A Liturgy for the Extinct
Illustration of Bachman’s Warblers by Louis Agassiz Fuertes via Wikimedia Commons
In October 2023, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service declared 21 species extinct. The declaration of their extinction hit me hard, and while I felt grieved by their loss, I struggled to express what I was feeling. In and amidst my feelings, the words that eventually rose to mind were words from the prayer of confession in the United Methodist communion liturgy: “We have not loved our neighbors… .” I found that my sorrow was seeking to be expressed liturgically, in community. I couldn’t think of a liturgy that existed for lamenting the loss of species, so with encouragement from my spiritual director, I explored what it would look like to craft a liturgy to lament these 21 species’ loss and our human role in that loss.
If you are looking to mourn the loss of extinct species, whether individually or in community with others, I hope this liturgy and ritual offers a container for your grief and sorrow. Grief of any kind is not easy, yet as Francis Weller writes in The Wild Edge of Sorrow, it can reshape us, “to help us become our mature selves, capable of living in the creative tension between grief and gratitude. In doing so, our hearts are ripened and made available for the great work of loving our lives and this astonishing world” (Weller, 2015, xxiii).
While this liturgy was written with the 21 species named by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2023, it strikes me that, in our current time of climate crisis, there will likely be more extinctions. I wrote this liturgy in a way that the species named could be changed to reflect new extinctions or to reflect those in your own part of the world.
This liturgy can be used on its own, or included in a larger service or order of worship. Many churches often celebrate a Blessing of the Animals service yearly; this liturgy could also be adapted for use in such a service to hold space for that creative tension between grief and gratitude. You are welcome to use this liturgy with credit given. If you use this liturgy, I would be honored to hear how you adapted it for your context and what it was like.
Through it all, my hope is that praying this liturgy helps you hold space for grief, while also awakening your curiosity to see the beloved creatures who also call your ecosystem home. May our grief for the extinct renew our love for those who remain.
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A Liturgy for the Extinct
Written by Rev. Christina Lelache
Living God, you have made a beautiful world filled with wonder and surprise, bringing into being that which we could not have imagined for ourselves. We see and know only a fraction of it, yet we know that all is known to you. Some of these creatures we are grateful to call companions and friends; some of these creatures sustain us with their very bodies. By the marvel of your imagination, we are because they are, breathing together in an interconnected web of life.
Thank you for this incredible abundance of life.
Thank you for placing us into belonging and community with these creatures.
In the ongoing story of this universe, species have come and gone. Through natural extinctions, they have made our lives possible in the giving of theirs. We are here because of these ancestors who have made our existence possible through their struggle, adaptation, and survival.
Nevertheless, species are disappearing a hundred times faster than in the past.¹ Whereas previous mass extinctions were caused by cataclysms of some kind, today’s rapid extinctions are caused by the human species. Each year more plants and animals are becoming extinct or endangered due to the choices that we make every day about food, shelter, transportation, communication, and leisure.² Fewer than half of the individual wild creatures remain on Earth than in 1970, while the human population has doubled.³
Holy One, your love beats in all hearts.
Your breath breathes through all creatures.
Forgive us when we fail to notice these beloveds of yours.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Forgive us when we fail to remember our kinship with all of creation.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Forgive us for spoiling the ecosystems in which we live, removing places of shelter, polluting waters of nourishment, and destroying food supplies for all creatures.
This harms them as much as it harms us. Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Holy One, you blessed Abraham, that through him all the families of the earth shall be blessed. We have failed to live into this calling as a species. Forgive us for forgetting that humanity is not the only family of this earth.
Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.
We lament that our way of life is silencing millions of creatures and erasing God’s beauty.⁴
These creatures, great and small, are also the hungry and homeless brothers and sisters Christ calls us to care for.⁵
Each extinction is a loss, a silencing of one of the voices in the great conversation. In this silence, we pause to say goodbye, bearing witness to 21 species recently declared extinct by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.⁶
We give thanks for their lives. We grieve their loss.
We remember…
A moment of silence will follow each species. You may wish to ring a bell or pour a bit of water into a bowl for each species.
One species of mammals:
Little Mariana fruit bat
Ten species of bids:
Bachman’s warbler
Bridled white-eye
Kauai akialoa
Kauai nukupuu
Kaua’i ʻōʻō
Large Kauai thrush
Maui ākepa
Maui nukupu’u
Molokai creeper
Po’ouli
Two species of fish:
San Marcos gambusia
Scioto madtom
Eight species of mussels:
Flat pigtoe
Southern acornshell
Stirrupshell
Upland combshell
Green-blossom pearly mussel
Tubercled-blossom pearly mussel
Turgid-blossom pearly mussel
Yellow-blossom pearly mussel
The grief we feel over the loss of these species is interconnected with our grief for other lost species, for loved ones who have departed, and for the pain of Earth.
If water has not already been poured into a clear glass bowl, pause to do so before continuing. The bowl may be placed in a location where people can come up to it, or it may be passed from person to person.
This water represents our tears for Earth and for all beings. You are invited, as you feel led, to come forward and place your fingers in the water, bringing to mind a place where Earth is wounded or a loss that you are carrying, human or more-than-human.⁷ Linger with the water for a few moments, or more. Let the water trickle from your hands. You are welcome to name your grief out loud: “My tears are for…”
Leave time for people to engage with the water, with music playing underneath.
The grief we have named is not ours alone; it is also God’s grief. Through our tears, we are connected. And through our tears, we are called to renew our love once more. Our tears remind us that we can still grow, still love, still discover God here with us in the mess and in the beauty. It is the broken heart that holds space for something new.
All over the world, people are dreaming of new ways to bless the creatures with whom we share this planet.
Inspire us with dreams of our own, God.
Help us to slow down and see, with the eyes of our hearts, the vulnerable ones in our own backyards.
As we reflect on the choices we make, give us eyes to see where we may act in ways that bless them.
May we develop relationships with all those who live in our ecosystems.
May we learn from the many others, human and more-than-human, who through their love and action are restoring wholeness to all of Earth.
May we awaken to the ways in which our own actions and choices are contributing to the decline of species.
May we reflect and take action, so that we may add blessing upon blessing to all the families of the earth.
We are called, again and again, to be a blessing to all the families of the earth.
Where we have failed to love our neighbors, we can begin again.
We can choose, each day, to be a blessing.
We are here, God.
Guide us back to wholeness.
May our tears renew our love.
May our love renew our hope.
May our hope inspire our action.
May our actions bless one another, human and more-than-human, so that together we may all flourish.
Amen.
After the liturgy is finished you may wish to move outside (if not already) with those gathered and pour out the bowl of tears onto the earth.
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Footnotes
¹ Gayle Boss, Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2020), 6.
² Boss, Wild Hope, 6.
³ Stephen Moss, Ten Birds That Changed the World (New York: Basic Books, 2023), 8.
⁴ Boss, Wild Hope, 7.
⁵ Boss, Wild Hope, 8.
⁶ These 21 species were declared extinct in October 2023. You may wish to update this section with a more current list reflecting your area.
“Fish and Wildlife Service Delists 21 Species from the Endangered Species Act due to Extinction,” U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, accessed December 14, 2023, https://www.fws.gov/press-release/2023-10/21-species-delisted-endangered-species-act-due-extinction.
⁷ This ritual is adapted from The Bowl of Tears ritual, as found on the Exercises and Practices page of The Work that Reconnects.
“The Bowl of Tears,” The Work that Reconnects, accessed December 14, 2023, https://theworkthatreconnectssa.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/wtr-exercises-and-practices/.