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Spiritual Ecology: My Journey and Our Journey

A Talk by Shelley Tanenbaum. I am deeply grateful to the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting’s (SAYMA) planning committee for bringing me here – and for asking me to talk about eco-spirituality and my personal journey. I’ve been asked to talk about what it has meant to me to connect on…

Permaculture: The Art of Designing Beneficial Relationships

By Carol Barta. Permaculture is said to be “the art of designing beneficial relationships.” Permaculture is a design science rooted in the observation of natural systems, the wisdom of traditional farming methods, and systems thinking. It uses both ancient wisdom and modern scientific and technical knowledge to create sustainable habitats…

Fracking 101 Glossary

Helpful Terms to Better Understand Fracking Clean Water Act of 1972 – national legislation which established the basic structure for regulating discharges of pollutants into the waters of the United States and regulating quality standards for surface waters. (www.epa.gov) Energy Policy Act of 2005 (Halliburton Loophole) – legislation…

The Myth of a Century of Natural Gas in the U.S.

In arguing against fracking, it is important to debunk the myth that the U.S. has enough natural gas reserves to fulfill our need for the next 100 years. It is equally necessary to discuss the plan by gas companies to make the export of natural gas the next big…

Quaker PopOffsets

Are you concerned about your “carbon footprint”? QEW’s Population Working Group can help. QEW’s Population Working Group offers an innovative program to help confront climate change and other environmental problems. It is based on a similar program in England – “PopOffsets” – an offshoot of the British organization Population Matters.

What I’m Learning From the Pandemic

By Shelley Tanenbaum. EVERY YEAR WE Friends ask ourselves, “How has truth fared for Thee?” It is a way of refreshing ourselves, of self-evaluating personally and in our Meetings. It gives us an opportunity to change course and to respond to emerging leadings. What if we see the coronavirus pandemic…

United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent

United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent The United Nations (UN) commemorates international decades to focus world attention on a specific topic, and then mobilize resources to respond. In December 2013, the U.N. General Assembly proclaimed the decade of 2015 through 2024 to be the International Decade…

Black and white photo of two hands coming together

Truth Is Something That Happens

by Louis Cox. DO YOU SWEAR that the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you, God?… Early Quakers were known for their refusal to take such oaths in a court of law (often at the…

Why a Specifically Quaker Testimony on the Environment?

By William Beale. SINCE THERE ARE MANY excellent organizations actively working to improve our relation to the planet, is there any need or place for a specifically Quaker organization to address the same concerns? The fundamental environmental questions we face are essentially religious: What is our place in the…

A Shared Quaker Statement: Facing the Challenge of Climate Change

[Last update: June 2017] “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…

Blue book cover with pink and green wheel

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 for the Earth. Was…

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

by Quaker Earthcare Witness. 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…

A frosty Sierra morning, about 10,000' elevation. Fall has arrived in the mountains,with its sweet morning light.

Important Reasons to Use Native Plants

Important Facts. Native plants are adapted to the local area and its climate. Unfortunately, many of our beautiful non-native garden flowers provide little or no food for honeybees, native pollinators, songbirds, and other wildlife. Non-native plants have the potential to become invasive species – weeds that spread rapidly and often crowd…

Colors of Fall ~ Along McGee Creek in the Eastern Sierras.

The Spiritual Basis of Earthcare

QEW’s PROGRAMS and publications stem from a conviction and consciousness that the global crisis of ecological sustainability is at root a spiritual crisis. Even as individuals in our network or our steering committee support political and social action in numerous areas, such as globalization, population, genetic engineering, and toxic pollution,…

Ecological Principles of Permaculture

Three important ecological principles of permaculture are: The role that each organism plays, the niche it occupies; Understanding succession in natural ecosystems and using it to heal the soil and bring forth both annual and perennial crops; and including as much diversity in the garden space as possible, both of…

Black Butterfly: Interview with Artist Damita Hicks

Damita Hicks is a Bahai artist living in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Her paintings center on Mama A’free’ca, Nature, and racial unity. Kirsten Bohl of Durham (NC) Friends Meeting speaks with Damita here. How did you get started with painting? I’ve been painting almost all my life. In terms of…

In the School of the Shipwreck

by Noah Merrill. Editor’s Note: Noah wrote this piece in spring 2020 and his reflections speak to us still. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. —José Ortega y Gasset JUST OFF THE shore…

Crosswalk in long exposure in Chile, Santiago

Caring About Population

By Richard Grossman. Most Friends are careful stewards of our environment. Indeed, more than half of Yearly Meetings have added “Stewardship” (or the equivalent) to their short list of Testimonies. However, sometimes we don’t make the connection between our stewardship of Earth and human population. OK, I admit it: the…

Photo by Kathy Barnhart of rippling water

A Prayer for the New Year

By Pamela Haines As we head toward a new year, let us: Take in the environment around us with relaxed awareness—appreciating beauty and opportunity, noticing threats, staying grounded in the midst of both; Cultivate gratitude, for spaces that have opened in our society, for all the forces of goodness around…

Durham Friends Meeting Install Solar Panel

Durham Friends Install Solar Panels

By Dale Evarts. IN AUGUST 2019, following a spiritual leading to live in harmony with Creation by harnessing the energy of the sun to power our meetinghouse, Durham Friends Meeting (DFM), a member of the North Carolina Yearly Meeting Conservative, began generating electricity from solar panels installed that summer. After…

The CZU Lightning Complex fire was stopped here, along the Fawn trail at Ben Lomond Quaker Center. Photo: Bob Fisher.

Redwood Renewal

By Shelley Tanenbaum. THE STORY OF redwood renewal through fire gives me hope in a world gone mad with doom and gloom. What can we learn from one of nature’s most elegant ecological systems that evolved to not just cope with adversity, but to turn adversity into rebirth? The few…

Yellow iguana on rocks in front of the turquoise ocean

Galápagos: Lessons from Finches, Marine Iguanas, and Islands

Now, as we careen into the Anthropocene era, the human species has seemingly become the prime mover of ever-accelerating change; but we are nonetheless subject to it. Subject to inexorable processes of evolution. “In this changing world everything is subject to change,” says the Isha Upanishad. The…

Friends Meeting at Cambridge

Divestment Minute from Friends Meeting at Cambridge Following is the divestiture minute the Friends Meeting at Cambridge passed in early October. The minute is to Friends Fiduciary Corporation in Philadelphia where we have meeting funds; at the time of the writing of this minute, FFC had more than 6 percent…

Canadian Yearly Meeting

Minute on Harmony with Nature (approved August 2001) Canadian Yearly Meeting website: http://quaker.ca/ Friends believe we are all manifestations of the Creator, the Divine Spirit, God. As our knowledge has grown, we have come to realize that indeed all life forms are exquisitely interrelated and independent. We envision a Religious…

Minneapolis Friends Meeting

Minute on Voluntary Carbon Tax Peace and Social Concerns Committee statement regarding the voluntary carbon tax and the goals of peace, racial justice, and economic justice: Quakers have taken the lead in saying that the US and other nations need a mandatory carbon tax, something to encourage people to buy…

Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting

Sustainability Minute (approved August 2, 2002) Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting website: http://ovym.quaker.org/ We of Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends believe that the web of life, and each being within it, are expressions of the Spirit. We further believe that all our actions resonate throughout the…

Netherlands Yearly Meeting

Sustainable Development as a Quaker Testimony? A Challenge to All Friends (approved 1997) In 1988 Netherlands Yearly Meeting agreed on a minute in which our representative to the 1988 Triennial was asked to request the Triennial in Japan: as a matter of urgency, that the theme of the ecumenical Concilliar Process—Justice,…

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

Minute on Relationship to God's Creation (approved at the January 1998 Session of Interim Meeting) Philadelphia Yearly Meeting website: http://www.pym.org/ The world is God’s creation. How we treat the earth and all its creatures is basic to our relationship with God, and of fundamental religious concern to the Society…

New England Yearly Meeting

Minute on Connection with All Creation (approved 1991) New England Yearly Meeting website: http://www.neym.org/ Cultivating a deeper awareness of our connections with all of Creation enables us to live more Spirit-filled lives. Such awareness brings us great joy, reminds us of God’s presence in everything around us, leads us to…

Baltimore Yearly Meeting

Minute on Global Warming Approved August 2000 Baltimore Yearly Meeting website: http://www.bym-rsf.org/ Protecting God’s Earth and its fullness of life is of fundamental religious concern to the Society of Friends. The links between human activity, the dramatic rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, and the rise of average global temperature…

Community Monthly Meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio

Sustainability Minute (Approved May 14, 2000) We of Community Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends believe that the web of life, and each being within it, are expressions of the Spirit. We further believe that all our actions resonate throughout the symphony of Creation, flowing through space and…

IIlinois Yearly Meeting

Minute on the Condition of Human Population and the Earth (approved August 2, 1997) Illinois Yearly Meeting website: http://www.ilym.org/ Today, we are confronted with interacting problems unique in their magnitude. Among the major problems are increasing numbers of people, excessive use of resources, environmental degradation, loss of biodiversity, and the…

Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting — Climate Change

Minute Regarding Global Climate Change (approved 2001) SAYMA Friends: http://sayma.org/top/ SAYMA Friends recognize that unprecedented rate of change in our global climate is causing rising global temperature, diminishing polar ice, changing local weather patterns, and increasing frequency of severe storms. We also recognize that human activity, largely the combustion of…

Acadia, Maine, Friends Meeting

Minute on Connection with God's Creation (Approved January 18, 1998) “For me, God is creative, responsive love, binding together all that exists in the universe, manifest to us in the experiences which can bind us, all parts of creation, together in a blessed community.” Bruce Birchard, “This is my Quaker…

Patuxent, Maryland, Friends Meeting

Minute on Ecological Sustainability (approved June 6, 1999) Patuxent Friends believe that ecological sustainability should be added to our existing Quaker testimonies—for the following reasons: The concept of ecological sustainability has a spiritual depth. It includes a resolve to live in harmony with biological and physical systems. It also includes…

Princeton Monthly Meeting

Minute on Sustainability (Approved October 13, 1996) We, as Friends, are disturbed by the increasingly numerous, and increasingly severe, environmental problems besetting our world. We deplore environmental degradation as well as attempts by groups and individuals to eliminate such protections of the environment as are already in place. As Friends,…

Reading Monthly Meeting

Minute on Sustainability (Approved February 16, 1997) We recognize that all lives, and the earth and its resources that sustain us, are gifts from God. We reaffirm that our Testimonies, Concerns, and Queries as considered together can help us realize the stewardship needed to sustain our communities as part of…

Santa Barbara Friends Meeting

Friends Called to Consider World Population (Approved June 13, 2004) In the middle of the seventeenth century, when Quakerism was founded, there were over 600 million people on Earth; now there are more than six billion. The human population is growing at the rate of 3,000 every twenty minutes, while…

Stony Run and Homewood Friends Meeting

Minute in Support of the Diversity of Life (approved 2001) The universal processes that establish and maintain the forms we find in nature, including those forms we call “life,” are a manifestation of the Divine in which we are blessed to participate. In the manner of continuing revelation we are…

Swarthmore Friends Meeting

Minute on Living in Harmony with Nature (Approved February 9, 1997) The world is undergoing a number of ecological crises that threaten the survival of many living things, including humankind. Ozone depletion, climate change, the widespread presence of toxic substances in the earth’s air, water and soils are among the…

Roaring Camp, Big Trees and Pacific Railroad Station, north big trees Park Road, Felton, CA, USA

Wellsboro Monthly Meeting

(Approved December 8, 1997) The historic testimonies of the Society of Friends concerning simplicity, stewardship, equality and peace are widely recognized. Not so widely recognized are the interrelationships among these testimonies. Overpopulation and the misuse and overuse of resources are inextricably intertwined with poverty, injustice and illiteracy. These conditions are…

Annapolis Friends Meeting

A Minute on Climate Change Concerns and Policies “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it.” Psalm 24:1 The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) testimonies of Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Equality and Stewardship are our guides in dealing with the challenges of global warming and climate change.

Southeastern Yearly Meeting

Minute on Climate Change Southeastern Yearly Meeting approved a minute on climate change at our most recent Gathering, in April 2014. The minute is the result of a full year’s work. It was first read at our Gathering in 2013. Our Earthcare Committee asked each Monthly Meeting to season the…

Chena Ridge Friends, Fairbanks, Alaska

(Approved January 21, 1996) We applaud the efforts of Federal and State governments to address the current deficit problem. However, we fear that, in their haste to cut budgets, they have focused on programs critical to the well being of millions of Americans. Budget cuts in the areas of social…

Strawberry Creek Friends Meeting

Minute on Climate Change and Divestment from Fossil Fuels Climate change is a real and urgent threat to humanity’s current way of life. As Quakers, we see it as imperative that governments must take immediate action to curb climate change. When governments are unwilling to take swift action, then we…

Divestment FAQ

Isn’t it hypocritical to divest of investments in fossil fuel companies on one hand, but keep driving our gas powered cars on the other? Actually, this question goes right to the heart of why many of us have decided to take the step of divestment. First, the point should be…

QEW Statement to the U.S. State Department on UNDRIP

United States Review of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Comments from: Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) www.quakerearthcare.org QEW is an organization of individuals and of Yearly Meetings of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) across North America Directed to: the Department of State at: S/SR Global Intergovernmental Affairs, U.S.

Statement to ECOSOC on Science, Technology, and Innovation

Statement to the High Level Segment of ECOSOC on Science, Technology and Innovation and the Potential of Culture for Promoting Sustainable Development and Achieving the Millennium Development Goals Science, technology, and innovation are moving ahead rapidly without due caution. Unintended consequences are being ignored, as the world was recently reminded…

QEW Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery

In the days of European exploration and colonization, governments relied on what we now call the Doctrine of Discovery to extinguish all rights of indigenous peoples. The doctrine has not disappeared or been revoked. Instead, it has evolved into common property law, providing the underpinning of US and Canadian chains…

Statement on Unity with Diversity

Dear Friends, As both Friends and environmentalists, we on the Spiritual Nurturance Committee of Quaker Earthcare Witness hold a variety of personal views, beliefs and approaches based on the variety of our backgrounds, traditions and experiences. We see it as good for QEW to endeavor to…

Looking up at many trees with blue sky peeking through

QEW Participates in Revisions to FCNL Policy Statement

About every 10 years, Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) revises its full Policy Statement. This is the document that “forms the foundation and vision for all of our work,” according to the instructions FCNL gave to Quaker churches, meetings, and organizations participating in revising the 2003 Statement.

Trees in forest with light shining through

QEW Minute on Nuclear Power

Approved by the Steering Committee of Quaker Earthcare Witness in session, October 14, 2007, Burlington, Vermont. Quaker Earthcare Witness cannot support nuclear power as part of the solution to harmful climate change. As Friends, our peace testimony has long led us to witness against nuclear power because of its connection…

Comment Suggestions on Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for Keystone XL Pipeline

On March 1 of this year, the U.S. State Department released its draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) on the Keystone XL Pipeline, which is part of TransCanada’s application for a Presidential permit to build and operate the pipeline across the Canadian border into the U.S. A week later on…

NEYM 2016 Yearly Meeting Minute on Climate Change

New England Yearly Meeting Minute 2016-67 Friends at the New England Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions at Castleton, VT, August 6–11, 2016, have heard a Divine call to the witness of addressing climate change. We affirm the overwhelming scientific consensus that greenhouse gases released by human activity are causing…

A Shared Quaker Statement: Facing the Challenge of Climate Change

“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 Creator stare them in the…

Recommendations for all Friends

To Friends Everywhere: Quaker Earthcare Witness developed some challenges, which are recommendations for Friends’ Churches and Meetings throughout North America. We ask local Friends’ fellowships and Yearly Meetings to prayerfully examine these challenges and to explore ways to act upon part or all of them. These are suggested actions to…

Host a Film Festival on Energy Options

One excellent approach to sharing both the concern for our future and the tremendous potential for renewable energy is to host a film and discussion series. Below we have listed a number of options to consider. SHORT VIDEOS ON THE PROBLEM AND THE SOLUTION Palo Alto: http://www.go100percent.org/cms/index.php?id=25#c943…

Introduction to Permaculture

The word “Permaculture” comes from two-word combinations: permanent and agriculture and permanent and culture. It is a design system that could potentially revolutionize what we call civilization. Largely used in homesteading or home and community gardens, rather than in large agricultural acreages, permaculture includes perennial vegetables and fruits, both bush and tree. In regards to culture,…

Butterflies on flowers and grasses with water in background

Planning, Planting, and Managing Your Butterfly and Pollinator Garden

NATIVE PLANT SELECTION, LAYOUT GUIDELINES, AND MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES FOR BUTTERFLY AND NATIVE POLLINATOR GARDENS Step 1: Location. Choose an appropriate spot for your garden. Step 2a: Strategies to Create Positive Public Perception Before Planting Consider the public perception of your native garden planting before you begin. Discuss your native garden…

Choosing Native Plants for Pollinators in Your Area

As Sophie explained in her article, Shrinking or Transforming Your Lawn, it is important to use plants from your native area so that the ecosystem will flourish. The non-profit organization Pollinator Partnership promotes the health of pollinators through conservation, education, and research. You can use the tool on their website…

Ecological Principles of Permaculture

Three important ecological principles of permaculture are The role that each organism plays, the niche it occupies; Understanding succession in natural ecosystems and using it to heal the soil and bring forth both annual and perennial crops; Including as much diversity in the garden space as possible, both…

Important Reasons to Use Native Plants

Important Facts. Native plants are adapted to the local area and its climate. Unfortunately, many of our beautiful non-native garden flowers provide little or no food for honeybees, native pollinators, songbirds, and other wildlife. Non-native plants have the potential to become invasive species – weeds that spread rapidly and often…

Practical Permaculture Methods: Start Today!

Permaculture, as much as possible, is an imitation of nature. Nature does not like bare soil; it is quickly filled up. A permaculture garden, except for paths, is filled chock-full with growing life. Soil is alive and miraculous. Rocks and organic matter decompose with the help of microscopic animals and…

Planning a Permaculture Garden

Planning a permaculture garden is important; although much learning comes from experimenting with ideas. For instance, I tried planting potatoes in a “hugelkultur,” a pile of small sticks with a lot of compost over them (probably not enough in my case), and the yields were definitely smaller than planting them…

Birds, Plants, and Insects: What They Need

Today we are discovering new things every day about the relationships between plants and insects and humans. Chickadee babies eat thousands of caterpillars that their hard-working parents bring them. Around industrial farms, the insects have been killed with pesticides and there aren’t any caterpillars available. Even in our…

Shrinking or Transforming Your Lawn

Centuries ago, wealthy landowners in England, with lots of land and lots of sheep, pastured the sheep in front of their mansions and invented the present-day lawn. Eventually, more people adopted the practice of lawns, not with sheep, but with newly invented lawnmowers. Today, maintaining the lawns around our homes…

Friends’ History of Investing with Integrity

Friends groups have a long and proud tradition of ethical investing. As Friends, we have consistently sought congruity of our principles when we consider what types of investments we should hold. We understand that how we use our money and what we choose to own is always a moral choice.

Practicing Earth Activism

By Ruah Swennerfelt (Updated 2021 by Hayley Hathaway). To become more active on behalf of Earth, start by making yourself aware of the issues. Learn from sources in addition to the conventional news reports. Begin examining ways you can reduce your purchases, buy local, rather than transported, goods, walk or…

Earthcare, Energy, and the Right Use of Things

Visualizing the Better World That Is Possible by Louis Cox TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF. While casting about for ways to introduce this article about changing wasteful lifestyles, one of my favorite movies broke to the surface: A New Leaf (1971, **½) is about a middle-aged playboy…

Bobbi Block holding up Rockwool protest poster next to country road

A Toxic Factory Will Create a Toxic Future

By Bobbi Blok. Children deserve clean air, water, soil, and a safe healthy area where they can play and grow. But a factory that manufactures wool-like insulation from spun-melted rock in Ranson, Jefferson County, West Virginia, will make that impossible. Rockwool, a Danish company, is constructing a factory that will…

Sharing Love and Knowledge in the Time of COVID-19

An Interview with Beverly G. Ward. “IT’S LIKE PEELING an onion: layer after layer of pandemics and it all makes you cry,” shares Beverly Ward. She’s referencing the built-in injustice of her home state of Florida, where she works as Field Secretary for Earthcare for Southeastern Yearly Meeting (SEYM) and…

Cedar Green holds up greens as part of mutual aid project

Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Mutual Aid Experiment

By Keith Runyan and Rebekah Percy. WHEN the shelter-in-place order took effect throughout California earlier this year, a small group of Young Adult Friends from Pacific Yearly Meeting organized a mutual aid project with the goals of sharing resources and creating greater equity and self-sustainability within our communities during the…

The colorful diversity of plant species is preserved in the restored, Schulenberg Prairie, at the Morton Arboertum.

Plowing the  Prairie

By Pamela Haines Leaning into the plow— an enduring symbol of virtuous work Pioneers breaking virgin ground, bent on mastering the prairie whatever the cost. The harder the work the more noble the cause. And subdue the prairie they did— along with all the beings that called it…

I am a tree

By Cai Quirk. I am a tree, rooted in the bedrock of divine love. I am no longer trying to be a stone wall or surround myself with one. Walls are strong but they divide, are inflexible, less connected to the earth and the divine. A tree is rooted, grounded,…

Black and white photo of six police officers in Washington DC in riot gear

Collective Community Resilience: Thinking Through Climate Change and Defunding the Police

By Sara Jolena Wolcott. ONE OF THE MOST important lessons I learned when working in sustainable development overseas is to listen to the people most impacted by the problems to appropriately co-create viable solutions. Sometimes they would prioritize things that seemed strange to me. But over time, I would realize…

Connected Crisis: COVID-19 and Climate Change

By Alicia Cannon. WE ARE LIVING IN A TIME of concurrent global crises. There is the COVID-19 pandemic at the forefront of our minds. It is forcing us to stay home, constantly wash our hands, and wonder when this time of uncertainty will end. Despite this immediate threat, there is…

Weeding out Systemic Oppression in Our Garden

By Katie Breslin. THIS YEAR, I started a garden at a local farm. I didn’t know what I was doing when I signed up, just the basic principles like make sure the plants have water and to pull weeds, but that was about it. Thankfully friends and my plot neighbors…

Population is Personal

By Stan Becker. Here Stan Becker shares his spiritual and professional journey initiated by his early concern for the growth of human population on Earth. It is a story of his initial “vivid visual experience” in Mexico, which led him to search for an academic program that would allow him…

Love in the Wilderness: A Path for Climate Action

By Mey Hasbrook. LOVE SPEAKS OUT to me from the Biblical account of Exodus as a way to face climate breakdown. I hear this as someone of Cherokee Celtic-Irish descent and a Quaker carrying a ministry about Right Relationship, connecting care of the Earth and human communities. The mythology tells…

Master Chinese herbalist Joe Hollis with young apprentice in his apothecary at Mountain Gardens, Celo, North Carolina.

Mutual Aid & Local Food Sufficiency in the Era of COVID-19

By Bob McGahey. South Toe Mutual Aid is an organization of people in the South Toe/Celo, North Carolina area who are collaborating in a variety of activities with intent to strengthen our community’s capacity to meet our resource needs for overall well-being. As a hub of Co-operate WNC, a regional…

A tall person walks hand in hand with a child in the golden leaves

If I Were a Poet

By Allen J. McGrew, for Heidi S. McGrew. If I were a poet,  I would summon for you the cold creak of the board walk beneath your booted feet, And the gentle caress of the cool breeze on the back of your neck. My words would paint for you the…

Screen capture from Resource Generation's sharemycheck.org

How Will I #ShareMyCheck?

By Hayley Hathaway. MY BANK ACCOUNT looked good after I received my Economic Impact Payment of $1200 this spring. I felt grateful for the money Yet, I still have a job, unlike the 25 million people who have applied for unemployment in the US since the pandemic started. I got…

Quakers Caring for God’s Creation: A Kessler Family Journey

By Jim Kessler. SERENDIPITOUS moments are transformative intellectually and spiritually. In 1970, close to the first Earth Day, I was finishing a Masters in Biology at the University of Northern Iowa. I bought a Sierra Club book entitled A Moment in the Sun. Its clear description of the environmental crisis…

Endless War, Endless Environmental Harm

By Emily Wirzba and Alicia Cannon. THE QUAKER VALUE OF PEACE calls us to advocate for a reduction in Pentagon spending and military interventions abroad. The value of stewardship urges us to address climate change and seek an earth restored. While it might seem surprising, these two issues are intrinsically…

In Uncertain Times: Wisdom for the Pandemic

By Mary Jo Klingel. I HAVE HEARD the conventional wisdom that the business community needs certainty to function, and that the stock market needs certainty to grow. When I hear that, I think, “Well, what you are really saying is that you need to know that you will continue to…

Human-Induced Climate Change

By the QEW Sustainability: Faith & Action Working Group What are the effects of human-induced climate change? Human-induced climate change threatens to overarch all the human misuses of creation, including rapidly growing human population, habitat destruction, over-exploitation of resources, and introduction of invasive species. Human-induced climate change is the…

Photo of Gulf of Mexico from space at Night

Collective Evolution in the Face of Climate Crisis

By Keith Runyan. FROM THE EMERGENT PATTERNS of a monarch butterfly’s wing to the fractal branchings of a mycelial web, we find ourselves, as 21st-century Friends awash in a fundamentally beautiful world, unveiled. We find ourselves not in the universe, but of it, in a state of interbeing. Every day…

Philadelphia Friends Confront Climate Crisis

By Patricia Finley, Ruth Darlington, Liz Robinson, and the Eco-Justice Collaborative of PYM. MORE THAN 50 FRIENDS gathered on a snowy morning at Germantown Monthly Meeting on January 18 to learn, share, and discern how to effectively address environmental injustice and the climate crisis. Over the course of the Thread…

Book Review: Nothing Lowly in the Universe: An Integral Approach to the Ecological Crisis by Jennie M. Ratcliffe

By Ruah Swennerfelt. MANY, MANY YEARS ago, after having a deep-felt conversation with my father, who wanted to blindly trust his government, I gave him Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner. I chose that book because Dad lived in Southern California, a desert turned into a false oasis of millions of homes using…

Poems: “The Earth is Us” and “gifts”

By Mary Ann Iyer. The cells of this earth are our cells. The wind that blows across its surface is the self same air that we breathe. Our life blood courses through our veins with no less certainty than the rivers cascading…

Roadmaps to a Better Future: Analyzing Climate Change Solutions Without Geoengineering

By Judy Lumb. HOW DO WE ensure a future on Earth for humans and other creatures? Three recent reports analyze solutions to climate change that meet the ambition of the Paris Agreement. The Climate Urgency: Setting Sail for a New Paradigm Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité (CIDSE)…

Is (the) Paris (Agreement) Burning?

By Shelley Tanenbaum. THE MOST RECENT Conference of the Parties (COP), held in Madrid, Spain in December, appeared to balance the Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 on a knife’s edge, a sharpened knife’s edge. Lindsey Cook of Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) referred to this conference as “the COP25 of…

Interfaith Earthcare Touchstones

Compiled by Beverly G. Ward. “A touchstone transcends any one religion, thought, or spiritual tradition and serves as a guide. These touchstones provide examples of specific prayers, passages or scripture, or inspirations from various sacred texts or philosophical writings associated with diverse traditions.” Last year I joined faith leaders at…

Group sitting in circle at Ben Lomond Quaker Center

Young and Old for Climate Justice

By Hayley Hathaway. GEORGE LAKEY, lifelong civil rights activist, and Friend, hosted “Young and Old for Climate Justice: A Dialog” at Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, CA this January. Forty Friends, ages ranging from 15 to 80, joined the weekend-long retreat in the redwoods. Shelley Tanenbaum, QEW’s General Secretary, and…

Soil: Begin with the Beginning

Share this Article This article is part of our Pamphlet for Sharing Series Download PDF By Tom Small It begins with the land. And the land begins from the soil. Soil that lives. The soil is the great connector of lives, the…

Considering Limits to Human Population Size

Friends have long been concerned about how we live on our Earth and how we can best support a good life for everyone and all species. Sustainability requires that we use Earth’s resources at a level that provides a reasonable life for all now and maintains…

Farming for Social Change

By Sayrah Namaste “To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves,” Gandhi said. The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) has been addressing the impacts of climate change through programs in New Mexico, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Baltimore, to name a few.

For the Love of the Land

By Pamela Haines. I’VE LOVED THIS bit of land for over fifty years. Coming up over the hill, my heart always opens anew to the jewel of a valley spread out below, part of the rolling farmland and woodlots of central New York state. My father bought an old farm…

Flows Repeatedly: Learnings from the Menominee Nation

By Tom Small. NAPANOH PEMECWAN—Menominee for “flows repeatedly.” In nature, there is no foreground or background, no hierarchy, only relations, patterns of change and repetition. Train yourself to see the repeated patterns, to understand, feel, and identify with the flow. With these two Menominee words and their implications, Jeff Grignon,…

Listening to Roots, Walking in Beauty

By Mey Hasbrook. IN THE MEADOW, I gave thanks beside a beech tree. Sunset neared after a beautiful day with Swarthmoor Area Meeting of Southwest Cumbria, England. This area is called “the cradle of Quakerism” and brings to mind The Valiant 60, the 17th-century law-breaking mystics and traveling ministers from…

Spiritual Ecology: My Journey and Our Journey

Permaculture: The Art of Designing Beneficial Relationships

Fracking 101 Glossary

The Myth of a Century of Natural Gas in the U.S.

Quaker PopOffsets

What I’m Learning From the Pandemic

United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent

Truth Is Something That Happens

Why a Specifically Quaker Testimony on the Environment?

A Shared Quaker Statement: Facing the Challenge of Climate Change

Q&A with Douglas Gwyn

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

Important Reasons to Use Native Plants

The Spiritual Basis of Earthcare

Ecological Principles of Permaculture

Black Butterfly: Interview with Artist Damita Hicks

In the School of the Shipwreck

Caring About Population

A Prayer for the New Year

Durham Friends Install Solar Panels

Redwood Renewal

Galápagos: Lessons from Finches, Marine Iguanas, and Islands

Friends Meeting at Cambridge

Canadian Yearly Meeting

Minneapolis Friends Meeting

Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting

Netherlands Yearly Meeting

Philadelphia Yearly Meeting

New England Yearly Meeting

Baltimore Yearly Meeting

Community Monthly Meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio

IIlinois Yearly Meeting

Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting — Climate Change

Acadia, Maine, Friends Meeting

Patuxent, Maryland, Friends Meeting

Princeton Monthly Meeting

Reading Monthly Meeting

Santa Barbara Friends Meeting

Stony Run and Homewood Friends Meeting

Swarthmore Friends Meeting

Wellsboro Monthly Meeting

Annapolis Friends Meeting

Southeastern Yearly Meeting

Chena Ridge Friends, Fairbanks, Alaska

Strawberry Creek Friends Meeting

Divestment FAQ

QEW Statement to the U.S. State Department on UNDRIP

Statement to ECOSOC on Science, Technology, and Innovation

QEW Statement on the Doctrine of Discovery

Statement on Unity with Diversity

QEW Participates in Revisions to FCNL Policy Statement

QEW Minute on Nuclear Power

Comment Suggestions on Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for Keystone XL Pipeline

NEYM 2016 Yearly Meeting Minute on Climate Change

A Shared Quaker Statement: Facing the Challenge of Climate Change

Recommendations for all Friends

Host a Film Festival on Energy Options

Introduction to Permaculture

Planning, Planting, and Managing Your Butterfly and Pollinator Garden

Choosing Native Plants for Pollinators in Your Area

Ecological Principles of Permaculture

Important Reasons to Use Native Plants

Practical Permaculture Methods: Start Today!

Planning a Permaculture Garden

Birds, Plants, and Insects: What They Need

Shrinking or Transforming Your Lawn

Friends’ History of Investing with Integrity

Practicing Earth Activism

Earthcare, Energy, and the Right Use of Things

A Toxic Factory Will Create a Toxic Future

Sharing Love and Knowledge in the Time of COVID-19

Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Mutual Aid Experiment

Plowing the Prairie

I am a tree​

Collective Community Resilience: Thinking Through Climate Change and Defunding the Police

Connected Crisis: COVID-19 and Climate Change

Weeding out Systemic Oppression in Our Garden

Population is Personal

Love in the Wilderness: A Path for Climate Action

Plowing the  Prairie

I am a tree