Letters - 01 September 2023
From Become more balanced to Outreach
Become more balanced
Gerard Bane’s letter (11 August) spoke to my condition. While any efforts to reduce human damage to the planet are essential and most welcome, I think it disturbingly likely that having equipped ourselves with ‘environmentally friendly’ cars, heating systems and so on, we may feel that we have done our bit and can carry on as before.
However, such appliances are beyond the means of many, and can involve additional expenses and difficulties, such as disposal of car batteries, finding space in small properties for heat-pumps, larger radiators and so on.
As much new technology is at an early stage of development, newer versions will be introduced within a few years and we shall need to start again.
Manufacturing processes themselves involve large amounts of electricity and water.
I expect most of us are guilty of justifying our personal excesses however harmless we feel them to be.
The amount of traffic on our roads is already excessive and needs to be reduced no matter how ‘sustainable’ the vehicles may be.
Growth in itself is not necessarily a good thing, as many cancer patients can testify.
A further danger of a market-based culture is the ever-widening gap between the well-off and those struggling to earn enough to cover basic necessities.
This is not only morally questionable but could also lead to social upheaval.
Over forty years ago Michael Lee wrote this: ‘If John Woolman’s approach is the right one for the Society of today it is not enough to go over our own behaviour in detail, cutting a bit here and pulling back a bit there; we must be concerned with our and society’s attitude to life as a whole, to live answerable to the design of our creation.’
The need for us to become more balanced in every way is now urgent.
Carol Williams
Overheated language
A description of ‘raping’ (rather than stealing) to obtain basic components, and ‘humans who have always raped the Earth’, was presumably used to raise awareness about the ‘plundering, destroying and spoiling’ of our planet (11 August).
Rape is unlawful sexual penetration of the vagina, anus, or mouth of another person, by a penis (and other body part or foreign object depending on the legislature) without the consent of the person subjected to it.
A moment’s consideration of its impact might have tempered language that suggests victims of sexual violence are horribly polluted and have no resilience.
The analogy has no pertinence to one half of the population, nor most of the other half.
It didn’t work to motivate this reader to examine her unthinking everyday environment-damaging behaviours that will cause climate change and planetary harm. Talking to an audience as if they understand the rapist’s mindset (and that’s what matters) is distracting.
Gerard Bane exhorts us to live simply; I urge him to use plain words.
Susan Bewley
The status of trans people
My heart goes out to Neil Crabtree’s honest effort to describe personal experience (4 August). I started meeting trans people in about 1960. As Quakers, we got to know them as individuals – we welcomed them among us and in our meetings on this basis. Like Neil, those transwomen never claimed to be exactly the same as women, and were careful not to offend women. It would have seemed bizarre to suggest conflict between women’s rights and trans rights: we were courteous and negotiated easily around each other.
Like many people, I was sexually abused as a child. After some false starts I found healing in my Quaker Meeting, beyond imagining. In consequence I have dedicated my life to supporting others, including trans children and adults, both professionally and informally.
But since Yearly Meeting (YM) two years ago, I do not recognise some of what is being said in my name. Of course trans people have always been welcome in our Meetings as long as they behave in a Quakerly way.
Many of us felt insulted at YM 2021 by the insinuation that we could not be trusted to discuss the issue. Quakers in Britain seem to have increasingly closed down discussion ever since.
They fail to recognise the difference between our support of individual Friends, and an unqualified acceptance of trans organisations. They are not speaking for all Quaker Meetings.
Our Meeting expressed considerable distress recently at being signed up to the Charity So Straight pledge without adequate discernment.
Anne Wade
What do Quakers say?
I have a small yellow card that I value highly. It is headed ‘What do Quakers say?’ and was produced by Quaker Life quite some years ago. It contains six short statements which encapsulate in everyday language the essence of Quaker beliefs.
The first is ‘There is something sacred in all people’.
We use the word sacred sparingly, for good reason. It does not appear in Advices & queries. The nearest I can find in Quaker faith & practice is ‘the whole of life is sacramental’.
So I was surprised and concerned that in a recent press release from Friends House it was asserted that ‘Quakers believe that all people are equal, and that gender and sexuality are sacred gifts’. Gender? What discerned deliberation is this based on? What process of consultation was carried out in drafting this release?
Gender has a multitude of meanings, and has sadly become a focal point for deeply conflicted views in wider society. And Quakers are not detached from this. I would hope that our tradition of thoughtful and respectful listening and skills of conflict resolution would enable us to play a constructive role in helping to bridge divisions around understandings of gender. But to do this we have to engage with complexity, recognise that we need to exercise empathy with transgender people and with those who have suffered sexual traumas, and not oversimplify. There is a reason why our public statements need to be made sparingly and within explicit criteria.
The last statement on my card is ‘Each person is unique, precious, a child of God’. Let us hold to this.
Robin Waterston
Climate crisis denial
My interpretation of ‘the mainstream thinking’ that Sue Holden refers to (11 August) is based on the United Nations’ 195-world-scientist-strong Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), whose assessments are published every six or seven years after being reviewed and sanctioned by hundreds of leading scientists who volunteer time and expertise to do so.
The latest, published earlier this year, has widely been considered a last warning to humanity on the irrevocable damage caused by greenhouse gas emissions (of which seventy-eight per cent come from humans). Only swift and drastic action can avert this.
Of the world’s actively-publishing scientists, ninety-seven per cent agree we humans are causing global warming and climate change. It is because of these warnings, seemingly unheeded by governments, that climate climate activists all round the world have taken to the streets.
A part of Steve Baker MP’s perspective involves rejecting the science and also believing that these climate campaigners are terrifying children; he has equated their warnings to child abuse.
To me, that is climate crisis denial. He did, however, in 2010 vote against his Tory Party whip by apposing the HS2 plan, declaring it should be scrapped! Just saying…
Maris Vigar
Outreach
Outreach? Oh yes indeed, Jane (11 August). I am very aware of creating deliberate outreach.
Whenever I get a chance, I bring in ‘Quaker’ to my talking. This may be as in ‘Sorry I am busy this afternoon; I have a Quaker Meeting’; or ‘Oh I know them. They belong to my Quaker Meeting’. I often get a happy look and ‘Oh are you a Quaker?’
Diana Brockbank
Comments
Robin Waterston is labelled as coming from Birmingham on the pdf version, but it’s actually St Andrew’s, Scotland.
By Anne & Rob Wade on 1st September 2023 - 11:25
Please login to add a comment
