Ways to Kiss the Earth by Linda Murgatroyd

Author: Linda Murgatroyd. Review by Jennifer Mui

Last summer, an art exhibition called Seeking Routes was held at Swarthmoor Hall. It showed work in which Friends explored Quaker experience and action in building a more sustainable Earth. This book presents a selection from the exhibition and its five themes: ‘Reverence for Nature’; ‘Spiritual and Creative Process’; ‘Climate Emergency’; ‘Simple and Sustainable’; ‘Witness and Activism’. The final section presents some early pieces from ‘Loving Earth’, a community textile project with roots in the exhibition – it is still growing and evolving today.

Each section of the book opens with a short text from Quaker faith & practice, an invitation to enter into the next theme in the spirit of worship. Each artwork is accompanied by the artist’s description of their spiritual experience in the making of the piece.

I read Ways to Kiss the Earth over a day, dipping in and out between work and meals and meetings, pausing to sit with some pieces that spoke to my condition. I could readily imagine a more meditative reading of the book, each piece a prompt towards reflection, prayer or conversation.

The artwork comprises a range of media – painting, collage, textile and ceramic. Some pieces, such as Rachel Grimshaw’s Lines across a landscape and Kirstie Macqueen’s Held in trust, focus on the physical process of making itself, thus creating openings into spiritual enquiry. Other works, such as John Lampen’s Antarctica: Penguins, Tyna Redpath’s Kissing the Earth, and the Loving Earth Project’s Wildlife powerless in the face of raging bush fires, represent a narrative, an idea or a process.

Sam Donaldson’s the last days moved me deeply: a clarion call in verse; life and death in critical imbalance; ‘love is all we can ever leave behind us’. Lily William’s watercolour on the same page distills a profound truth at once simple and infinitely complex: the outline of a person standing in a field or the sea, being of the land and the sea and the sky and also not simply part of the land and the sea and the sky. 

In the face of the crisis we have collectively created, how we live on the Earth, what we do to nurture it back to life-sustaining processes, rhythms and cycles, demands an honest and thorough interrogation of our relationship to the Earth – this physical manifestation of our spiritual experience, shaping and shaped by our relationship with all that gives and supports life. This book is an offering of hope; an invitation to engage with some very big issues (and perhaps be inspired to action) through art and the sharing of tangible remains from the process. It could be shared in a Meeting library or presented as a gift to Friends, artists and anyone feeling led to transform our problematic relationship with the Earth.

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Comments

I can’t find a source for getting hold of a copy of the book - it doesn’t appear to be available from Friends House bookshop.

By Joan Sharples on 12th September 2020 - 13:23

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Thanks for your enquiry.

The book can be purchased direct from Quaker Arts Network http://quakerarts.net/resources/ .

The Bookshop has said they would carry it but haven’t yet ordered any from us. I am hoping that they will do so soon, but they have only recently reopened.

By Linda Murgatroyd on 16th September 2020 - 23:27

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NB the image on the book’s cover is “Going, Going”  by Judith Bromley.

By Linda Murgatroyd on 16th September 2020 - 23:28

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Thank you for the information.

We saw the exhibition at Swarthmore last summer, and bought the Judith Bromley pictures, as a fortieth wedding anniversary present to each other, so we are fortunate enough to enjoy them hanging on our wall every day.

Joan

By Joan Sharples on 17th September 2020 - 8:01

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