Cosmic Sparks by Margie Abbott rsm

This book of prayer services is an amazing collection of quotations, song, litanies, prayers, video clips and rituals that encourages us to explore and express our relationship with Mother Earth. Margie invites us to use all our senses to engage with Nature. Through these prayers we praise, we lament, we take courage and we commit ourselves in love to God’s gift of Earth. Margie’s thinking behind this work is that as we pray, so shall we believe and act. She wishes the Church to embrace a spirituality that appreciates Nature, that recognises the interconnection between all created things, living and inanimate. Margie does not shy away from the hard topic of our destruction of this planet. 

In his foreword, Sean McDonagh draws our attention to the interfaith dimension of this work – it takes us beyond our customary Christian liturgical experiences. The book is divided into four sections (seasonal/elemental/directional and gift) but one can trawl though all of it to create one’s own themed prayer service. Each page or two gives a prayer service that can be five to twenty minutes in length.  

This book ends with an extensive bibliography for those who which to extend their journey of faith into the wonders of the cosmos. This is a great resource for parishes, schools and any faith group. 

“Let us fall in love again with Earth and allow ourselves to be filled with her wonder and magnificence, to be filled with the Divinity of this vibrant community of life in which we are embedded.” (Mary Southard, p. 110).  Margie certainly helps us to do this. 

Iain Radvan sj