Pages tagged "environment"

This children’s book by Nancy Marshall of Phoenix Friends Meeting was published in September 2021. Several Friends from Intermountain Yearly Meeting have written to praise it:

Many new initiatives to promote "carbon offsets" have emerged since the letter below was published.

We had heard about the Snowflake Museum from friends in Kansas City and decided to make a pilgrimage for the holidays. The kids of course had never seen snow, though they had heard the occasional story. Our parents, after all, were the last generation to witness it first hand in Kansas. But there are several spots along the Continental Divide where a skiff of snow may appear from time to time, though it is very rare any more. It’s been ten years or so since the last sighting up on Monarch Crest, according to Professor Fairdiwel, the curator of the museum.

[Friends are not sufficiently] sensitized to environmental issues, and the result has been that we are now only slightly more awake to their significance than the average American . . . [As] individuals, many of us have become involved with environmental organizations, or have spoken out on special concerns within the environmental arena. But we have failed to see the overall magnitude and urgency of the environmental crisis . . . We have failed to see that the environmental crisis has a towering spiritual dimension, which must be addressed if the crisis is to be resolved . . .

Dear Grandchildren: I am writing this letter for you to read twenty years from now. I write it as an act of hope. By the time you read this, world will look very different. While I am concerned about the life we are leaving you, I have faith in the unexpected (reality always has a way of messing up our best forecasts). I also have faith in That-of-God residing in each of us, which gives us our capacity for compassion, sacrifice, creativity, and wisdom.