Including The Earth In Our Prayers

Including the Earth in Our Prayers tells a story of love and prayer, how spiritual practice is not just for ourselves, our own journey, but for life itself. It steps back to reclaim the wisdom of our ancestors, including the "Original Instructions" of Indigenous peoples—instructions that describe how we need to "get along" with all of creation—and relates these teachings to the need of our present time. With our ecosystem in crisis and our culture increasingly divisive, it suggests ways in which the energy and transformative potential of our spiritual nature can be applied to these critical issues, and reconnects us with a spiritual understanding of the living Earth. The simple premise of this book is that there is a vital need to shift our collective culture from a story of separation and exploitation into a new story of living oneness, and that spiritual practice, and the love and light it generates, have an essential part to play in this shift. (Including the Earth in Our Prayers is a revised and updated edition of Awakening the World: A Global Dimension to Spiritual Practice, which was originally published in 2006.) “The call of the soul in our time is to become loving partners with our world in manifesting the potentials of blessing and wholeness innately within us and within the Earth. In this wonderful book, Llewellyn eloquently shows us that we each have within us the power to answer this call and embody this partnership. In a time when we are beset with fear and divisiveness, he offers a vision of wholeness and healing, hope and empowerment. It is definitely a book whose time has come.” —David Spangler, author of Journey into Fire “Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is a rare mystic who honors the eternal truths of the wisdom traditions while recognizing the ever-evolving ways that these truths must be accessed and lived... this book opens our eyes and hearts to the true potential of spiritual practice to go beyond self-transformation to play a vital role in the well-being and awakening of the Earth as a whole. He suggests that ours is a time when new pathways are being revealed that use spiritual practice as a way of nourishing the whole of life, pointing the way to a form of spiritual service that belongs to the future.” —David T. Nicol, author of Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation “... this luminous book shows us the way to navigate these tumultuous times with a clear mind, a hopeful heart, and a renewed relationship with holy awe. In Including the Earth in Our Prayers, Vaughan-Lee, one of the great wisdom teachers of our age, invites us to participate in nothing less than the radical rebirth of all that is.” —Mirabai Starr, author of God of Love and Wild Mercy “The Earth is luminous. From being a dark and degraded "thing," the earth is in reality an angelic being. Our relationship with the Earth, not one of domination but one grounded in harmony, adoration, and contemplation is a powerful indicative of our relationship with the Divine, with the feminine, and ultimately with the entire realm of the Spirit. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee opens up this connection in a lucid and luminous way. Highly recommended for devotees of spiritual pursuit and ecological sustainability.” —Omid Safi, author of Radical Love: Teachings from the Islamic Mystical Tradition; Professor, Duke University; Leader, Illuminated Tours “As we enter the Anthropocene era when no part of the world remains untouched by the human imprint, the need for action is urgent. Any talk now of contemplation or spirituality might appear to be self-centered, and much of what passes for spirituality has fallen into this quagmire. But as Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee shows us, ‘Real spiritual practice is never for ourself alone, but always for the whole, always for the sake of the Beloved.’ Drawing on the deep tradition of Sufi wisdom, Including the Earth in our Prayers is a call to place the wellbeing of the Earth at the center of our spiritual practice. With lucidity, grace, and wisdom, Vaughan-Lee has given us a cleverly disguised resistance manual for our time.” —Fred Bahnson, author Soil & Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith, and director of the Food, Health, and Ecological Well-Being Program at Wake Forest University School of Divinity

A resource for Christians who believe that environmental concerns should be an integral part of the public and private prayers of all Christian people.

Our planet is engaged in a struggle for survival, as critical issues impact it in alarming ways. The earth's ecological breakdown is outpacing our efforts to save it. The warming of the atmosphere caused sea levels to rise and submerge Venice, Italy in 2019. The food supplies we grow do not sustain us, and three-quarters of the world suffers from malnutrition, starvation, or lack of a potable water supply. Familiar species are decimated to extinction, or to the verge of it. The threat of nuclear war has increased to the extent that the Doomsday Clock has reached 100 seconds to midnight. Civil liberties are eroding worldwide, as authoritarian states impose brutality and increased restrictions on them. The world unites in a crescendo of protests over often deadly policing policies that affect people of color and peaceful activists. Those who disclose their gender identity are often faced with violence and intolerance. This book is written for a global audience that is caught up in a powerful indisposition to change, and for a planet in crisis. Its goal is to promote world peace, social justice, and restoration of Earth's natural habitats. These ideals are achievable by elevating our global consciousness through a world of healed individuals. The prayers in Prayer Book for Our Planet emphasize healing of self, and embody classical principles of recovery. They juxtapose divisive rhetoric and prejudice with world communal gardening, global peace and prosperity. Watson calls upon IBM's supercomputer by that name to solve world hunger, homelessness and disease for 820 million people by 2025. The prayers attack Earth's environmental and societal ills at their root causes, and offer reasonable solutions to them. The message they convey is that God created and sustains the universe, and that He must occupy a central place in our lives for personal and planetary healing to occur. Prayer Book establishes God's presence among us in a venerable way. We know that through the persistent efforts of an inspired few, much good has been done in the world. I hope to inspire many others to action. The prayers are interspersed with scriptural tenets and secular quotes, from Darwin to Gandhi, Aristotle to Shakespeare, and the Book of Genesis to Albert Schweitzer. The wisdom of spiritual leaders including Jesus Christ, St. Francis of Assisi, Pope Francis, and the Dalai Lama, is echoed in the book. The mission of Prayer Book for Our Planet is to generate a world of committed individuals that embody a new spiritual awareness, one that promotes world peace, ecological restoration, and equality of mankind.

We as Jews, Christians, and Muslims share a common spiritual descent, yet painful divisions between us lie at the center of much conflict and war in the world today. Praying with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace articulates the deep longings for peace that unite these great spiritual traditions. For each morning and evening of the week, John Philip Newell provides strikingly beautiful and profound prayers that call us to be the people Jesus named blessed: those who know their need, those who weep, the humble, those who hunger for earth s oneness, the forgiving, the clear in heart, and the peacemakers. Whether prayed alone or with others, these richly illustrated, simple liturgies invite and inspire us to live as those whose hearts yearn for peace.

"... parallels the prayer practices of Sufi and Christian mysticism with ease.... Vaughan-Lee's prayerful prose is poetic, inclusive, and intelligent." —Publishers Weekly Prayer of the Heart in Christian & Sufi Mysticism guides the reader through the stages of mystical prayer. Mystical prayer is a way to create a living relationship with the Divine within the heart. Drawing on Christian and Sufi sources such as St. Teresa of Avila, Attar, St. John of the Cross, and Rumi, as well as from his own experience, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee describes how prayer is first born of need, but then takes one deep within the heart, into the stages of Union and Ecstasy. Through mystical prayer, one is drawn beyond any words into the interior silence of real communion with God. Here, in the silence within the heart, a meeting and merging takes place that carries us beyond our self into the mystery of divine presence, into the secret nature of love's oneness. Prayer of the Heart in Christian and Sufi Mysticism explores the inner listening of the heart, and the secret of 'pray without ceasing' in which we discover how prayer becomes alive within the heart. Finally there is a chapter on the need at this time to pray for the Earth. How can we pray for the well-being of the Earth? How can we include the Earth in our prayers and our heart? This little book is an offering of the heart that brings together the Christian and Sufi mystical traditions in the oneness of love to which they belong. It will benefit any practitioner of prayer, anyone who is drawn to discover a relationship with God within their heart. “... with the understated simplicity of a true spiritual master, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee seamlessly weaves these complementary traditions into a single tapestry of singular power and beauty... this book offers yet another profound contribution to the collective evolution of our hearts.” —Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, from the Foreword "... draws together the Christian and Sufi traditions of mystical prayer ... Vaughan-Lee's clearly written little guide will be gratifying and absorbing for those interested in mysticism and alternate routes toward the love of God." —Library Journal “... an excellent book ... As we recover more and more of the ancient contemplative traditions, we are finding immense similarities in goal, practice, and effects. At the mystical level, we are seemingly talking about the same experience, despite our different vocabularies and styles! Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee makes this sacred journey both clear and inviting.” —Fr. Richard Rohr, Franciscan Priest, author, and founder Center for Action and Contemplation

The Spirit of God has empowered believers with everything necessary to fight and destroy every work of the devil. Yet, too often Christians choose to maintain a reactive, defensive position in spiritual warfare. Warfare Scripture Prayers & Declarations is a dynamic prayer resource that offers believers a fresh perspective on spiritual warfare—praying offensively before your enemy strikes as opposed to defensively praying after the attack of the enemy has occurred. God's strategy in warfare is not to simply pray, but to know when and what to pray thus praying offensively!