Walking Gently into the 21st Century

 

 a Sourcebook on Sustainability

for Quaker Meetings

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

provided by

the New England Friends in Unity with Nature Committee

2000

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Friends

 

 

Our goals for this book are to connect spirit with right relationship with Earth; to help Monthly Meetings and by offering  tools, inspiration, connection, and models; and to report to YM.

 

This Sourcebook has been a labor of love.  I believe each selection offers light.  Thanks to all of you who sent messages now included in this book, and to the NEFUN committee.  Especially helpful in drafts and edits were Susan Lloyd McGarry, Louis Cox, Molly Anderson, David Dahm-Luhr, David Ahlfeld, Gwen Noyes, and Bob Hillegas.

 

Welcome, please feel invited to explore and add to this work. Please let us know what you are doing in your Meeting or Committee.

 

Janet Clark

Clerk of New England Friends in Unity with Nature

July 31, 2000

 

OUR SUGGESTIONS:

1.               Take this book back to your Meeting

 

2.               Punch holes and put it in a recycled binder with section tabs.

 

3.               Have first Day school decorate the binder

 

4.               Assign someone to be caretaker and keeper of the book.

 

5.               Read it, duplicate it, add to it, make it yours

 

6.               Tell NEFUN what you are doing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter One.        Request from Yearly Meeting

 

Chapter Two.        A Picture of NEYM

 

Chapter Three.     Writings, Queries and Minutes that Ground Us in the Spirit

 

Chapter Four.       Resources for Discernment

 

Chapter Five.        Leaders that provide Content or Facilitation

 

Chapter Six.          Recommended Titles, Organizations and Websites

 

 

 

 

Chapter One - Request from Yearly Meeting

 

1. The 1998 request from New England Yearly Meeting

2. The 2000 report to New England Yearly Meeting from NEFUN

 

 

1.  1998 request from New England Yearly Meeting

In 1998, New England Yearly Meeting asked the New England Friends in Unity with Nature committee (NEFUN) to support discernment throughout the region on the faith and practice of sustainability.  This was in response to a  Minute from Netherlands Yearly Meeting on sustainability.

 

New England Yearly Meeting in 1991 had approved a Minute which concluded with the following sentence: "We ask Friends, individually and corporately, to affirm our connectedness with all Creation and to consider how the Spirit of Christ by which we are guided can help us live in a more loving association with the Earth and its inhabitants." The Netherland Minute reminds us to look for opportunities to act on our previous commitment.

 

The following letter was sent to all Monthly Meetings in New England.

 

October 18, 1998

 

Dear Friends

 

At the 1998 New England Yearly Meeting sessions, the attached minute was approved that accepted the challenge forwarded from the 1997 Triennial meeting to seek discernment about the faith and practice of sustainability. 

 

The call to reconsider the truth of our work in the light of new changes and conditions in our world is urgent and challenging, but this is also a joyful opportunity to grow in truth.  Our concern is spiritual.  "By recognizing this concern as spiritual, we are acknowledging that significant changes in how human beings treat the earth and its creatures will not take place until there are significant changes in how we feel about the earth.  When the heart is engaged, actions will follow."

 

We also look to John Woolman:

"The produce of the earth is a gift from our gracious creator to the inhabitants,

and to impoverish the earth now to support outward greatness appears to be an

injury to the succeeding age." John Woolman, 1772,  (as quoted in Britain YM

Faith and Practice, 25.01) From Conversations on the True Harmony of

mankind...ms 1772 included in the journal and essays ed Al G ummere, 1922,

p462)

 

This letter is being sent to Monthly Meetings to support your work to discern how you

might link environmental concerns to the testimonies of Peace, Justice, Simplicity and Integrity

and our faith-led work.  To assemble a response to Yearly Meeting, we would like to have a description of the state of your Meeting with regard to the Netherland Minute on Sustainability by April of 1999. We suggest this letter and its attachments be passed to your Peace and Social Concerns Committee for finding the best approach for your Meeting.

 

Our committee offers support in three ways:

 

*          A Listening Program of dedicated Friends who will come to your meeting and witness to and listen to your discernment, or offer workshops on the subject if requested.  If you have Meeting members who wish to join this Listening Program, please have them contact Molly Anderson.

 

*          A Resource Packet with thoughts and writings from other New England Friends as well as definitions and basic concepts.

 

*          Those so inclined may wish to join our email listserve  (janet_clark@uml.edu), which  nurtures our own threshing. 

 

You will receive a telephone call in October or November to learn what approach you have chosen and in what way we can support you.

 

The following queries noted in the Netherland Minute may serve to initiate your discussion. Also attached is a personal response to the Netherland Minute from Bob Hillegass which he shared at Yearly Meeting and which is included here as one view of the scope of the topic.  (Note – the Netherland Minute and Bob Hillegass’ response are offered in Chapter Three of this book.)

 

Queries

1.         We live in a society where political and economic choices are more often dictated by greed than by need. What choices do we make as individual Friends?

 

2.         If the dominant life-style, the dominant economic model is causing... detrimental effects, even the extinction of God's creatures, should not Friends question it?      

 

3.         Throughout Friends' history we are reminded not only of the "Words of God" but also of the "Works of God". Who are we to put these works of God at risk? 

 

4.         We are called to sound stewardship in order to care for the integrity of Creation.  How do we let our lives speak in answer to the love of God?

 

In light,

 

 

Janet Clark

Clerk

New England Friends in Unity with Nature Committee

 

2. Aug 2000 REPORT TO New England Yearly Meeting Sessions from the NEFUN Committee

 

 The current work of the NEFUN committee supports discernment around New England Monthly Meetings about the faith and practice of sustainability as requested by Yearly Meeting in 1998.  To focus and unify NEYM on the issue of sustainability, we sought clarity about suggesting corporate action. In fact, New England Friends are involved in lots of  relevant activities. 

 

 In the end, we found no clear leading to suggest for Yearly Meeting action, and realized  that NEYM may take a little more time to discern right action.  Our expectation is that, over the next few years, a clear issue or leading will emerge from one or more of our Monthly Meetings and gain the support of YM.

 

 

Our members have worked hard this year ‑‑ surveying Monthly Meetings by  phone,  traveling to lead workshops, and holding on‑site dialogs with individual Meetings ‑‑ to connect with all of the New England Meetings and hear about their experiences as they open this issue to the Light. There is a wide variety of vital, luminescent experience and concern across New England related to exploring and creating sustainable pathways.

 

Some Meetings are just beginning to understand and others are more clear in their leadings to work toward sustainability.  Some individuals work outside their faith community on these issues, and others find vital connection to this work of the Spirit through their Meetings.  A deep connection with and appreciation of  nature as a revelation of God in the world is widespread among NEYM.  Many, many people ask for more information or express continuing confusion about the status of environmental problems, solutions that can be tried, and the right stance for Friends toward these problems and solutions.

 

 There are emerging among Friends some common understanding about sustainability concepts that help us with its complexities.  What follows are some basic themes from writings and gatherings, especially from Mt. Toby and Cambridge Meetings and from the NEFUN Committee.

 

1.  Sustainability is about limits to Earth's resources, especially the use and protection of air and water, and responsible use of energy and materials.  Fair and equitable access to these resources is as important to sustainability as preservation, conservation, and attention to waste.

 

2.  The perspective of sustainability adds the dimension of time to existing Quaker concerns of peace, justice and simplicity.  Peace and justice actions support sustainability when they address the causes of conflict and oppression, and work for strategies that put living and replicating solutions in place.  If limited resources foster conflict and injustice (as they do in a large proportion of global conflicts), it follows that a stable supply of  resources and equitable access to them are part of peace and justice. Simplicity can then be understood to be about personal resource use, and "conformity to this world" (the theme of this year's sessions)  to be about greed and waste.  There's a connection with the plain‑speaking or honesty testimony too ‑‑ that we labor to overcome the denial of environmental destruction on which our global economy rests and from which we have profited.

 

3. We are of Earth ‑‑ physically and spiritually.  We were created to live in Eden, and Eden was created to be our home.  The Divine is in the garden as surely as within each of us. As Cambridge Friends Meeting, tells us, the universal processes that establish and maintain the forms we find in nature, including those forms we call "life", are a manifestation of God in which we are blessed to participate.

 

4. This work is a call to unity with Earth, a call of such clarity and urgency that we should feel joy and love as we prepare and begin.  In loving and honoring whatever part of the web of life draws us, we are helping to sustain it. Guilt and dismay are not effective strategies for the problem solving and change that are needed. Neither are about niggling over trivial details or pride of concept ownership.

 

5. Technology is intertwined with our economy and our community, both important issues for sustainability.  Technology also drives our use of earth's resources. Bob Hillegass, in a letter just submitted to "Friend's Journal" suggests that sustainability requires attention to the intersection of technology and Quaker testimonies.   The Full Moon Group at Mt. Toby Meeting urges that we take time to understand technical complexities, that we may better understand this intersection. This means learning about emerging cleaner and more efficient production and transportation, product design with environment in mind as well as cost and performance, toxic chemical threats, fair access to resources and other issues ‑‑ as diligently as we learn about injustice, prisons and preparation for war.

 

How will NEYM support this work?  Our committee found that resources are scarce or non‑existent in some Meetings and concentrated in others. Increasingly we have focused on the creation of a sourcebook, a resource for Monthly Meetings filled with writings, ideas, queries and questions, workshop tools, and initiatives to explore right action from around NEYM. 

 

This manual is offered at NEYM Sessions this year in draft form.  It is a work in progress because we see no finish to those activities that are generating such deep and fine ideas and experience.  We are asking Monthly Meetings to

take this book and make it their own ‑‑ read it and add their own sections and material. We ask that they continue in this way to foster in their Meetings and communities learning and inspiration toward unity with nature.

 

 Let us know what you are doing. This committee will continue to assemble master files on the materials generated for YM and provide a section of the NEYM website for downloading the Sourcebook. There are also experiences and projects across Yearly Meeting offering opportunities for action. For example, Equal Exchange offers fairly-traded coffee, a term that includes organically grown products that support grass roots co‑ops in El Salvador, Peru, Nicaragua, and Chiapas/Mexico. Other YM initiatives for peace ‑‑ Friend's Peace Team Project, Family Peace Projects, and Active Peace Zones can support or suggest models for action on sustainability.  The NEFUN Workshop at YM sessions last year suggested an "Alternatives to Consumption" project. One meeting did an "ecoteam" project during which five families met monthly to reduce their consumption and live more sustainably.

 

We would like to see Friends become a model for discernment and action which will bring sustainability,  as we are on actions which will bring peace and simplicity, but note that we are behind other faith groups on this work ‑‑

individual Friends notwithstanding.

 

What does the long-term perspective mean?  What can Quakers do to model a joyous, authentic, valuable, full‑bodied life which is in harmony with the natural processes of renewal and replacement of what is used?  What is our Friendly vision for a peaceful, green future?  What are we called to do as Monthly Meetings to bring this vision to fruition?  How can we help to focus the Yearly Meeting to hear whatever corporate action God asks of us?    

 

 

Chapter Two - A Picture of New England Yearly Meeting

 

An overview of  YM (monthlys' and committees') work to discern the faith and practice of sustainability

 

Over the last two years NEFUN members have been talking with Monthly Meetings and Yearly Meeting Committees to help discern the faith and practice of sustainabilty.  As well as receiving minutes, draft minutes, and requests for assistance, NEFUN members called out to every Meeting in New England. Often, the first reaction from our telephone calls has been guilt: we need to be doing more, we meant to consider it, we're not doing anything but we know we should, we want to do more but we're straining just to work on this issue....

 

We heard an epidemic of busyness, reflecting the busyness of our lives, which several mentioned as a drawing away from the testimony on simplicity.

 

Very often, we have then found that the Meeting has been doing much.  One example is North Fairfield Meeting who first indicated they were not doing anything and then told us: "For more that ten years this Meeting has worked to achieve justice for cancer victims of illegal toxic dumping by Scott Paper Company.  We await the results of court decisions, and work to empower this politically weak community.  There are actually many illegal dumping issues in our town which keeps this small Meeting locally focused."

 

Often we heard confusion about or even dislike of the term "sustainability" particularly the phrase in the Netherlands Yearly Meeting Minute that cited "sustainable development."  We also heard some Meetings wonder whether there was a need for a new testimony, with the sense that if we lived out the existing testimonies, particularly those related to simplicity and peace, we would be doing the work that the Netherlands Yearly Meeting Minute suggests.

 

Yet we also heard that we need to examine our relationship with and role in the natural world, and that might have some different aspects than how we have traditionally interpreted it, even with existing testimonies.  We heard pain and suffering about how we treated that world, and our fellow occupants of it, human and non-human.  We heard worry and concern about the environment and our part in it, and about the interrelatedness of all of these issues. We heard of the difficulty of living up to what we already know, and the difficulty of educating ourselves about what we do not know.  Meetings and individuals are grappling with this question and struggling with a way in.  Again and again we heard that Friends know that they are called to do more in living faithfully, but struggling with how.  One very important aspect of the discernment of sustainability as a testimony has been a renewed focus on all the testimonies and how we live them.

 

We agree with Friends who see the interconnectedness of the testimonies. We want to encourage Friends to approach this work from a place of joy, love, and in search of beauty rather than from Quaker guilt.  In loving and honoring whatever part of the web of life draws you, you are helping to sustain it. In becoming informed about ecology, you are doing the work. In assisting in a local issue, you are helping to keep your part of the web connected. We also want to encourage Friends to support one another, and cite Mt. Toby's Full Moon group as an example.

 

Many Monthly Meetings are working to discern the faith and practice of sustainability through multiple strategies, including second hour discussions, workshops, surveys, special committees, and creation of their own minute on sustainability. Mt. Toby and Friends Meeting at Cambridge have been leaders in this area.  Other Meetings are encouraging individuals in their Earthcare leadings and memberships in other environmental organizations and project activities.  Ecumenical efforts such as the Maine Council of Churches program on "Spirituality and Earth Stewardship" are a valuable way members of smaller Meetings in Maine are addressing the faith and practice of Sustainability.

 

Several Quarterly Meetings (Vassalboro, Connecticut Valley, and Salem are examples) have held retreats or discussions within the regular Quarterly Meeting that focused on this topic. Yearly Meeting Committees are having a hard time connecting their work and focus with sustainability, although some are seriously making the effort. The Nominating Committee minuted this discussion, in part:

 

“Can we reduce our use of paper?  Almost all of us have email, so perhaps we could avoid making copies by bringing our own printouts. Jonathan encouraged us to think more broadly than merely recycling, to consider during our nominating work the sustainability gifts of the

individuals we are considering for committee work.  For example, the Finance committee could benefit from individuals with gifts in this area, to help guide the use of our money.  Youth Programs could use such people in planning youth programs. Not too much―but the discussion of the issue helped us all become more sensitive to it and a little better idea of what it means―a major rethinking of our values...”

―Nancy B. Isaacs.

 

The list below summarizes some of the activities of some of the Meetings in New England.  It is not comprehensive neither in its listing of activities for an individual meeting nor in its listing of Meetings.  We include it because we heard very often that Meetings would like to know what other Meetings are doing.  We encourage Friends to give us updates to this list, particularly for Meetings not included here.

 

Acton

·         Six families did the Ecoteam Program, a seven-part self-directed course on sustainable lifestyles.  They made several key household changes and learned a great deal. 

·         Held a workshop on "the Science of Sustainability" with speaker Janet Clark.

·         Are surveying its members for priorities.

·         Considering wider community forum on sustainability literature

 

Allen's Neck

·         Creating material for an adult class called, “The Environment and Religion” to be led by Jim Munger and based on Lisa Gould's book Caring for Creation, which supports discernment on Bible directions and stewardship.

 

Bennington

·         An informal committee started on Earth day 1999Sponsored an adult forum on earthcare that was open to the wider community.  Ruah Swennerfelt of Burlington (How does change occur?) and Walter Haines of Bennington (Markets, profits and the cost to earth) were speakers.

·         Using Earthcare for Children study guide in First Day School

·         Meeting monthly to read Your Money or Your Life by Robin and Dominguez.

·         Starting a tool lending library

·         Considering initiating a bartering system

 

Burlington

·         Established a BFUN committee that meets monthly

·         Check‑in monthly to report personal efforts toward ecological integrity

·         Intergenerational outings to nature center

·         Present to First Day School

·         Sponsored an adult forum on sustainable living and Quaker values

·         Has queried other Meeting committes about earthcare

·         Participated in “Buy Nothing Day” at the downtown mall, carrying posters and handing out material urging less materialism.  A vigil was continued once a week until Christmas.

·         Sponsored an evening meeting about Chiapas in Mexico and free-trade policy impacts.

·         Drafting a Minute

 

Cambridge

·         Created and brought Minute to Business Meeting (see “Minutes” in Chapter 3)

·         Held many workshops

·         Sponsored several speakers

·         Surveyed members and attenders at FMC as to how they saw their relationship with creation

·         Created queries

 

Dover

·         Has an active FUN Committee

·         Retreat used theme of sustainability―what would a sustainable world look like.

·         Joined the Connecticut Energy Co-op as a Group Member so that all meeting members and attenders can join the co-op at a discount.  Energy Co-op is making green electricity available in Connecticut.

·         Committee is working on queries for other meeting committees that encourage the committees to consider sustainability issues in their work.

 

Mattapoinsett

·         Involved in several external projects: the Heifer Project and Save the Bay

·         Equal Exchange Coffee

·         Encouraged the creation of a local organic cranberry farm

 

Mid-Coast

·         Hosted a celebration of the simple life including a meal with locally grown food and discussion about power and energy.

·         Sponsored Peter Arnold on global warming and changes in our households and organizations.

·         Studying cleaning materials to address recyclability and safer solvents.

·         Book discussion groups reading Dream of Earth by Thomas Berry and When Corporations Rule the World by David Korten

·         Sponsored a presentation by the “Food Connection” to encourage farmers’ markets and consider food distribution methods and poverty

·         Exploring green power options for the State

·         Conference planned on impacts on Maine of global warming

 

Middlebury

·         Sponsored a second hour discussion.  Janet Clark of Acton (Science of Sustainability and the NEFUN Sustainability Game) was the speaker.

·         Participate in the interfaith A Spirit in Nature Trails, in which several paths in the beautiful Vermont woods encourage meditation on the spirit in nature according to different faith traditions, including Friends.

·         Drafting a Minute

 

Monadnock

·         Committee formed

·         Created a sustainability questionnaire

 

Mt. Toby

·         A group (the Full Moon group) began to support each other in work in relationship with the earth took up the query about sustainability as a testimony and helped to thresh it in the meeting. They continue in this inquiry and to support each other in efforts to live and work in integrity with the earth, alternating monthly sessions between breathing in (looking at personal issues) and breathing out (looking at community issues).

·         Have done two adult education hours

·         Produced  some statements

 

North Fairfield

·         Working on illegal dumping issues

 

 Northampton

·         Yearly Retreat focused on sustainability; included a Council of All Beings co-led by Kathleen Moran and Susan Lloyd McGarry

·         Passed a Minute in July 1999

 

Pond Town

·         Equal Exchange coffee and tea

·         Worm composting inside

·         Organic gardening

·         Creative paper recycling

 

Portland

·         Discussion of  tapes of Lisa Gould's Bible talks at Yearly Meeting.

·         A focus group has been formed.

 

Providence

·         Equal Exchange coffee and tea

·         Share meeting house with community based agriculture farm

·         Workshop

·         Hosted Quarterly Meeting on this topic

 

Quaker City Unity

·         Potluck discussion around the query "What would you take with you 50 years into the future?"

 

South Berkshire

·         Land Use committee addressing sustainability at new meeting house

·         Discussion with Louis Cox and  Ruah Swennerfelt

·         Project to help clean up the PCB damage to the Housatonic River

 

Storrs

·Considered environmental friendly issues with new meeting house, sometimes difficult to decide what truly was most environmentally friendly

·Sponsored worship sharing on relationship with all creation