Author: Publications Committee

A Path to Changing Hearts–An Interview with Alan Burns

By Jeff Meyer, Charlotte Friends Meeting Quakers have joined with many other groups and people of good will in the effort to do something about climate change. We want to be better stewards of the environment, combat global warming, stop poisoning the environment, reduce our use of fossil…

My Time in Washington

Mary Gilbert, QEW Representative to the UN On Wednesday night, with the Pope to speak the next day, QEW Friends participated in the interfaith program and the overnight vigil organized by the Franciscan Action Network (https://franciscanaction.org/). Can you imagine a gathering of Jews from differing communities, Muslims,…

Over planned and under organized: On target but missing the mark

Roy Taylor, Clerk of QEW The release of the Pope’s Encyclical earlier this summer set the stage for his historic visit to the United States and his address to both houses of Congress. What a perfect opportunity for the interfaith community to respond with multiple corresponding events in Washington DC…

Expectant Waiting–Expectant Doing

Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW General Secretary It feels like the entire state of California is holding our collective breath as we wait for El Nino to water our thirsty crops, reservoirs, shrunken lakes, and trees. In the city, trees deprived of winter rains for the past four years are dropping leaves…

NEYM’s Public Response to Pope Francis

New England Yearly Meeting [Editor’s note: This statement is posted on NEYM’s website at: http://neym.org/news/public-statement-climate-change-response-pope-francis] In his address to the U.S. Congress and to our nation, Pope Francis invited us to pray for him, and to pray together. On behalf of the Quaker faith communities in the…

Canadian Happenings

CYM SIGNS INTERFAITH DECLARATION ON CLIMATE JUSTICE Canadian Yearly Meeting has signed on to an interfaith declaration seeking action on climate change, poverty reduction and justice for aboriginal peoples. The seven-page declaration “On promoting Climate Justice and Ending Poverty in Canada; Faith Communities in Canada Speak Out,” was…

Podcasts from Friends

“DOING THE WORK OF NOAH: GROWING THE ARK” Tom Small, co-clerk of the Publications committee, was interviewed on Northern Spirit Radio in August, talking about responding to species extinction and creating habitats with native fauna. You can listen to the interview here: http://www.northernspiritradio.org/episode/doing-work-noah-growing-ark “NICARAGUA INTER-OCEANIC CANAL – NO!”…

Creating Campaigns: EQAT’s Process of Discernment

Creating Campaigns: EQAT’s Process of Discernment George Lakey, Earth Quaker Action Team On March 2, 2015, PNC Bank said it would give up financing mountaintop removal coal mining. The New York Times and the Guardian joined other media outlets in announcing the outcome of EQAT’s campaign demanding that…

A Path to Changing Hearts–An Interview with Alan Burns

By Jeff Meyer, Charlotte Friends Meeting Quakers have joined with many other groups and people of good will in the effort to do something about climate change. We want to be better stewards of the environment, combat global warming, stop poisoning the environment, reduce our use of fossil…

In Quaker Silence: Reflections on QEW’s Recent Week in Washington DC

Russ Adams, North Columbus (Ohio) Monthly Meeting In Quaker silence, do I hear our humanitarian ancestors, our abolitionist ancestors, our pacifist ancestors, crying out to us to pursue full sustainability for ourselves and our children and all folks yet to come…while there is time? Perhaps an…

My Time in Washington

Mary Gilbert, QEW Representative to the UN On Wednesday night, with the Pope to speak the next day, QEW Friends participated in the interfaith program and the overnight vigil organized by the Franciscan Action Network (https://franciscanaction.org/). Can you imagine a gathering of Jews from differing communities, Muslims,…

Over planned and under organized: On target but missing the mark

Roy Taylor, Clerk of QEW The release of the Pope’s Encyclical earlier this summer set the stage for his historic visit to the United States and his address to both houses of Congress. What a perfect opportunity for the interfaith community to respond with multiple corresponding events in Washington DC…

Expectant Waiting–Expectant Doing

helley Tanenbaum, QEW General Secretary It feels like the entire state of California is holding our collective breath as we wait for El Nino to water our thirsty crops, reservoirs, shrunken lakes, and trees. In the city, trees deprived of winter rains for the past four years are dropping leaves…

Thanks, Friends!

QEW wants to thank Friends at Ann Arbor Friends Meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan for their wonderful hospitality and participation during the QEW Spring 2015 Steering Committee meetings at the end of April. New friendships were formed, ideas were explored, and plans were made…

Quakers and the New Story

Quakers and the New Story By Mary Coehlo It was only in the last century that scientists have been able to connect their many discoveries in astronomy, geology, evolutionary biology, and other subjects into a continuous story of the origins of human beings, the earth, and all its…

Soot

By Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW General Secetary Cleaning up soot is the perfect counter example to the outdated concept that we have to choose between slowing climate change and economic development. Do you want to dump your despair about climate change along with getting rid of all that black…

Get Resources for Your Meeting

Newly posted! Two new topical website sections for your reference and reflection: Fracking 101, a new section providing information about fracking Friendly Landscapes for Birds, Soil Organisms, Pollinators, and People, a new section exploring ideas for creating  and cultivating healthy landscapes for Earth…

Finding Our Inner Activists–with Humor and Heart

Finding Our Inner Activists–with Humor and Heart By Katherine Murray Are you an armchair earthcare activist? Do you have a growing concern for the planet that you aren’t sure what to do with? If you feel a gentle stirring (or a more insistent inner nudge) in your life,…

Is This Your Year? Apply for a QEW Mini-Grant!

Has your meeting been dreaming of creating a community garden, harvesting rainwater, relandscaping to make use of native plants, putting in a low-flush toilet, or otherwise improving the energy efficiency of your meeting house or neighborhood? QEW makes grants available for Friends’ organizations who want to…

SEYM Breaks New Ground with Field Secretary for Earthcare

SEYM Breaks New Ground with Field Secretary for Earthcare By Barbara Letsch and Brad Stocker This April, Southeastern Yearly Meeting gathered and among other decisions Friends took a huge leap of faith. They established a new, full-time position under the care and guidance of SEYM and its Earthcare…

Measuring What Matters

By Mary Gilbert, QEW Representative to the UN Measure what you treasure…or you might just treasure what you measure. Imagine for a moment that you are the chief statistician of your country. You regularly generate data on everything your nation asks for, along with the statistical…

Don’t Google That!

By Brad Stocker If you’re searching for something online, you can find what you need and donate to your favorite cause at the same time by using Goodsearch as your search tool. Goodsearch is a search engine that donates a penny per search to the cause of your…

An Earth Testimony

By Adrian Ayres Fisher. Once during Meeting for Worship, a member spoke of how she had always heard the saying that Friends should walk cheerfully over the earth…speaking to that of God in everyone. Then she read what George Fox actually wrote: that we should “walk cheerfully over…

Northern Yearly Meeting Lights Up

By Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW General Secretary Northern Yearly Meeting (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and a bit more) meets on a lake in central Wisconsin to deepen worship, conduct business, and nurture connections among Friends in the upper Great Lakes region. This year, they boldly chose the challenging theme: Climate Change: Turning Awareness into…

Book Review: The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm

Book Review: The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm By Katherine Murray As I began to read The Community-Scale Permaculture Farm: The D Acres Model for Creating and Managing an Ecologically Designed Educational Center, by Josh Trought (Chelsea Green Publishing, March 2015), a favorite quote from George Fox rang in my head: “Be patterns,…

Being a Player

By Mary Gilbert, QEW Representative to the UN I’ve been attending meetings at the UN for more than 15 years and have often been asked “Do you ever get to ‘speak’ at the UN? What do you say?” I’ve explained that representatives from organizations like QEW may at times collaborate…

Divesting from Fossil Fuels in Cincinnati and Beyond

By Marjorie McKelvey Isaacs, Community Friends Cincinnati      Cincinnati…is always ten years behind the times. —Mark Twain When our Earthcare Committee clerk at the time, Bill Cahalan, first suggested that Community Friends in Cincinnati divest from coal, oil, and petroleum stocks, it sounded like a foolish waste of the Cannon Fund,…

Video Resources to Share

On a recent visit to North Palm Beach Meeting, Mary Jo Klingel discovered that Palm Beach Friends are creating YouTube videos of their adult learning sessions. She discovered a wealth of video resources on a range of earthcare topics. A few representative samples: Backyard Beekeeping 1 & 2 Prisons and…

Letting Your Life Speak: Quaker Earthcare Begins at Home!

Anthony Manousos and Jill Shook In 2014 we decided to adopt some major new green initiatives in our home that would inspire our friends and neighbors to do likewise. In doing so, we followed the injunction of George Fox: Be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations wherever…

Praise Be!

By Rachel Findley and Shelley Tanenbaum In this Encyclical, I would like to enter into dialogue with all people about our common home. [3] 1 Laudato Si’, the letter Pope Francis wrote to us all, surprises us with its overarching emphasis on how “everything is connected,” including justice in human societies,…

Rising to the Challenge: The Transition Movement and People of Faith

Transitioning Times: An Interview with Ruah Swennerfelt Ruah Swennerfelt, QEW’s former General Secretary, has just published a new book with Quaker Institute for the Future, entitled, Rising to the Challenge: The Transition Movement and People of Faith (QIF Focus Books, 2016). As part of the research for her…

What Is Your Elevator Pitch?

Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW General Secretary Suppose that you are sitting next to your second cousin at a family function or you bump into your neighbor from down the street in a coffee line, and they ask, “What’s up?” How do you convey (in two minutes or less!) all…

Many Thanks to Long-Time Supporters!

Some of you have been supporting Quaker Earthcare Witness for many, many years—possibly starting when we were called Friends Committee on Unity with Nature (FCUN). I marvel when I receive a donation to QEW and see a long history of support, both in financial donations…

QEW Spring 2015 Steering Committee Meeting

Where: Ann Arbor Friends Meeting 1420 Hill Street Ann Arbor, MI 48104 www.annarborfriends.org When: Thursday, April 23, 2015 1:00 pm to Sunday, April 26, 2015 1:00 pm Registration is now open for our April 23-26, 2015 Steering Committee sessions in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Courage for Creation

By Minga Claggett-Borne The Bolder and Deeper Action Group formed at Friends Meeting at Cambridge partly to discern strategic action and partly to act as an affinity group as more Friends were considering breaking the law, so as to follow God’s law. BDAG consists of 15…

IPBES: A Rosetta Stone for Nature’s Benefits to People

Mary Gilbert, QEW Representative to the UN The UN is like the city on a hill with its ideals gleaming in the sunlight. But up close, you can see that the city’s silhouette is defined by acres of canvas draped over the whole thing. If you lift the…

Young Friend Asks Quaker School to Take Climate Seriously

Young Friend Asks Quaker School to Take Climate Seriously On February 13 and 14, Friends in many parts of the world participated in Global Divestment Day. Creative actions took place in some 60 countries ranging from concerts, rallies, marches, artistic projects, teach-ins, and more. (For photos and videos,…

4 Asks: Recommendations for All Friends

4 Asks: Recommendations for All Friends By Sophie Quest and Paula Kline If you’ve been fortunate enough to attend Pendle Hill in Pennsylvania, you’ll remember all of the amazing trees planted there over many years. Caring for these acres as people studied Quaker testimony together was a strong…

Fasting for the Climate: Two Reflections

Jim Kessler & Judy Lumb In November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines, killing more than 6,000 people and destroying homes and livelihoods all across the country. Climate commissioner Yeb Saño was at the UN climate talks in Warsaw when the typhoon struck, and his own family was…

Congratulations and Many Thanks for Direct Action

In March, PNC bank announced that they will limit their funding for mountain-top removal coal mining. This is a particularly egregious form of coal mining—laying waste to large areas and contaminating local water supplies. Earth Quaker Action Team (eqat.org), Rainforest Action Network (Ran.org), and the Ohio Valley Environmental…

Letters to Share, March-April 2015

Dear Editor, Carbon sequestration with regenerative organic agriculture (including well-managed grassing of grass-fed ruminants) could sequester all of the excess carbon dioxide now in the air. Soil not oil, Cook Organic, not the Planet. This can be done at low-tech levels worldwide by the two billion…

In Sight of Sustainable Hope

By Ruah Swennerfelt Can we have hope in the face of the human-caused climate disruption that is threatening the very home where we live? Although many now believe that the trajectory of increasingly chaotic climate isn’t likely to be stopped through any likely combination of technological solutions or political programs,…

A Good Way to Start the Year

Shelley Tanenbaum, General Secretary Amazingly, there is quite a bit of good news to start the year, among all the doom and gloom (not that these aren’t also part of our reality). Here are a few things that are making me hopeful and giving me ideas for how…

Review: Symphony of the Soil

Review: Symphony of the Soil Reviewed by Adrian Ayres Fisher 2015 is the UN Year of the Soils. Anyone who would like to understand why living soil is so vitally important would do well to watch “Symphony of the Soil,” directed by Deborah Koons Garcia. This beautiful, poetic…

Family’s Plan for Cultivating Soil, Skills, and Spirit

One beautiful morning last summer, my granddaughter Ruby and I stood side-by-side in the garden, picking first green beans and then blueberries. She had her favorite blue basket and I’d grabbed a colander, and as we picked, we talked about vegetables and things like soil, butterflies, and frogs. Suddenly she…

Q&A with Douglas Gwyn

Doug Gwyn, the author of A Sustainable Life: Quaker Faith and Practice in the Renewal of Creation, generously agreed to be interviewed for this issue of BeFriending Creation. Thanks, Doug! 1. You explain how your thought and interests developed through several books, always including the thread of your concern…

Review: A Sustainable Life: Quaker Faith and Practice in the Renewal of Creation

Reviewed by Katherine Murray In 2014, we saw many hopeful and encouraging signs that the world is beginning to “get it” about climate change. We also saw heartbreaking events, species slipping closer toward extinction, major disruptive weather events, and the ever-pervasive challenges of power and money at work…

Review: Climate, Food, and Violence: Understanding the Connections, Exploring Responses

Review: Climate, Food, and Violence: Understanding the Connections, Exploring Responses Reviewed by Keith Helmuth The nexus of climate disruption and food insecurity leading to societal breakdown and violence is one of the most fraught scenarios of our time. This is not a new story. Both the 14th and…

Review: Quaker and Naturalist Too

Mary Gilbert There I was, at the age of almost 13, away at camp for the first time. This camp ran a 24-hour recruitment program for being born again and baptized in the lake. There was a lot of pressure, so that none of us would leave at…

Review: Coming Back to Life: The Updated Workbook to the Work that Reconnects

By Judy Lumb Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy and Molly Young Brown is expanded and updated from their book of the same name published in 1998 (New Society Publishers, 2014, Gabriola Island, BC). The Deep Ecology work of Joanna Macy, also called the “Work that Reconnects,” dates…

Quaker Earthcare Witness Mini-Grants

QEW has grants available for Quaker projects that have the primary purpose of benefiting the environment and/or promoting environmental awareness and education among Friends and the larger spirit-led world. All ideas that support QEW values will be considered, but we especially encourage projects that directly address climate change and those…

Quaker Statement on Climate Change

QEW, FCNL, QUNO “It would go a long way to caution and direct people in their use of the world, that they were better studied and knowing in the Creation of it. For how could [they] find the confidence to abuse it, while they should see the great…

An Experience in Lima: The UN Climate Change Conference

Lindsey Fielder-Cook, QUNO Climate Change Representative This December, Jonathan Woolley, the Director of Quaker UN Office (QUNO) Geneva, and I travelled to Lima to attend the latest round of international negotiations held under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These talks are working toward December 2015, when negotiators…

Un Testimonio en el Asunto de la Población

Este articulo forma parte de una serie que se llama “Folletos para compartir”. Esperamos que se le pueda compartir con su comunidad y que sea útil para su discernimiento propio. Desgargar el PDF Pedir…

Climate Change and Racial Justice

By Shelley Tanenbaum, General Secretary I experienced a great shot of inspiration and hope from the September People’s Climate March in New York —not just from the sheer size of the turnout (400,000!), but also from the diversity of the organizers and the participants. Marchers were like the city of…

For Peace on Earth and Unity with Creation: Recommendations for All Friends

From the QEW Sustainability: Faith and Action Working Group. Recognizing the urgency of reducing our carbon footprint and living sustainably on the earth, QEW’s Sustainability: Faith and Action working group will be reaching out to all monthly and yearly meetings this year with resources and encouragement to take…

Dreaming of a Green Christmas

By Katherine Murray Many of us look forward to the holidays as a time of family togetherness and much-loved traditions. In addition to the deep spiritual significance, we enjoy cookies, eggnog, caroling—what’s not to love? But the holidays are also often a time when we may throw caution…

Can We Get Off Carbon?

By William Beale Several years ago, my wife and I decided that it was time to act on the ever-rising threat of climate change. Climate scientists had repeatedly warned us that we must stop putting carbon into the atmosphere or face the high likelihood of a near-term global…

COP 20: Preparing for the Road to Paris

COP 20 opened on December 1 and will continue until December 12, 2014 as organizations, individuals, government representatives, and participants from UN bodies and agencies gather in Lima, Peru, to work toward developing a global agreement to help pave the way for success at the COP21 world summit…

Reflections on the People’s Climate March: Prelude to the Mother of All Movements?

Reflections on the People’s Climate March: Prelude to the Mother of All Movements? by Bob McGahey Geeta and I joined the amazing People’s Climate March in New York in September 2014. We marched with Quakers amongst the faith communities, a cohort with a pre-march estimate of 10,000, rivaling…

Considering the Consequences of Unchecked Population Growth

Considering the Consequences of Unchecked Population Growth By Roger Plenty I am a Quaker living in Stroud, UK, and I have been a Friend for about 50 years. My interest in population started at a precise point in 1958. During an economics course, the lecturer told us about…

Letters to Share, Nov-Dec 2014

Dear Editor, I appreciated the recent article about indigenous peoples. This is an area where environmental justice and social justice meet, as these are the cultures who have a better sense of how to live in harmony with the land. I want to draw…

Eco-Witness Roots and Shoots, Seeds and Trees

Shelley Tanenbaum Greetings, Friends! We hope as 2014 draws to a close you are feeling a sense of gratitude and hopefulness about the changes we’re seeing—and making—in the world around us. Quaker Earthcare Witness coordinates a network of Quakers working on Earthcare, in part by sharing our stories…

You Can’t Have Your Kay(a)k and (H)eat it, Too!

Shelley Tanenbaum, General Secretary Alaska Friends have a deep connection to their land, as I learned on a recent visit when I facilitated a daylong workshop on earthcare, climate change, and witness in the world. The title of this article was the theme for their annual gathering. For…

A Report from UNFCCC Negotiations

A Report from UNFCCC Negotiations Lindsey Fielder Cook. QUNO Representative On June 4-15, 2014, international climate change negotiations were held in Bonn, Germany under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). These “inter-sessional” negotiations were preparation for the annual UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP). The next…

Four Snapshots from the March

Mary Gilbert Snapshot 1: Patti Muldoon and I are kneeling on the floor working on a blue cloth rectangle, painting in the letters on the banner we designed: “QUAKER WITNESS.” It should be useful for many events, not just the People’s Climate March. The paint is…

Melting the Ice in Our Hearts

Shelley Tanenbaum The ice is melting in the north. The only way to change our ways is to melt the ice in our hearts. This is a slightly paraphrased statement from Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, an indigenous leader from Greenland, one of the many inspiring speakers at the…

Letters to Share

Dear Friends, A carbon tax—widely thought to be the most rational and effective means to reduce fossil fuel and other carbon usage—is not on our government’s current agenda. We can, however, voluntarily tax ourselves and devote the taxes we raise to organizations or projects working to…

When Does a march become a March?

Roy Taylor, QEW Clerk When does a march become a March? Was it six months ago, when the idea for the People’s Climate March was hatched and the first hundred groups coalesced to bring it forward to the world? That was when QEW got on board as a sponsoring organization.

What’s Up With QEW – Mid-Year Report

By Shelley Tanenbaum. General Secretary Our world is heating up, quite literally—and QEW is ramping up our activities and enlarging our network to address this challenge. More than ever, our network of Friends carrying concerns for Earthcare is needed to share information and stories, provide support, encourage spiritual…

The Concerns of Global Indigenous Peoples Today By Mary Gilbert, QEW Representative to the UN The bottom line for the indigenous peoples of the world is their sovereignty and the recognition of that sovereignty. Despite, as one man put it, “choosing or being forced to live” within the borders of…

You’re Invited! Join Us at the QEW Annual Gathering

We hope you’ll consider joining us this fall and help form the goals and projects that are ahead for QEW. What do you feel are the key issues for us to be engaged in, and how can we best witness in the world during 2015 and beyond? We…

Greetings from Friendly Mystics

Greetings from Friendly Mystics Greetings to Friends everywhere from the participants in “Naming Our Spiritual Condition: The Second Annual Gathering of Friendly Mystics,” organized by What Canst Thou Say (WCTS) which is a Quaker journal, a meeting for worship in print. During our first annual gathering…

Kicking Over the Traces and Restoring Connections

By Ruth Small While reading The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture, Daphne Miller, M.D. began underlining more and more passages from a chapter titled, “The Body and the Earth,” riddling its pages with a surfeit of pencil marks and notations (Miller, xii). With Miller’s medical training…

Join the People’s March for Climate Change!

Join the People’s March for Climate Change! Come join us September 21, 2014 as we participate in what is being billed as the largest climate rally ever. It is time to stand up and be counted. Quaker Earthcare Witness is one of the many sponsors of this event.

Grab a Shovel, Find Some Dirt, & Join the Good Food Revolution

By Justin Mog, Louisville Friends Meeting Like my fellow Kentuckian, Wendell Berry, and my fellow Ohio native, Gene Logsdon, I consider myself a bit of a contrary farmer. I reject the notion that agriculture can occur only in the wide-open countryside on farms stretching for hundreds of acres.

A Meditation on Seed and Seedtime

By Tom Small Virtually all of us, expelled from the garden that was our heritage and birthright, seek to recover, somehow, a seed that will germinate and flower, nourish and sustain us. In that seed is the genesis of contemplative action, its harbinger and its sign. Scott Chaskey, like Wendell…

Young Adult Friends Conference on Community, June 6-11, 2014

There are still five remaining spots in the Continuing Revolution 2014 YAF Conference at Pendle Hill this June 6-11. QEW’s support for this conference has taken many invaluable forms thus far: financial support, programmatic expertise, workshop/interest group lead­ership, elder accompaniment, and participant recruit­ment. Today we need your help with finding…

Brief Update from Downunder

 By Robert Howell THE AUSTRALIAN RELIGIOUS RESPONSE to Cli­mate Change was established in 2008 (http://www. arrcc.org.au/). It is an initiative focused on multifaith environmental action, linking with like-minded groups such as 350.org, Go Fossil Free Australia, the Austra­lian Student Environmental Network, The Vital Few, and Market Forces. The latter two…

Out of the Silos, Into the Mix

By Mary Gilbert, QEW Representative to the UN TIMETABLE FOR THE SDGS In March the Open Working Group (OWG) on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) completed 12 months of stock-taking in 37 areas of human interac­tion with our natural environment. As of April, the OWG was left with only 20 days…

Epiphany

By Angela Manno Out of the depths I cry unto you, Oh Presence, Maker of this perfect world Out of this silence but for my own breath Out of the darkness and weightlessness The black infinite night Encrusted with countless stars, cool, distant, white. I turn…

Earth Literacy?

Brad Stocker, Ed. D. WHEN I SAY THAT I FACILITATE Earth Literacy—as I recently did at the Palm Beach Friends Meeting—the question often comes: What is Earth Literacy? In this article, I’d like to introduce QEW friends and readers to the concept and invite you to engage the question. Let’s…

Letters to Share, May – June 2014

“What canst thou say” about spirit-led efforts on behalf of Earth, about your own stirrings toward care for the planet, in relation to the vision and thoughtful action of Quaker Earthcare Witness as a whole? We’d like to hear from you. Send your letters to Katherine at katherine@quakerearthcare. org, and share…

FCNL & the Moral Call to Conscience on Climate

by Emily Wirzba, FCNL I OFTEN BECOME OVERWHELMED knowing that climate disruption is causing global temperatures to increase, sea levels to rise, and ecosystems to be irreversibly damaged. At times I become so frustrated at the seeming inability of the U.S. to take meaning­ful action, despite the immense scale of…

Peaceful, Joyful, Random Thoughts During a Blizzard

By Jim Kessler Notes of Gratitude On Synthetic Biology See You in Colorado This Summer Peaceful, Joyful, Random Thoughts During a Blizzard Catching Up with Barbara Williamson Inviting Your Support Quaker Institute for the Future…

April Connections and May Mini-Grants

By Shelley Tanenbaum, General Secretary As a network of Friends who are carrying a concern for Earthcare, we meet twice a year to set policy, reconnect with each other, share stories of our work, and help each other strengthen our spiritual core. We do this through Meeting for…

A View of the UN Open Working Group

By Patricia Chernoff, QEW Representative to the UN At the beginning of each day’s meetings of Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals, several keynote speakers make an effort to educate the diplomats from various countries on the theme of the day. On the day I am reporting,…

Update on the Sustainable Development Goals

By Mary Gilbert, QEW Representative to the UN On February 5, 2014, the UN Open Working Group (OWG), assembled to form the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), finished taking stock of 37 vast and interconnected world topics such as water, agriculture, oceans, forests, human rights, and 32 more. Between…

An Invitation to Right Sharing

By Lynne Sootheran, Right Sharing of World Resources Greetings, Friends. My purpose here is to introduce members of Quaker Earthcare Witness and others interested in healing the Earth to Donor-Designated Projects available through Right Sharing of World Resources (RSWR). Since 1967, RSWR, a Quaker organization, has worked…

Massachusetts Quakers Host Carbon Tax Forum

By Maureen Lanan and Mary Gilbert As Friends deeply concerned about climate disruption and seeking ways to reduce the fossil fuel pollution spewing into the air, the Cambridge Quaker Earthcare Witness committee of Friends Meeting at Cambridge (FMC) was excited to learn that a carbon tax bill has…

Apply for a QEW 2014 Mini-Grant!

Have you been thinking about doing an Earthcare project this spring but don’t know where to start? Take advantage of a funding opportunity QEW offers through QEW Mini-Grants. Put together a group of like-minded Friends and fill out our application, and your project could be awarded up…

Letters to Share March-April 2014

Dear BeFriending Creation, Thank you so very much for publishing both of our articles in the latest edition (BFC, January-February 2014)…it was quite exciting to see us in print like that. We meant to include our Meeting affiliation—Mohawk Valley MM, New York Yearly Meeting—and share that…

Seeking Consistency in Word and Deed

Roy Taylor, QEW Clerk Are we doing a good job at doing what we say we are supposed to be doing? Years ago we developed a variety of ways to describe ourselves. The FCUN working group is now reviewing the words we use to see if…

Envisioning 2014

By Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW General Secretary What is in store for QEW in the coming year? As I begin my new job as your General Secretary, I’ve been thinking about new directions, areas that need shoring up and existing strong programs that we want to maintain and grow.

The Negotiation Landscape: Countries

By Mary Gilbert, QEW Representative to the UN Years ago at a morning briefing for NGOs, a naïve newcomer asked, “Why don’t you just take the UN position?” Experienced people stared. The week before, the Secretary General had made a sensible statement and she wondered why we didn’t…

2014 QEW Mini-Grant Applications Now Being Accepted

Do you have a great idea for an Earthcare project you want to do with your Monthly Meeting or other Friends group? Submit an application for a QEW Mini-Grant! We match funding up to $350 for projects that meet our application criteria. We welcome your project…

Letters to Share

submitted by QEW Readers “What canst thou say” about spirit-led efforts on behalf of Earth, about your own stirrings toward care for the planet, in relation to the vision and thoughtful action of Quaker Earthcare Witness as a whole? We’d like to hear from you. Send your letters…

Eco-Resources from Friends

QEW Friends We like to begin each new year with an offering of Earth-friendly resources—in print, video, and web content—shared by QEW members and supporters. This year we have a good mix of inspiring and informative sources to recommend. Thanks to all who participated!   THE PERMACULTURE HANDBOOK:…

Reporting from the WCC in Busan

By Anne Mitchell In late October, Anne Mitchell travelled to participate in the World Council of Churches (WCC) 10th International Assembly in Busan, Republic of Korea. Here is a brief summary of her trip. You can read Anne’s full report, including recommendations relevant for QEW specifically, on our…

A View from COP 19

By Lindsey Fielder Cook, QUNO Climate Change Representative In November, more than 8,000 people gathered in Warsaw to attend the UN Conference on Climate Change. The conference was known as COP 19, including the 19th Conference of Parties and the 9th Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol…