Submitted by Rabbi Arthur Waskow on
Between the Fires:
An Invocation for Earth Week, Earth Year, All Years—
For Kindling Candles of Commitment
We are the generations
That stand between the fires.
Behind us
The burning crosses lit by hate
To choke our people in the smoke of terror;
Behind us the flame and smoke
That rose from Auschwitz and from Hiroshima.
Not yet behind us
The burning forests of the Amazon,
Torched for the sake of fast hamburger and fast wealth.
Not yet behind us, the glare of gun fire
exploding in our children.
Not yet behind us –
the hottest years of human history
That bring upon us
Melted ice fields. Flooded cities.
Scorching droughts. Murderous wildfires.
Before us we among all life-forms
face the nightmare of a Flood of Fire,
The heat and smoke that could consume all Earth.
"Here! The day is coming,”
Said the Prophet Malachi,
“That will flame like a furnace,
Says YHWH / Yahhhh --
The Infinite InterBreath of Life --
when all the arrogant, all evil-doers,
root and branch,
will like straw be burnt to ashes
in the fires that they set.
Yet for all who revere
My Interbreathing Name, Yahhhh,
a sun of justice will arise
with healing in the beating of its wings,
its rays, its winds."
“Here! Before the coming
of the great and awesome day
of YHWH/ the Breath of Life,
I will send you the Prophet Elijah
to turn the hearts of parents to their children
and the hearts of children to their parents,
lest I come and smite the earth with utter desolation."
Here! we ourselves are coming
Before that great and terrible day
Of smiting Earth —
For we ourselves shall turn the hearts
Of parents to their children
And the hearts of children to their parents
So that this day of smiting
Does not fall upon us.
We ourselves are coming
To douse that outer all-consuming fire.
We must light again in our own hearts
the inner fire of love and liberation
that burned in the Burning Bush --
The fire that did not destroy the Bush it burned in,
For love is strong as death --
Love’s Fire must never be extinguished--
The fire in the heart of all Creation.
It is our task to make from inner fire
Not an all-consuming blaze
But the loving light in which we see more clearly
The Rainbow Covenant glowing
in the many-colored faces of all life.
Woven by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, The Shalom Center
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