Looking for a prayer to read at your service? Consider this prayer written by Rabbi Arthur Waskow, of The Shalom Center, in honor of Yom Kippur and following the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. This prayer was read by Rev. Dr. Jean Wright at the Virginia Climate Crisis Forum.
The prayer, adapted, is entitled: “May their beds not become their graves” based on a text reading as follows: “And we pray for the people who live in the town of Sharon, that their beds not become their graves.” (Sharon was a town in ancient Israel that experienced earthquakes).
And so this evening, as the people of the Carolinas and others face the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, let us pray:
“May your beds not become your graves,
may all your roads not become streams of drowning,
may all your homes not become piles of rubble,
may all your electric power not cough and collapse!
May your days as climate-crisis refugees be few, so
that you may return to your homes alive and be well!
Tonight, we commit ourselves to courses of action so that
Californians need not fear wildfires,
that Carolinians, Virginians, and others need not fear floods;
that more Puerto Ricans not die and suffer from the collapse of their electric grid,
the paralysis of their hospitals and
the deliberate refusal of national government to act.
We act so that we will have no other climate refugees.
We commit to taking new steps to renew and restore a healthy, life-giving Earth.
So on this eve of Yom Kippur, these prayers, these commitments –
for the Carolinas,
for all in immediate danger,
and for all in impending danger around the Earth –
We pray. We pray prayers for life, for loving action,
for both now and to the 7th generation.
Shalom!