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Botany on an Endangered Planet

• Authored by:
• Barbara Goodrich Phillips

I have spent my whole life learning about the natural world. I am a professional botanist whose career was focused for fifty-plus years on trying to use science to understand and “save” specific unusual components of our earth’s ecosystems. I have learned a lot about climate change over the many years since Al Gore published Earth in the Balance in 1992, which my life partner, Dr. Charles Avery, used as a textbook in his Northern Arizona University conservation classes.  However, in recent decades, I have become increasingly sad, frustrated, angry, and sometimes depressed that humans in general, and climate-change-deniers in particular, are threatening the health of our whole earth.

On Science (November 2022)

Vanguard SOS

• Authored by:
• Shelley Tanenbaum

Dear Friends: I encourage you to learn about the remarkable “Vanguard SOS” campaign, organized by a coalition of which Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) is a member.

On Science (November 2022)

Songs to Lift the Spirit

• Authored by:
• Julie Harlow

Dear Friends: As part of our daily International Worship for Peace, we have been sharing songs with each other. I have stored links to recordings of those songs in an online spreadsheet. Having the songs listed in a table makes searching for a specific song much easier. See: tinyurl.com/SongsLiftSpirit

On Science (November 2022)

Toward a Life-Centered Economy (review)

• Authored by:
• Catie Polley

Inspired – simply put, this is the feeling I’m left with after reading Toward a Life-Centered Economy. This volume is the twelfth “focus book” from The Quaker Institute for the Future, a spirit-lead research organization working to “envision a global future in which humanity is in right relationship with the commonwealth of life.” The book explores the mindset of unlimited growth, which drives our current global economic system, along with the impending repercussions of that mindset on our global ecosystem. Further, this book spells out the inability of our ecosystem to support our current intense patterns of human consumption, and it offers advice about what we can do to change humanity’s impact.

On Science (November 2022)

Dielectric

• Authored by:
• Eric Sabelman

Here is a strange simile: God is like the parallel plates of a capacitor, and we are the molecules of dielectric between them.

On Science (November 2022)

Please Do Not “Believe in” Science

• Authored by:
• Muriel Strand

Cautious confidence in the scientific process is, I believe, the best perspective. Science is akin to continuing revelation and undermined by groupthink. However, modern science is fundamentally materialistic, and we do not live by bread alone.

On Science (November 2022)

O, Day!

• Authored by:
• Tyger Wright

 

On Science (November 2022)

Elizabeth Gurney Fry: A Quaker Mess

• Authored by:
• Barbara Birch

Friends are doing a lot of reevaluation these days, reexamining our past and our venerable Quaker ancestors. In some cases, when moral inconsistencies emerge into the open, reexamination means that some iconic Friends are losing their luster. In other cases, stories of early Friends’ messy lives help us to see their humanity, which can lend greater depth and nuance to their spiritual writings. This happened for me when I read Chad Thralls’ May 2011 article in Friends Journal on the “embodied” life of Thomas Kelly. Learning how Kelly confronted his inner demons through surrender to Spirit increased my appreciation of his lyrical testimony.

On Conflict (January 2023)

Steel to Flint

• Authored by:
• john heid

“For the last time, I am ordering you to depart the grounds of Griffiss Air Force Base or you will be subject to arrest.” On a crisp spring morning in 1984, I came to realize – in a hands-on, hand-cuffed kind of way – that I was not just a participant in conflict; I was also its student. The tension in the air that day was as taut and clear as the bright blue line demarcating the base. I had just crossed that line, along with my nonviolent comrades, and I realized I had things to learn.

On Conflict (January 2023)

Esther

• Authored by:
• Joseph Snyder

This late summer we welcomed a new resident into our home. She came in through the kitchen window, where she built her own abode. The day eventually came when we needed to close the window due to excessive heat. Our guest moved from the opening to the inside of the sliding panel. She incorporated the curtain and a bit of the houseplant on the windowsill into her dwelling-place, which is an edifice of beauty. We call her Esther.

On Conflict (January 2023)