Meeting for Sufferings: Minute 36
How is Minute 36 being put into practice and what are the findings of the Working Group?
The main agenda item of Meeting for Sufferings, held at Friends House on Saturday 1 December, was the commitment made at Canterbury in 2011 for Quakers to become a low-carbon sustainable community. Minute 36 states: ‘Sustainability is an urgent matter for our Quaker witness. It is rooted in Quaker testimony and must be integral to all we do corporately and individually’.
How was this commitment to be put into practice and what were the findings of the group assigned to address this historic minute?
Though the Minute 36 Commitment Group had met several times it had not ‘achieved unity on the way forward’ and the meetings had been ‘difficult and challenging’ for several participants. They asked Meeting for Sufferings several questions.
These included asking whether ‘our concern for becoming a low-carbon, sustainable community’ was seen by most Friends as a spiritual issue? If not – how could the spiritual basis be deepened?
A ‘climate impact calculator’ had been sent to all Meetings to help them check how sustainable they were. The aim was to provide a starting point from which to move forward. The response had been low. Representatives were invited to explore why so many Meetings had not responded.
Friends were reminded that ‘things are getting worse’: the Arctic ice has been dangerously reduced this year; food prices are rocketing and starvation is on the increase as a result of the failure of harvests due to lack of, or excessive, rainfall.
The good work being done by Quaker Peace & Social Witness, such as the Sustainability Toolkit initiative, and other work like the ‘Living Witness’ project, were acknowledged.
Friends talked passionately about the subject. One emphasised that ‘there are many hard choices that we, as Friends, have to take’. Some reinforced the argument that it must be, firstly, a deeply felt spiritual concern – a true prompting of conscience – before real, meaningful, action can be taken.
A Friend admitted that, while their Meeting had filled in the calculator, those who were most passionate had the highest carbon footprint – but they had family overseas and it was precisely because of this, and their anxiety about taking air travel to see them, that had prompted their concern. On hearing this, a Friend extolled the benefits of Skype.
A London Friend revealed that his Meeting had formed a small group that had met regularly and read, together, Pam Lunn’s Swarthmore Lecture. He said ‘we have a duty of love to future generations’ and stressed we should not judge one another and that ‘each of us is starting from a different place’.
Not filling in the calculator, a London representative argued, was not proof of a ‘lack of interest’. Many Quakers were finding different ways to be sustainable in their lives. Friends also commended the good work being done at a local level. Quakers needed to find what ‘existing work was being done’.
A northern Friend proudly admitted to being the ‘potato consultant’ for his Local Meeting. He revealed that part of the Meeting house garden had been used to grow spuds. The message was: be creative!
Other representatives believed that Minute 36 was not seen by ‘enough of us’ as a spiritual concern. One said he was ‘convinced it must be grounded in love, and joy, and tenderness’.
A Friend from Somerset reminded those present that ‘the earth is the Lord’s and everything that is in it’ and that ‘there is nothing in the world that is not spiritual’.
A Friend was critical of sending out a calculator. She said her Meeting perceived it, perhaps incorrectly, as ‘telling us what to do’. Was this the right way to start the process? Might it have been better to say to Meetings: ‘Can we facilitate your study and reflections’? Others, however, highlighted that we did not have time to reflect. We had to act – now!
Contributions continued to range widely. Someone asserted that ‘we were too affluent’ and asked how we could find ways to ‘share it out more?’ She believed ‘we need a completely different lifestyle – that is the truth of the matter’.
A Friend said ‘love of nature’ was a spiritual issue – but not sustainability. She interpreted this to be about the survival of mankind. Love of nature was about the survival of the planet. ‘I struggle’, she admitted, ‘to see sustainability as a spiritual issue’. The planet might survive, one day, but without the human race on it.
Friends were urged to continue to put their faith into action. The Commitment Group welcomed feedback and were open to suggestions.
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