Living Witness hosts climate gathering
'It’s really about being a space for Friends to meet and support each other, and hopefully to broaden the way people think about the ecological crisis and what they can do about it.'
The Quaker charitable trust Living Witness has organised a summer gathering aimed at unifying action on the climate crisis. The ‘All Change! Making paths on shifting ground’ event started as an idea when Friends identified a need to come together and unify their thinking on the crisis in an area that includes many diverse approaches.
One of the Friends, Laurie Michaelis, coordinator of the volunteer-led Living Witness group, told the Friend: ‘My trustees agreed to test the waters in the autumn and we had a lot of meetings in November and found that there was definitely an appetite for it. It’s really about being a space for Friends to meet and support each other, and hopefully to broaden the way people think about the ecological crisis and what they can do about it: what is the Quaker response? Maybe it’s an attempt to find some unity, but you can never predict where the unity will be.’
Laurie stressed that the gathering is ‘definitely an attempt to be inclusive of different approaches, it’s not about choosing a single one’.
The gathering partly came out of the space left behind when Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) laid down its sustainability group in 2018. Before then, BYM held around three gatherings every couple of years. ‘That was something Meeting for Suffering said needed to continue,’ said Laurie. ‘We decided we’d go ahead and hold something ourselves.’
The sessions held at Woodbrooke from 26 to 29 August will include short talks, workshops, relaxation, worship and other spiritual practices. The group hopes the event will ‘strengthen our sense of community and the connections among our diverse approaches, to open ourselves to transformation and discern some unity in a way forward together’.
Interested Friends can book by emailing Laurie Michaelis at laurie@livingwitness.org.uk.
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