Western Friend logo

Pages tagged "Nature"

Faith and Sewage

Everyone Poops by Taro Gomi (translated into English in 1993) has been my theme book for years. While it was written with toilet trainees and their eager caregivers in mind, I have other reasons to display the book prominently in my office. I work for a program in our local health department, the program that monitors water quality in streams, lakes, and groundwater, the program responsible for ensuring that the septic systems in our county are adequately treating the sewage that flows through them. That’s where “everyone poops” comes in.

On Garbage (November 2017)

If Animals Could Talk

When I was a child I loved the cuddliness and innocence of animals, and I wished they could talk. A grownup and activist now, I look for ways to use art to awaken our empathy with the natural world and to increase our climate-change consciousness. As an artist and writer, I know what fun it can be to combine pictures and text. So when my Friends Meeting in Santa Cruz put out a call for adults to share their skills with children in the First Day School, I offered a project called “If Animals Could Talk.”  

On Consumption (May 2013)

Integrity as Discipline

Dear Editor: I was glad to see Richard Grossman address the population crisis in your May/June 2015 issue, both for the sake of this grave topic, and also because he organizes his arguments around the SPICE acronym for describing key Quaker values, or “testimonies:” Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, and Equality (and Grossman adds Stewardship). Some Friends object to SPICE on the grounds that it would not have been recognizable to George Fox, but I regard the formula as a very succinct and very accurate description of our concerns since at least the nineteenth century.

On Difference (July 2015)

Love in the Desert

A story about Jim Corbett and friends.

On Difference (July 2015)

Ministry of the Wolf

One summer afternoon, I sat with a dozen other folks in the White Mountains of Arizona, listening to Aldo Leopold speak of witnessing the green fire fade from the eyes of a Mexican gray wolf, after he had shot it on the very spot where we stood. He spoke of that green fire as an image he could never forget, an image that brought him to an epiphany, challenging his belief in the superiority of man over nature. This experience left me with goose bumps and a wish that we all could face that fire (the Light?) within all animals, to become more (less?) human.

On Limits (May 2016)

Nuclear Waste, One Million Years from Today

Virtually all Friends oppose nuclear bombs. This is, of course, because we have a Peace Testimony. However, not all Friends realize that the world’s great religions are now being challenged to help oppose humanity’s ignorance about nuclear waste.

On Production (May 2014)