Editor's Note: The following prayers were written as part of a class activity at the February 2007 Earth-Based Spirituality module. Students were asked to write an on-the-spot prayer to be offered at the memorial of "a friend's father." While this man had self-identified as non-religious, he had felt a profound connection to the natural world throughout his life.

8 Interfaith Prayers, Selected and Adapted by the March 2008 Ordinands

From the Pagan Tradition:

“I send out words in praise of the Goddess,
from whom all worlds flow.
Mystery of mysteries, this continual creation,
like a fountain forever bubbling up from the Earth's darkness,
She is a cup that is never empty.”

(Adapted from a prayer by Ceisiwr Serith in
A Book of Pagan Prayer—In Praise of the Goddess, 2002)

From the Hindu Tradition:

On Tuesday morning I was paged to go to the hospital. A teenage girl had hung herself. She had been found by her father and mother.

When I got there, the medical team were just pronouncing the death. The nurses got busy tidying the room and putting the emergency resuscitation equipment away. There was complete silence in the room as I knocked and stepped in.

(written for a ChI sermon assignment)