Hosea 11: 1-12 reimagined as Gaia speaking to her children

I did this for Old Testament class. I love writing poetry, so I enjoyed the assignment, which was to re-write a prophetic text to respond to a modern issue.

Valerie Freseman
OT 101: Hosea 11:1-12
(An extended lament/prophecy of the Earth/Nature to those who refuse to stop global warming….)

When humankind was but a child,
I loved him,
Out of the caves I called him, to suckle on my breast,
I imbued him with speech and free will,
But the more I loved him
The more He went from me,
He made sacrifices to creations that were false and His alone,
He offered his soul to that which makes waste, pollution and smog.

Yet I was the one who taught Ephraim to gaze at the stars at night,
I led  him into forests and besides oceans and within the meadows so that
He could be still, dream, and listen.
But he did not know that by this I had healed him.
I told to feel the soil with his hands, and to till it with care.
I was to him like those
Who teach children at their knee
I leD him to the places where he could behold creation’s wonder.

He shall return to the land of unknowing,
And hunger, cold, and sickness shall be His king,
Because He has refused to preserve me, His mother.
Oil, and Gas, and Coal, and Nuclear power pour forth sickness in His cities
They consume His leaders with greed,
and devour Him because He has forgotten me in His desire for comfort.
He is bent on His own convenience above all other concerns,
He has fogotten his brothers and sisters that I put in his care, the animals and the plants.
To me, their mother, He assigns blame for tumult; truly, I will not raise him up.
But Oh, how can I forsake my Son?
How can I hand you over to your barren soul?
How can I make you like the fossils of the deep-
How can I treat you like that which lies forever rotting in the earth?
My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.
I will not execute my fierce anger, I will not again destroy human kind,
For I am Mother-God-and no mortal,
Gaia in your midst,
And I will not come in wrath.
He shall go after She who shakes ash from the heavens,
Who trembles and shakes the earth like a Serpent.
And when She moves, Her children shall come trembling from the West,
They shall come, repentant and sorrowful
like snow from the mountains, melting to water and rushing back to the ocean,
Like flowers on the trees, budding forth to adorn Me in the Spring.

Greed has surrounded my waters and my soil with corruption,
And Humankind with the seeds of its own destruction,
But those who hear my call still walk righteously upon me, if they walk softly..
And are faithful to the Holy One.