By Joe Morris. This article appeared in the November issue of Western Friend.
This past year has again brought bad news for our planet: glaciers melting ever faster, the cyclone in China, the paralysis of international agreements over reducing greenhouse gas emission, and here in California, the over 2,000 wildfires that have burned since the beginning of summer. But the involvement of Quakers in Pacific Yearly Meeting (PYM) in Earthcare action tells a different story.
Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Unity with Nature (UWN) Committee brought forth a “Responding to the Global Climate Crisis” minute at PYM’s 2007 Gathering, which was approved. In that plenary, the committee was charged with two tasks: gathering the reports from monthly meetings on their actions regarding global warming over the course of 2007-08, and to begin drafting a new testimony on “Harmony with Nature,” in cooperation with the PYM Discipline Committee.
In addition to PYM’s minute, the past year has brought other sources of inspiration for Earthcare. Ruah Swennerfelt and Louis Cox of Quaker Earthcare Witness spoke to over fifty Quaker gatherings as they trekked from Vancouver to San Diego. In March 2008, under the care of San Francisco Monthly Meeting, Rolene Walker began her “Walk with Earth,” starting in San Diego with the ultimate goal of reaching Santiago, Chile in two years. Her email reports show an active engagement around environmental issues with dozens of schools and colleges. Also, Friends Bulletin published Earthlight, a book consisting of articles from the magazine of the same name. [This book is available on this website--click on the "subscribe" tab at the top of the screen.]
We live in an exciting time, as energy builds among us for better care and respect for the planet. A transformation seems to be occurring, and people like Ruah, Rolene, and the creators of Earthlight may be among our prophets.
Admittedly, this is a bold statement. Is this optimism warranted? Before receiving these reports, no one in PYM could know the extent of environmental involvement among meetings, and some assumed it was minimal. Here is what UWN learned:
Over 75%–29 meetings and three worship groups—sent a report. This number gives us some real confidence that the overall findings are representative of the yearly meeting as a whole.
About 85% of meetings and worship groups, the overwhelming majority, stated that they had considered and taken significant steps to respond to the environmental crisis. Naturally, some meetings are much more involved than others. But it is clear Earthcare is not only alive but flourishing among PYM Quakers.
Finally, the activities reported are not merely conventional ones like using florescent bulbs or cloth bags, but show an impressive and creative variety of approaches. They included:
Holding “locavore”, 100-mile potlucks
Developing awareness of native Hawaiian concepts of nature
Donating tax rebates to environmental causes
Joining with interfaith groups
Installing solar panels
Holding retreats in natural settings
Animal kinship projects
Organizing “carbon footprint” support groups
Committing to car-free transportation
Accumulating a Green Fund of over $4K for Earthcare projects
Producing an environmentally friendly purchasing guide
Dozens of other activities are too numerous to mention here, including some that were a bit provocative, such as a worship group whose members “dumpster-dive” for reusables! (Unity with Nature is happy to share these reports; please contact Joe.)
The second charge for the UWN Committee this past year was to begin work on drafting a new testimony on “Harmony with Nature.” The committee conferred about this for several months and contacted the Clerk of Discipline Committee to begin work together. Since February, an environmental working group composed of members of Strawberry Creek Meeting (but with no official ties) has written a draft, which is now available for consideration. It broadens our definition of community to include all of life and challenges us to consider our place in a society that routinely consumes the diminishing resources of an ailing planet.
Conclusions and Reflections
From relative quiescence two years ago, the membership of PYM seems to be experiencing a collective shift in a spiritual connection to the planet. Maybe our energy has become contagious. In July, North Pacific Yearly Meeting also approved a climate change minute, drawing on our minute and using some of the same wording.
What might all this mean? Things are happening so fast that it is hard to define the pattern –akin to drawing the shape of a cloud that changes from moment to moment. As Quakers are wont to say, “Proceed as way opens.” Certainly more surprises await us. As Earthcare becomes part of our spiritual lives, several new personal challenges seem to be emerging.
A critical one is the place of environmental justice. Most all of the meeting activities are focused on care and respect for other species. Yet our current testimonies urge us to minister to the poor and disadvantaged of the world. Pointedly, these are the very ones most harmed by the exploitation of the environment, whether they are inner-city children in LA developing cancer from the fumes of diesel trucks, impoverished families who must live near toxic waste sites, or the millions in Africa facing famine or starvation due to the prolonged drought.
We Quakers still are learning that care for the planet must include care for its people. If, for instance, we don’t address the poverty of people in Brazil, they will continue to cut down rain forest and further impact us all. As oil consumption grows, it not only increases global warming but also the odds of war over scarce resources. We cannot ultimately separate environmental activism from social activism. A positive example is the work of the Right Sharing of World Resources project.
A second challenge is work with other groups –both interfaith and nonreligious—for Earthcare. Only four meetings reported such activities, yetit is linked to our testimony of community. We will never be able to do this work alone. We need other people, the 99.9% who are not Quakers, to widen our vision and the impact of our actions. In this, we are significantly behind many churches, who have many interfaith alliances for the environment. This now includes both liberal and evangelical denominations.
A powerful positive example is Interfaith Power and Light, which began in the San Francisco Peninsula and now has branches around the country. Why not invite non-Quakers like Sally Bingham, the founder of Interfaith Power and Light, to speak to us at Pacific Yearly Meeting’s 2009 Gathering?
The need for collaboration demonstrates that the job of Earthcare is not to move away from the age-old Friends testimonies of equality, simplicity, and community, but to build on them, revealing new meaning in them for the 21st century.
Our Quaker ancestors would probably agree. In 1693, William Penn wrote, “And it would go a long way to caution and direct people in their use of the world that they were better studied and knowing in the creation of it. For how could men find the conscience to abuse it, while they should see the great Creator look them in the face, in all and every part thereof.”
A final challenge is dealing with our negative feelings–anxiety, discouragement, guilt, and powerlessness–surrounding the planetary crisis we now face. These feelings (sometimes called “green fatigue”) seem to be growing in our country, and they can paralyze any effort.
An objection raised at the recent North Pacific Yearly Meeting Annual Session was, “why should we bother about global warming? Can we make any difference? Don’t the corporations or the government or China really call the shots?” Quakers voice these doubts here as well. Discouragement easily becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Ultimately, the ethical rightness of an action is separate from its hoped-for effects. I am reminded of the Vietnam protestor, standing alone on a street corner in the seventies, who was confronted by a sarcastic driver. “Do you think you can really change the generals in the Pentagon?” He replied, “I’m doing this so they won’t change me.”
The writer Nelson Henderson also expressed it well: “The meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” What we do today to heal the planet may not be noticed in our lifetime or even in our children’s. Maybe our grandchildren will benefit. It will take generations, many scientists say, for our planet to noticeably heal. And some damage is irreversible. Extinct species are gone forever. Earthcare may then be the most unselfish social movement in our history.
That is why care for the Earth must be a spiritual matter! And that is why, in this ailing world, we in particular are needed and called.
Author Joe Morris is a member of Santa Monica Friends Meeting, and has been Clerk of the Unity with Nature Committee of PYM since 2006.