Environmental awareness – Noticing the life force in small things
Reflective liturgy for all levels
The following are some ideas for classroom teachers to adapt to suit their own teaching levels.
1. Use your senses. Explain to the students why you are all going for a walk. Its about noticing
things. Suggest they open their senses and take in the details. Ask ‘What can you see, hear,
feel, touch?’ On their return to the classroom, undertake a quiz to see how well they noticed
small things.
2. A sensory walk. Go for a walk around an interesting part of the neighbourhood. Suggest it
takes about 10 minutes.
3. The Noticing quiz. Back in class go through the Noticing Quiz (see over). Discuss the answers
and take time over this. Encourage answers that provide details.
4. Reflection with a poem. For seniors try: Sanctuary poem by Kevin Dobbyn or When I was
the forest by Meister Eckhart (1260-1328). Primary children may like to locate a poem
themselves from the library collection of poetry. (For copies see over).
5. A Scripture Reading. For seniors use: Job 38:2-15. For juniors use: Genesis 1-2.
6. Prayers of intercession. Suggest students compose prayers of sacredness; protection;
respect and dignity.
7. Actions. All of us who believe in God, in Jesus, know that what is at the heart of the world is
love. It is an unbounded love, a love that has created all things, each in its own magnificent
way, a love that has been set in motion from the beginning and is sustained. It is a love that
is given unconditionally and freely...we are not out here on our own. We are not to despair.
What must we do?
First we must learn to reverence the earth and let the knowledge that we are all one, seep
into our bones and consciousness.
We must learn to notice. To be receptive to everything surrounding us, open to the past and
the present. Even though something may be very small, try to understand it.
Human life must be able to appreciate the vitality and life force in all things.
Look up and look out. Look. Take notice. Remember small details.
[sunset]
[tussock]
The ‘Noticing’ Quiz
1. Was the earth you walked on wet or dry?
2. What thing cast the largest shadow on your walk?
3. What was one sign that showed it was a particular season of the year?
4. Name two of the birds you noticed. What were they doing?
5. Can you remember one sign that showed there were insects present in the
environment.
6. What was one sign as proof that humans had passed through here before you.
Good sign or not so good sign?
7. Was the sky a deep blue, pale blue, dark grey, pale grey, or some other colour?
8. Name four different surfaces your feet went over on your walk (grass, concrete,
tar seal, soil, stones, moss, wood, mud, sticks and dry leaves...)
9. Did you find a leaf or flower and smell it? Y/N
10. If you could draw a shape to describe a sound you heard would it be long and
unbroken? Short and sharp? Moving from soft to loud or loud to soft? Another
shape?
[footbridge]
[pathway]
Teachers
Add you own ideas about noticing things linked to the sacred wonder of our
world. The answers to this quiz will depend on where your walk is.
Sanctuary
Otaki, 18 December 2011
Sacred space, this thin space where
Gods, gulls and ancestors dwell:
A canopy of blue and white
With Christic surround sound
And the Wind whispering in my ear
Pointing me to the mother and children
Exploring the treasures of driftwood.
I watch the waves roll out, sweep the sand
And gather the shells of once living beings –ancient ancestors?
Now clustered in a grand mosaic.
Are those just random words at play
Like shells gathered into some mosaic pattern
Waiting for a Celtic muse
Or some ancestor like John
Whose cross confirmed my call?
That shadowed sketch on a sunset wall
Where a founder enters in
And my place is found, that place a sanctuary
Indeed a thin space this memory
Entered into, where a chapel’s too small.
A carpet of foam clears the way
Ahead where unshod I walk the Moment now again.
Shoes are not the stuff of awe
And nor are sandaled feet
When in wonder at the Mystery
I stand on sacred, shifting ground
And in holy timelessness.
Oh the joy of being bodied and to feel!
To be earthed in mountain, rock and river
And Michaelangelo clouds insisting
That shape and colour, sound and smell
Are the backdrop to this chapel:
A shrine lit sunset red and silent,
While windswept waves applause in welcome
And call me in a gull’s cry
To walk towards a horizon
I cannot clearly see.
Kevin Dobbyn FMS
[matarangi beach]
When I was the forest
by Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
[rapids]
When I was the stream, when I
was the
forest, when I was still in the
field,
When I was every hoof, foot,
Fin and wing, when I
Was the sky
itself.
No one ever asked me did I have
A purpose, no one ever
Wondered was there anything I
might need,
For there was nothing
I could not
Love.
It was when I left all we once
were that
the agony began, the fear and
questions came,
And I wept, I wept. And tears
I had never known
before.
So I returned to the river, I
returned to
the mountains. I asked for their
hand in marriage again,
I begged – I begged to wed
Every object and creature,
And when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms,
And he did not say,
‘Where have you been?’
for then I knew my soul – every
soul –
has always held him.
[any other trees pictures you like]
Scripture Reading
This reading will make us think twice about whether or not we know and are sure of who
God is and what God wants of us in relation to Creation, and call us to bend and bow our
heads and be humbled by the awesomeness of God and what has been shared with us, as
both gift and responsibility.
Job has been questioning God’s plans. God’s intentions, God’s justice and God’s very
existence in the world, of history, of creation and in Job’s own life. The first speech of God
comes out of the heavens and is directed right at Job. Can we direct these words to
ourselves today?
A Reading from the Book of Job 38:2-15.
Who is this who darkens counsel,
Speaking without knowledge?
Gird your loins like a man;
I will ask and you will inform Me.
Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations?
Speak if you have understanding.
Do you know who fixed its dimensions?
Or who measured it with a line?
Onto what were its bases sunk?
Who set its cornerstone?
When the morning stars sang together
And all the divine beings shouted for joy?
Who closed the sea behind doors
When it gushed forth out of the womb,
When I clothed it in clouds,
Swaddled it in dense clouds,
When I made breakers My limit for it,
And set up its bar and doors,
And said, ‘You may come so far and no further;
Here your surging waves will stop’?
Have you ever commanded the day to break,
Assigned the dawn its place,
So that it seizes the corners of the earth
And shakes the wicked out of it?
It changes the clay under the seal
Till [its hues] are fixed like those of a garment.
Their light is withheld from the wicked,
And the upraised arm is broken.
[karapiro]
A Reading from Genesis 1-2
God looked with gladness at the vast universe and the beautiful world that he had made but he
knew that he had still to make the most wonderful part of his creation.
‘Now I will make human beings,’ God said. ‘They will have minds to think and know and love me, and
I will put them in charge of this world to keep it in order.’
First God made the man, called Adam...then God made the woman, Eve, to be his wife, so that they
could plan and talk and laugh and love together...
Adam and Eve looked after the garden for God. They took great care of all the plants and trees.
Every evening when it was cool, God came to talk to them. They would walk up and down, sharing all
that had happened, until darkness fell to end another perfect day.
From The Children’s Bible in 365 stories. A Lion Book publication.
[Hastings]
Prayers of intercession. Suggest students compose prayers of sacredness; protection; respect and
dignity.
Actions.
What shall we do to continue to practice noticing the life force of small things?
Compose a list for the classroom wall. Refer to it often.
[tui in the blossoms]