Major anniversaries always evoke memories, but at this time in our planet's history, we seem hurtled into the future, as new and surprising events unfold each year. Witness the Gulf oil spill and the ferocious heat wave in Russia this past summer. So it may be advisable to consider less what we have done (or haven't), but what we might. As the Bible counsels, "Without a vision, the people perish." In that spirit then, take a time trip to the anniversary of the next 25 years, in the year 2035....
Looking back on the past quarter-century, we remember a time of shocks and surprises that have tested us as Friends, forcing us to take a fresh look at our Society and what it stands for.
In 2010, we were awakening to how our over-consuming lifestyles were damaging the planet. That year, we learned that the upcoming FWCC world conference in Kenya would have the theme of responding to global warming. Quakers returning from that meeting in 2012 realized the time for taking decisive action had arrived.
A move to give up personal ownership of cars then commenced in meetings in California's Bay Areaa region with excellent public transportation. But the resolve soon spread to other Monthly Meetings, so that by 2015, most of them had developed cooperative policies to help people give up their vehicles and assist each other for transportation. Many of us donated the proceeds of selling our cars to Meeting funds for rideshare vans and vehicles that could be lent out on a daily basis. This widespread collaboration also greatly strengthened community, for members regularly saw each other more than just on Sundays. It energized the hope that Meetings could do much more.
In 2015, you will remember, the Yearly Meeting discussed and approved a minute asking all members to consider the ethical issues involved in owning and driving a private vehicle. It also approved a Minute on compassionate eatingthat our diets need an awareness of the natural areas destroyed for farming and the plight of farm animals.
In the succeeding five years, 2015_2020, our nation had severe climate emergencies, flooding in Florida, droughts devastating the Southwest. Environmental refugees numbered in the hundreds of thousands from a feverous planet. We could no longer deny that environmental crises and human ones were inseparably linked and could not be considered apart. Both the Unity with Nature and the Peace & Social Action committees of the Yearly Meeting were laid down, and a new combined Peace, Earthcare, & Social Action Committee was formed in 2020.
We also realized that no longer could Friends from a state that stretches nearly 800 miles justify traveling long distances to an annual meeting. With many misgivings, we decided to transform each of the two quarterlies into its own Yearly Meeting to lower the travel time and expense and the environmental impact. Every three years, we now have a combined triennial meeting in central California.
The years 2020_2025 were probably the darkest time and also a turning point for us. Even more environmental crises occurred, including a major urban earthquake on a California fault that had been long overdue to erupt. At the Yearly Meeting in 2025, a young, native American woman gave a talk that galvanized people as much as had Marshall Massey 40 years before to inspire the birth of the Unity with Nature committee.
Her words tipped the balance to adopt a new "Harmony with Nature" testimony, which had been discussed for decades. Today we look back and understand better how it both builds on and enriches all the other testimonies. We can only have a sustainable lifestyle by practicing simplicity, or practice peace by ending the long war we've waged against nature. And we know that our spiritual community must include all of life, for other species also have within them "that of God." How absurd it was to formerly believe that only our species of the many millions on Earth happened to have that privilege!
But in the succeeding years, our learning to live out the new testimony has brought new questions. Many are convinced that changing only our private lives can never be enough, that we must directly challenge the paralysis in government and the greed in corporations. As in the 1960s, protesters have taken to the streets in direct action. They have blocked with their bodies entrances to coal-burning power plants. They have picketed meat-packing companies that treat farm animals inhumanely.
Pacific Yearly Meeting