, who create hunger, agents of death for all creatures that live, we who would foster clouds of disaster—God of our planet, forestall and forgive!

V4.     God of all living, God of all loving, God of the seedling, the snow and the sun, teach us, deflect us, Christ reconnect us, using us gently, making us one.

Text: Shirley Erena Murray, b. 1931
Music: Colin Gibson, b. 1933
Text & Music: © 1992 Hope Publishing Company
Hymnal: © 2006 Evangelical Lutheran Church of America
Published by Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
http://augsburgfortress.org/copyrights

The Earth Charter (intro by Rev. Tom VandeStadt)

The Earth Charter (intro by Rev. Tom VandeStadt)

Shep Hills Lutheran cultivates "new life!"

Shep Hills Lutheran cultivates "new life!"