Thought for the Week: Challenging times

Anne Adams reflects on our relationship with the whole of creation

Some of us will remember our exuberant joy seven-and-a-half years ago in Canterbury, when Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) passed Minute 36 committing ourselves to becoming a ‘low-carbon, sustainable community’. This had not happened easily, but was the result of years of hard work by dedicated individuals who had laboured, producing material, running courses, visiting Meetings and writing articles trying to get across the urgency of the situation. At last, with over 1,000 Friends present, the minute was agreed and accepted.

Before 2011, Quakers held several Yearly Meetings to consider our relationship to the whole of creation. Quaker Green Concern, formed in 1986, which later merged with the Living Witness Project, worked with Meetings. In 1988 and 1989, London Yearly Meeting (now BYM) considered it, and, in 2000, BYM set up a group to work for three years on the subject of ‘Earth: Our Creative Responsibility’ with a paid worker at Friends House.

The minute in 2011 resulted in the printed Swarthmore Lecture Costing not less than everything: Sustainability and spirituality in challenging times, a ‘toolkit’ booklet, leaflets on how to measure our and our Meetings’ carbon footprints, courses at Woodbrooke, courses run by Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW), and gatherings of the Living Witness Project and the BYM Sustainability Group. Now, after all this time, what have we to say, as a ‘low-carbon, sustainable community’? What have we achieved, as individuals and Meetings? Certainly, much has been done. However, sometimes it seems there is a lack of urgency and motivation.

Aspects of our relationship with the whole of creation that perhaps have been neglected are the spiritual and the moral ones, and our lifestyles. We cannot deny that we are physically part of the earth, with the same molecules as all other species. Many of us are cut off from the rest of nature by living in towns, and it needs a conscious effort to identify with other living things, but ignoring their needs is causing devastation. Quakers stress the importance of community, but can, I think, forget about including other life that surrounds us. Early Friends had a vision of a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ and felt that the opportunity had come for a just and peaceful community. Unfortunately, things moved in a different direction and generally we became more anthropocentric. However, we can alter our lifestyles to make them more compatible with such a new community.

Aldo Leopold’s book A Sand County Almanac, first published in 1949, still has an urgent message for us. ‘A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.’ He was particularly concerned about sharing the land with other species, both plants and animals. The air is also shared with other species, and we have no right to change its composition and affect the global climate so drastically.

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