“When you pray, go by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your God in secret. Your God who sees in secret, will reward you."
The Gospel of Matthew 6:6
Dearest Earthlings,
Please pray, contribute financially and or volunteer to make art work with us to create The Secret Prayer Garden both online and here in The Secret Garden Retreat Center at the John Cobb Eco Farm. We are creating twelve prayer altars or stations we will attach to trees with each one dedicated to one of the “Fruits of the Spirit” from Galatians 5:22,23, "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." (with three additional virtues, I have added, courage, generosity and creativity.) We invite you to join us in developing these inner fruits of the spirit within ourselves and offer them as food to our common home Mother Earth. Church for Our Common Home is a church dedicated to pray for the natural world which is suffering at this historic time. All life grows with love and we encourage all prayer and meditation practices from the wisdom traditions that teach us to love creation. You may go on a prayer pilgrimage with us here on our five acers or use this as an internet virtual prayer practice wherever you live. Each of the twelve small altars are dedicated to a virtue, a spiritual teacher and living creatures. The living creatures may include animals, trees, flowers, plants, the wind, soil, the stars as well as geographic places. We invite artists to make art work that may be icons or small statutes to decorate the twelve stations. When complete, people will be provided a map of The Secret Prayer Garden and you will be invited to sit or lie on the earth, sit with your back against the tree, lie prostrate on the earth or sit in chairs and benches provided. The wooden altars are big enough to hold an icon, art work or small statue, flowers and candles. The last altar will be “Creativity” and will be in the barn celebrating the Angel Gabriel, the Holy Family and the manger animals including donkeys, sheep, cows, chickens, ducks, dogs, cats and goats. Some of the saints and spiritual teachers included are Jesus, Mary Magdalene, St. Francis and St. Clare, Buddha, Butterfly Maiden, Krishna and Rada, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Hildegard, Hagar, and more. The tree altars we hope will invite prayers for the our common home, Mother Earth and all her creatures including, the Pacific Ocean, roses, sunflowers, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the soil, birds, bugs and butterflies, red robins and blue jays, hummingbirds, oak trees, fir trees, farm animals, cats, dogs, etc. The twelve altars invite us to develop the twelve inner virtues as we also pray for God's creatures. God and all her creatures are in need and appreciative our prayers and benefit when we have developed these inner fruits of the spirit. We ask that you imagine giving the inner fruits away in radical generosity to all human and non-human life forms we encounter. We follow in the the spirit of Findhorn in Scotland, one of the earliest ecological spiritual communities that changed the chemistry of their infertile sandy soil to become rich soil where cabbages grew as big as cars.
Please contact me if you want to support the Secret Prayer Garden and please pray for its becoming, blossoming and growing in healing love. Special thanks to Ron Welty for generously making our wooden altars and please keep him in your prayers. Ron is being of service although he has been ill and in pain and we feel incredibly blessed for his loving support and care for The Secret Prayer Garden. Please see the tree altar that Ron has made for our Secret Prayer Garden below. Won't you help me and Ron make manifest The Secret Prayer Garden at Church for Our Common Home, an interfaith, interspecies and interconnected prayer garden for God and creation?
Sending love, Bonnie
P.S. The altar to the left is not finished but I offer it as an example. The icon is our church logo, of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa which I altered. Please note my addition of the photo of the earth in the Madonna's hand and as her and Jesus' halo. We invite you to reimagine ancient symbols and how to transform them for The Secret Prayer Garden. I encourage you to experiment and try transforming ancient icons into altar art for our tree boxes. The Secret Prayer Garden is like the secret garden in Frances Hodgson Burnett's brilliant book, The Secret Garden a place for beauty and healing love. Mary Lennox in the story finds the garden after it has been closed for many years. In a similar way our hearts have been closed for decades and centuries to the power of prayer and the invitation to have secret intimacy with God in our atheistic culture. We are called by God at this historic time to learn and commit to prayer practices and care for the natural world in radical love. May we follow Jesus and Mary Lennox into the Secret Prayer Garden to pray without ceasing.
"What was this under her hands which was square and made of iron and which her fingers found a hole in? It was the lock of the door which had been closed ten years and she put her hand in her pocket, drew out the key and found it fitted the keyhole. She put the key in and turned it. It took two hands to do it, but it did turn. And then she took a long breath and looked behind her up the long walk to see if anyone was coming. No one was coming. No one ever did come, it seemed, and she took another long breath, because she could not help it, and she held back the swinging curtain of ivy and pushed back the door which opened slowly—slowly. Then she slipped through it, and shut it behind her, and stood with her back against it, looking about her and breathing quite fast with excitement, and wonder, and delight. She was standing inside the secret garden. Chapter 9 It was the sweetest, most mysterious-looking place anyone could imagine......... “How still it is!” she whispered. “How still!” Then she waited a moment and listened at the stillness. The robin, who had flown to his treetop, was still as all the rest. He did not even flutter his wings; he sat without stirring, and looked at Mary. “No wonder it is still,” she whispered again. “I am the first person who has spoken in here for ten years.”
Psalm 46 "Be still and know that I am God."
Please join us the first Sunday of October and every month for a Taize worship service. This Sunday we will have a Taize service about The Secret Prayer Garden.Please enjoy the book The Secret Garden which is free in print and read aloud online youtube just click here bhttps://youtu.be/Yx_GpxQvi5E