Author: Quaker Earthcare

  • Bathing in wood air

    Photo by Kathy Barnhart Bathing in wood air by Pamela Haines We all know that a walk in the woods refreshes– great trees, bird calls and breezes pungent scents of earth and pine. Yet our senses fail to name the greater forces here at work. Mushroom threads—mycelia—…

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  • Simplicity: A Call to Return to Unity and Harmony With Earth and Its Inhabitants

    Simplicity: A Call to Return to Unity and Harmony With Earth and Its Inhabitants By SJM and Lee Hall Climate Action Committee, Radnor Quaker Meeting It’s often said that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. There is an inherent simplicity and ease in smiling. To love, likewise,…

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  • A Fight for the Heart of the Everglades: The EAA Reservoir and Big Sugar

    A Fight for the Heart of the Everglades: The EAA Reservoir and Big Sugar by Scott Virgin Growing up amidst the ecosystems of South Florida is a blessing. Exploring mangrove channels, spearfishing coral reefs, climbing coastal islands, hammocks, and swamps, and observing the vast wildlife connects the young mind…

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  • The Un-Quaker Practices of TIAA

    The Un-Quaker Practices of TIAA by Laura Hulbert Imagine you smell bleach when you take your class out to the school yard. It’s not a faint smell. The tag-players are short of breath. The kids on the monkey bars are coughing and sneezing, and one girl is dry…

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  • Freeing Ourselves From Possessions

    Image by Kathy Barnhart Freeing Ourselves From Possessions By Tom Small If you want to make small changes, change the way you do things. If you want to make major changes, change the way you see things.  –Gabe Brown, quoting Don Campbell Burley Coulter is, to…

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  • Victory for the Youth-Led Constitutional Climate Case Navahine F. v. Hawaii Department of Transportation!

    Last month, Hawaiʻi officials announced a groundbreaking legal settlement to fully decarbonize Hawaiʻi’s transportation system by 2045. Thirteen youths from across Hawaiʻi brought the case in June 2022, arguing that their state’s transportation policies and practices contribute significantly to climate change, thus violating their constitutional rights to a clean…

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  • Deepening Community: Eco-Book Group Returns This Fall!

    This past spring, Quaker Earthcare Witness hosted a vibrant and deeply engaging book group focused on Jennie Ratcliffe’s transformative book, Nothing Lowly in the Universe. From February through May 2024, participants gathered every other Monday to delve into the intricate weave of ecological, spiritual, and moral issues Ratcliffe…

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  • QEW on the Road

    By Nora Lisette Cooke In June 2022, I was in a house in Calvisson, France, house sitting for local Friends who lived just down the road from the Maison Quaker, where my parents were the amis-résidents (Friends in Residence). I had been on the Zoom call for close…

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  • Upholding Truth, Democracy, and Environmental Justice

    “Loving your enemy is manifest in putting your arms not around the person but around the social situation, to take power from those who misuse it— at which point they can become human, too.” – Bayard Rustin Quaker Call to Action We see that truth, democracy, equality,…

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  • Pathways to Peace: Linking Disarmament and Climate Action

    by Molly McGinty The ongoing climate crisis and escalating threat of nuclear war pose the most acute threats to human and planetary survival. These twin existential threats to life are closely linked and mutually reinforcing, each requiring urgent action. In 2023, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) once…

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  • Fund Grassroots Earthcare Projects: QEW Mini-Grants

    0 Our Goal 0 Donors So Far 0 Amount Raised So Far Double Your Donation! Thanks to the deep generosity from a…

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  • Mini-Grants: Cloud Forest Regeneration Project

    Support our Mini-Grant Program Quaker Earthcare Witness offers grants each year to diverse Friends meetings, groups, churches, and organizations to support their community’s vision of caring for the Earth and each other through our Mini-Grants Program. Please help us continue this work. Right now, the first $4,000 in donations will…

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  • Our Own Worst Enemies: An Apostolic Exhortation on the Climate Crisis

    by Shelley Tanenbaum In 2015, the Pope’s message to the world, Laudato Si, amazed many of us, myself included, with his blunt comments about people, economics, and climate change. (QuakerEarthcare.org/Laudato-Si) He called for a radical restructuring of how we relate to each other and to the more-than-human world. This…

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  • See How They Love One Another

    Referring to the Romans’ view of early Christians, Tertullian wrote, “It is mainly the deeds of a love so noble that lead many to put a brand upon us. See how they love one another, they say.” This idea that our QEW community is rooted in addressing climate change through…

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  • Humans and Nature – The Yellowstone Model

    by Peter Husby To many people, the concept of “natural” is equivalent to a lack of human presence or measurable human influence. For example, the late ecologist E.O. Wilson believed that the only way to save our planet was to remove humans from half of the earth’s land surface! (Who…

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  • Community Choice Aggregation: Pennsylvania Boroughs are Ready for 100%

    Join a webinar sponsored by Philadelphia Yearly Meeting’s Environmental Justice Collaborative on Community Choice Aggregation on January 18th, 7pm Eastern. Presenters from the CCA for PA team will provide an overview of CCA, introduce participants to local leaders from the five boroughs that have already signed an MOU, and explain…

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  • Attention to True Climate Stewardship: Worship at Vanguard

    by Lina Blount On November 15th, I sat in a wooden folding chair on a grassy corner outside the Pennsylvania headquarters of the investment company Vanguard. I was surrounded by dozens of others, all of us in worshipful, contemplative silence. We had taken Quaker meeting for worship out of our…

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  • To Kneel and Kiss the Ground

    by Keith Runyan, Incoming General Secretary at Quaker Earthcare Witness In the fall of 2019, just after founding my podcast, A Future on Waxen Wings, I was invited to be a keynote panelist for the College Park Quarterly Meeting with Mica Estrada,…

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  • No Faith in Fossil Fuels

    by Miche McCall On the second day of Rosh Hashana, the faith hub at the March to End Fossil Fuels was full of celebrations of Life on Earth. Last September, 75,000 people poured into the streets of New York City to call for our leaders to protect our communities and…

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  • Earth Awareness, Earth Activism

      This is an excerpt from QEW’s Earthcare for Friends: A Study Guide for Individuals and Faith Communities. You can find this curriculum, as well as our Earthcare for children curriculum for your First Day or Sunday School at QuakerEarthcare.org/Resources. Written by Bill Cahalan and Ruah Swennerfelt…

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  • Young Friends for a Fossil-Free Future

    All photos by Sebastian DiMino With the local temperatures soaring to 96 degrees during the Friends General Conference Gathering and the global average temperatures breaking records, Earth Quaker Action Team (EQAT) gathered an intergenerational group of Friends from across the country in an action against JP Morgan Chase and Vanguard.

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  • Cold-Climate Horticulture and a Freed Bee

    Photo by Kathy Barnhart A Year as a Quaker Voluntary Service Fellow By Elsa Hoover I just finished as a Quaker Voluntary Service Fellow in Minneapolis Through QVS, I worked at the Minnesota State Horticultural Society, aka “The Hort”. To say I did not know what I was getting…

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  • The 2023 Farm Bill: Advocate for a Just and Faithful Bill

    Every five years, Congress takes up a massive piece of legislation called the Farm Bill. Right now, the 2023 Farm Bill has an expected budget of $1.5 trillion, which determines how food is grown, what food is grown, and who can afford it. The bill wields immense power in shaping…

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  • A Living Economy for a Livable Earth

    By Pamela Haines Most of us are intimidated by economics, made to feel too ignorant to understand, question, or challenge its system. But, just as we do with peace, we can step boldly into that arena with our faith and values intact, daring to imagine a living economy for a…

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  • The Sacred Depths of Nature

    Both Ancient and Modern Traditions Are Held Together by Mary Coelho We are invited to continually seek to discern the ways in which we are alienated, often without conscious awareness, from the sacred nature of the natural world. Considering two unexpected sources helps us become more aware of our…

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  • Front Cover of Smarter Planet or Wiser Earth?

    Smarter Planet or Wiser Earth?

    New Quaker Institute for the Future (QIF) Book on Human Ecology and Artificial Intelligence Current breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI) need to be evaluated holistically as part of serious, systematic threats to our human ecology. These threats are intimately related to the economic, political, military, technological, and ethical flaws…

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