Meeting for Sufferings: Kabarak Call
The Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice was discussed at Meeting for Sufferings
The Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice, which was approved at the Sixth World Conference of Friends at Kabarak in Kenya in 2012, was introduced by Barbara Windle on Saturday morning. She reminded Friends that a concern for the earth and stewardship of our scarce resources ‘runs through’ the history of Quakerism. Barbara also spoke, movingly, on her experience of producing the Call with other Friends in Kabarak.
She read out the Call to Meeting for Sufferings.
A Friend from Leeds reflected widespread support for the document. She said: ‘I hope the Kabarak Call can inspire us and lead us. What impresses me is the strong links that it makes between environmental concerns and peace work.’
Another Friend spoke of a trip that he had made to the Antarctic some years ago and of the profound impact it had made on him. He explained the territorial claims that different countries have to parts of the region and highlighted the fact that some of them overlap. So, he said, he heard the recent announcement that the British government had named ‘Queen Elizabeth Land’ after the present monarch, as a gift to her, with some interest.
The importance of ‘afflicting the comfortable’, of whom Friends were part, was emphasised from the floor. There was no option, a Friend asserted, but to ‘cut down’ on our consumption of resources. We are, currently, using the resources of three planets. The question was ‘how are we going to cut down’ and this involved very practical challenges.
Correction: Barabara Windle did not help to produce the Kabarak Call. She, however, expresses ‘great admiration for the work of those who actully did put it together’. Barbara was just reporting on it.
