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Welcome! We're glad you're planning on observing
a liturgical season of creation. We have prepared some materials
for you to use in worship, teaching, and personal reflection.
The Notes on the readings for this topic are
available for you to use. You may
- copy and paste what you wish from this page directly to
your preparation materials or
- download the materials as part of a reference materials
for the individuals involved in preparing religious education,
homilies, or special liturgical materials for your Service.
This Sunday's topic is the Arctic/The Poles.
The following themes may be useful in preparing a sermon, prayers,
or study:
Snow and ice; bears and water;
fish and birds migrating; cycles of freezing and thawing; fear;
isolation; stark; lack of control; damn cold; permafrost thawing
and releasing methane; interdependence of humans and animals to
survive.
Facts:
Alternate Scripture Readings:
- Job 24: 19; 38: 22
- Psalm 2: 8 and Psalm 148: 8
- Isaiah. 40: 28
- Mark 13: 27
Non-Scriptural Writings
In place of or in addition to a scripture reading
for the Sunday, you may use an alternative reading. The readings
below are some we offer for your consideration:
An Arctic Quest
O proudly name their names who bravely sail
To seek brave lost in Arctic snows and seas!
Bring money and bring ships, and on strong knees
Pray prayers so strong that not one word can fail
To pierce God's listening heart!
Rigid and pale,
The lost men's bodies, waiting, drift and freeze;
Yet shall their solemn dead lips tell to these
Who find them secrets mighty to prevail
On farther, darker, icier seas.
I go
Alone, unhelped, unprayed-for. Perishing
For years in realms of more than Arctic snow,
My heart has lingered.
Will the poor dead thing
Be sign to quide past bitter flood and floe,
To open sea, some strong heart triumphing?
~Helen Hunt Jackson (1830-1885)
Source: PoemHunter.com
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Polar Night
is a sodden blanket
pulled in close
to the hulk of mountain
the scattered pebble
glitter of a city
morning is
a weft of muddy yarn
a pelt of scraped skin
thrown around the
jagged birch-sticks
of a laavu
noon is a puddle
of rising murk:
like reindeer milk
in a stomach sac
the light curdles
into dark
~© Siobhan Logan 2009
Source: Polar
Poets
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Waiting at the Breathing Hole
The white of this screen burns
my eyes. Its unswerving glare
might well make me snow-blind.
There was a time when words would fly
across the screen, like a dog-team speeding,
each at its peak and pulling
equally and all I’d have to do was leap
aboard the sledge, guide it
in the right direction, then
relish the ride.
But suddenly,
we hit uneven ice.
Bumped over ridges.
I fell from the sledge. The dogs fled.
The instructions I yelled
had no meaning.
So now, with tender eyes,
I must hunt for a hole in the white
and wait
patient
at the rim
for the whiskered nose of inspiration,
for a flippered urge to surge to the surface.
And when it comes, I won’t shoot it,
harpoon it skin it rip its liver out and eat it raw
leave banners of blood on the snow.
No. I’ll feed it all the saffron cod and shrimp
it needs,
teach it to move with the ease it knows beneath
the ice
but first, I’ll take a few steps back
and just let it
breathe
~ © Susan Richardson 2009
Source: Polar
Poets
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Why is Antarctica considered to be a
desert?
A Desert is defined as a region that has less than 254
mm (10 in) of annual rainfall or precipitation. Antarctica
can be classified as a desert by this definition. In the
interior of the continent the average annual precipitation
(in *equivalent of water) is only about 50 mm (about 2
in), less than the Sahara. Along the coast, this increases,
but is still only about 200 mm (8 in) in *equivalent of
water. Heavy snowfalls occur when cyclonic storms pick
up moisture from the surrounding seas and then deposit
this moisture as snow along the coasts.
Unlike other deserts, there is little evaporation from
Antarctica, so the relatively little snow that does fall,
doesn't go away again. Instead it builds up over hundreds
and thousands of years into enormously thick ice sheets.
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*this precipitation doesn't fall as water
of course, but as snow, the "water equivalent"
is the amount of water you would get if the snowfall were
collected and melted.
~Source: Antarctica
Fact File
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Some additional readings can be found in Earth
Prayers From around the World: 365 Prayers, Poems, and Invocations
for Honoring the Earth, Edited by Elizabeth Roberts and
Elias Amidon; Published by Harper Colllins. The readings below
(with their authors noted) may fit within this topic.
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Page
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Author |
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162
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Allah Renee Bozarth |
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165
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Thomas Merton |
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172
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Mary Rogers - Gaelic |
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200
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Pierre Teilhard de Chardin* |
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203
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Ashanti Prayer |
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204
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Irish Blessing* |
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219
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African Canticle |
* Useful as litany or
adapted to prayers of people
Music:
Out in the Cold, Cold Snow
Gracie Fields sang the original, indeed
the chorus is the same. Hers was a humorous contemplation
of suicide when all hope had gone… perfect for June
'68!
We left Halley Bay last September
Our objective we did all know
We would reccie fresh tracks, a new route to the Shacks
Out in the cold cold snow
Chorus:
- Out in the cold cold snow
- Out where the cold winds blow
- No one to love us and nowhere to go
- Out in the cold cold snow
For weeks we were pushed further eastward
'Twas hardly the route for a crow
When new year came round, we were sledging new ground
Out in the cold cold snow
Chorus
At last we spied rock cliffs and mountains
Just fifty miles distant or so
But success got the boot when BAS cancelled the route
Out in the cold cold snow
Chorus
There's a depot way down by the Slessor
Alone like a dame with B.O.
But for us its no use when the kegs got no juice
Out in the cold cold snow
Chorus
We then turned our eyes to the eastward
Laid depots and flags in a row
Equipment galore in one more useless store
Out in the cold cold snow
Chorus
With aircraft to Shacks, kegs to Tottans
The programme is like a yo-yo
You won't think it a farce, when you're sat on your arse
Out in the cold cold snow
Chorus
Vestfjella, Shackletons, Therons
Oh where will we finally go?
The answer is plain, so just take up the strain
Out in the cold cold snow
Chorus
~Peter
Noble
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Whiteout
When driving snow tractors across the
Polar ice-cap we found we could easily travel in winds up
to fifteen knots because we could see over the spindrift,
but at higher wind speeds the spindrift rose and visibility
was nil. Whiteout however, the flat light resulting from
total cloud cover, was different. Visibility was often many
miles but because horizons were lost and there was nothing
to focus on, one often realised one was gazing intently
at the snow ten yards in front, hoping to see a route marker
in the distance. It was like being in dense fog until a
flag would suddenly appear with stark clarity two miles
away. Whiteout did not prevent travel but it did hide the
beauties of the snowscape… the wind sculpture sastrugi,
the snow crystals glinting like sequins, the wonderful pastel
colours. Whiteout was silent too, often eerily so.
A heavy bright blanket enshrouds our world
A world of unbroken white
Flat
Featureless
Uninspired
A new canvass awaiting it's Renoir
A manuscript hoping for Brahms
A clean page before its Joyce
A dead thing pleading life,
Pleading new horizons
For there are no horizons
They have fled this white world
As though demanded elsewhere
To separate laughing deck-chaired sands
And shrilling bare legged sea
From blue-white, gull gliding summer skies,
That little children might look up from their castles in
the sand
(Castles in the air?)
And exclaim "Look Daddy
“A Ship out there on the horizon!"
We have no horizon
And no ship defines it.
All around a silent battle is engaged
Cloud and ice vying for superiority.
Suns rays, that once gave form and colour
Now are scattered and contorted,
Refected and distorted,
Diffusing confusing,
Until some sympathetic wind
Or frolicsome breeze
Drives off the cloying cloud.
Then once again
Sun shines, shadows cast,
Form is restored, distance exists,
Horizon reorders ice an sky
But now, cloud ensnared
But three things define our world
Silence...
Nothing...
Whiteout.
~Peter
Noble
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Educational Ideas:
SSSSNo
Seals: Paul Lukosi is a high school teacher in the lower Yukon
River Delta, 6 miles from the Bering Sea...as the slough goes.
The village he teaches in is heavily focused on family and culture,
and has survived for thousands of years by subsistence living.
Ssssno Seals is an application of the lessons learned dealing
with the Law of Conservation of Mass, the water cycle, and the
food web. The lesson will tie into the life cycle of an ice seal
and how we are all connected in nature. This will also include
taking care of our environment as an additional topic of study.
Some reading resources for Children:
Prayers:
Arctic-Led Prayer
Creator (of all names) we give you thanks for our wonderful
creation. You are related to everything you made. We are asking
you with one voice to help us renew Mother Earth. Give us strength
to respect one-another, like brothers and sisters, to help your
creation. The Power of Your voice is like lightening. With your
great power we can wake up and be true Earth Guardians.
O men and women of the earth. Please humbly pray with the
holy ones for all our wildlife: including our polar bears, fish,
birds, as well as return of the bees. For all our water, soil,
rain, snow and ice. People all over the earth need fresh air to
breath, water to drink, and foods that nurture. Send your good
spirit upon every country, Creator.
We have lost our way and turn to You as we see Mother Earth
getting so contaminated that we are headed for extinction unless
we change and heal Her. Creator have mercy on us and guide each
of us toward making a difference so our children may continue
to survive and harmoniously thrive here. Our hearts are full of
thanks for all your love, as well as blessings for our Earth Mother.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
~ Rev Trimble Gilbert, from Native
American Olympic Team Foundation
Some discussion topics:
- Do you live in an area where you rarely see snow? What kind
of images do the Arctic and Antarctic come to your mind.
- Considering the loss of ice cover, do you think you will experience
any changes to the environment where you live?
- Are there things you (individually and corporately) can do
to slow down or reverse the effects of climate change and/or
pollution at the poles?
- Do you have a partner diocese or church in an arctic area?
What have they been telling you about their concerns about the
environment where they are?
Revised Common Lectionary Readings:
PDF Version of these notes:
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To the other Topics in this series
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Arctic/the Poles
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May 1, 2011
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May 8, 2011
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May 15, 2011
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May 22, 2011
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May 29, 2011
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June 5, 2011
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This Page
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Note: The Reflections and Notes for
this Sunday were prepared by the Rev Wanda Copeland and
Chuck Morello, with contributions from the Rev Margaret
W. Thomas and the Rev Tom Harries.
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