Pages tagged "Environmentalism"

An intense pleasure of my profession as a chemical engineer is the practice of balancing. Not the balancing of a body in movement (although I do know that pleasure – in dance and in Aikido), but the balancing of accounts of the earth itself. Everything that comes out of the earth goes back into it. Or almost everything.

This article is in dialogue with “The Bonds of Animal Agriculture” by Friend Joe Snyder in the May-June 2013 issue of Western Friend. I commend Friend Snyder for highlighting the destructive aspects of the prevailing system of plant and animal agriculture, which fail to respect God’s creation. To my mind, Friends cannot overemphasize the seriousness of such threats to our health and global sustainability.

Since biblical times, humanity has lived by an ancient contract: We the first party (animals) give you our wool, milk, hides and meat, draw your plows and carriages, guard your houses, control your vermin, and fertilize your fields.  We the second party (humans) promise to keep you safe from predators, bind up your wounds and treat your diseases, provide you shelter from the elements, feed you even in times of famine, and provide you with a quick and humane death.  Our own human relationship with God has long been expressed in similar terms. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.”

As a religion major at Drake University in the 1980s, my field studies took me to worship with nearly every denomination in Des Moines. One experience that kept drawing me back was the local Quaker Meeting, where I appreciated the overt commitment to justice and the inner sense of peace.

The Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice was approved on 24 April 2012 at the Sixth World Conference of Friends, held at Kabarak University near Nakuru, Kenya. It is the culmination of the FWCC World Consultation on Global Change which was held in 2010 and 2011. It is being circulated with the Conference Epistle.

during the 2013 gathering of friends general conference in greeley, colorado, a few of us met for three hours each day, all five days, to see what would emerge if we applied friends’ faith and practice towards seeking deeper unity with nature.  mark helpsmeet from “northern spirit radio” often attends this annual gathering; he interviews friends there and edits those interviews into segments for his radio show.   he arranged to interview three of us exploring unity with nature on thursday afternoon.