Photo: By Mika Baumeister on Unsplash.
A good support: Linda Murgatroyd’s Thought for the Week
‘Our actions do have impact.’
The urgency of radical action on the climate crisis has never been greater, but it can be tough. Love and truth, not to mention our corporate testimony, require active responses from us, individually and together. We each have to discern our part and review this regularly.
It can be tough in different ways. We have seen the exceptionally harsh sentences recently meted out to nonviolent campaigners. Such sentences generally come after awaiting trial, sometimes for years, often with stringent bail conditions like electronic tags and curfews. Awaiting trial means your life is on hold: you can’t make firm plans, and your work, income and health may all be affected. Mental health and personal relationships can be badly strained with serious consequences.
Knowing we are not alone is very important, whatever the form of our activism. It can be particularly uncomfortable if those we are close to don’t understand or disapprove, whether our calling is to lifestyle changes, to pushing for organisational change, or to political action. One thing we can all do is listen with open heart, and to offer non-judgmental practical or spiritual support to others in their witness, even if we are not called to join it. It is wonderful that there are now Quakers regularly holding online ‘Meetings for Worship for the Earth’, and/or liaising to support other climate activists, as well as working on particular issues themselves. Woodbrooke’s climate crisis programme and QPSW staff also have important roles to play, but support from our own worshipping community is particularly precious. Making time and effort to get to know one another better ‘in the things that are eternal’ is part of this.
Our actions do have impact even if there is always more to be done. Lindsey Fielder Cook, from the Quaker United Nations Office, recently posted a helpful reminder to a WhatsApp group for Quakers supporting climate activists: ‘It is hard, so hard, and nothing ever feels enough. I have been working on climate change for nearly 20 years… Keeping despair at bay is a daily call. Yet I want to share that, in the last 12 years with QUNO, we would not exist, and our climate change work would never have started, had it not been for BYM. We remain the only faith-based voice at the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] – called the “ethical voice in the room” – because of BYM support. I would be spiritually and emotionally broken were it not for their ongoing encouragement and support. In my international climate interfaith work, the Quaker community is appreciated for the calls of urgency and transformation that still fail to wake in many other faith-based communities. Our Testimonies also ground healing of root causes driving climate change, species extinction, chemical pollution and related planetary crises. BYM helped us be the first church to divest in the UK. Years of work… continues to inspire. Quakers have so much to give spiritually to this broken world… Be there with those who struggle with despair, be there with those who seek to build resilience, transformation and a healthier and more just way to live together. Tell the story both of urgency and also of the healthy transformations and vision we all need. Uphold each other, fellow Friends may do more on climate justice than we realise.’
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