Our contribution will take place the following day, Sunday, September 20, as part of our monthly Third Sunday discussion series. The topic will be “The Spiritual Practice of Gratitude for the Earth.”

We’ll begin from a simple query:

How does gratitude for the Earth change the way we live upon it?

Our discussion will explore gratitude for the natural world as a spiritual practice—moving beyond appreciation toward reverence, responsibility, simplicity, and care. We’ll consider the difference between simply appreciating nature and recognizing our dependence upon and relationship with the living world. We’ll also ask whether gratitude can motivate care for the Earth more deeply than guilt or fear.

Among the questions we’ll explore are: Does modern life make it harder to experience the Earth as sacred? Can gratitude coexist with grief about environmental damage? What is the relationship between simplicity and care for the Earth? And does gratitude itself create obligations?

Finally, we’ll turn the discussion toward our own Meeting and consider how our property, purchasing, meals, gardening, transportation, and community practices might better reflect our gratitude for the Earth and our responsibilities toward it.

Organizing an online worship service for the love of the Earth, open to Friends everywhere: Topic: Earthcare réunion
Time: Sep 19, 2026 04:00 PM Paris
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83072798364
Meeting ID: 830 7279 8364
Passcode: earthcare

A Silent Walking Vigil for Peace in the centre of London, on the saturday closest to the UN World Day of Peace: https://quakervigilforpeace.org/

Members of Detroit Friends Meeting and Birmingham Friends Meeting will perform clean-up and maintenance work at the Viola Liuzzo Memorial Park in cooperation with our neighbors from the Viola Liuzzo Park Association near our meeting house in Detroit. Work in the park will be followed by worship and refreshments at the meeting house on Greenfield Rd.

Our meeting will partner with the Dobbs Ferry Conservation Advisory Board to do an afternoon of taking care of a local pollinator garden (weeding) and removing invasive phragmites in a local park.

“Sunday, Sept. 20, 2025: Meeting for Worship Outdoors, Brown Bag Lunch, Weeding our pollinator gardens”

“First Day School will be doing a park clean-up in our park next door.”

“Our high school youths decided to build and put a variety of birdhouses in various locations on the church property.”

“Join California Coastal Cleanup Day on September 19th”

“Our fall Work Day is planned to coincide with this. We will do fall cleaning, which includes caring for our compost bin, trimming brush, caring for our individual ‘adopted’ sections of plantings, and perhaps clean out a room to facilitate a local climate resilience project offering help to elderly neighborhood residents during weather crises.”

“We are currently in the process of removing invasive plants and will continue restoration of our meeting grounds by planting native species in their place. I would like to include our meeting’s children by building a Bee Hotel.”

“1) connect people with our pollinator garden
2) potluck brunch and community conversation with 350 Pittsburgh about climate change
3) perennial swap
we’re just starting the conversation, so additional ideas may emerge”

“Vigil Love in Action 1:00 -2:00, followed by tree planting and giving away free trees and native plants, singing celebration songs about nature and our earth, ending in a Vegan potluck.”

Download the event flyer

“We will be doing a clean up/ trash removal/ recycling items at a public green space near our Meeting House. We will follow this with an earth friendly potluck, mostly with items from our gardens.”

“Tabling at a local fair to raise awareness and collect signatures for a sign-on letter supporting California legislation on Earthcare topics.”

“1. Between now and September 19, we’ll be reading Doug Tallamy’s book: The Nature of Oaks – the rich ecology of our most essential native trees.
2. On September 12, we’re taking a field trip with oak expert Jim Walters to see all the oaks he planted in the Iowa City area, and learn about how to plant and care for them.
3. On September 19th, we’ll gather to plant oaks in many places with acorns that have been germinated by either Jim Walters or ourselves in the previous month. Then celebrate around a potluck meal.”

“Quaker Voice holds an annual Quaker Lobby Day in Olympia. The Environmental Stewardship group always has significant bills that the gathered Quakers lobby for with their representatives. We also worship together and share a meal. The last QLD was on Jan. 28, 2026. The next will be when the new session starts – so in winter. At that time we lobbied (successfully) against a law enabling nuclear reactors and (again successfully) for a law to upgrade the power grid so it could include renewable power. We can’t do the normal spring/fall thing because we have to gather when the legislature is in session. We do, however, also do meetings over the course of the year with individual legislators.” Read more here!

“Illinois Yearly Meeting will be having one of our twice yearly Work Days organized by the Maintenance, Planning, and Envisioning Committee at the yearly meeting campus on Saturday, October 3rd. Activities this fall will include work on the native plant “pollinator” garden and a new composting system, as well as the usual building maintenance and care of the 12-acre site. The MP&E committee was looking for suggestions of a lunchtime program for that day. At annual sessions (June 19, 2026) the MP&E clerk gladly agreed to have QEW reps and ILYM Environmental Concerns Committee members provide such a program on that day. Sarah Pavlovic, Chip Rorem, and Noel Pavlovic will take the lead in planning – possibly on the topic of moving funds from the stock market. There’s also an opportunity to orient the group’s thinking to the spiritual aspects of the work we do in community on this land.”

September 19, 2026 is the inaugural QEW Day of Action, taking place during the Season of Creation, but you’re welcome to hold your Day of Action on a nearby date that works for your meeting. We hope that this is the beginning of a new biannual tradition: one Day of Action each fall during Climate Week or the Season of Creation, and one each spring around Earth Day.

Yes! You’re welcome to join another Meeting’s Day of Action that you can discover through our map, or reach out to QEW about how to get something started in your community.

Not at all. Meetings are encouraged to choose whatever action fits their community’s needs. That might mean working on meetinghouse land, cleaning up a local creek, or partnering with a local environmental group to remove invasive species from public lands.