Radical Worship - Radical Witness
In one of the threshing meetings to start preparing for this gathering, a question was asked along the lines of: Can we identify a distinct Quaker contribution/witness to caring for the Earth?
My considered answer to that is YES. Friends have always held worshipful spaces to which we can bring our whole selves, listening for guidance for spiritually rooted action. There’s a great need for places where we can hold our partial understandings (e.g., of science, society and ecology) alongside our personal needs, gifts, histories, and challenges, in relation to Earthcare. A need for spaces to which we can bring our awareness that just by living in more or less our current way - adaptations and witness notwithstanding - we are contributing to accelerating ecological decline. A need for communities in which we can trust that there is some understanding of the nature and urgency of the eco-crisis where we can uphold and be upheld, challenge lovingly and be challenged, test leadings, and explore together. Where we can let go or mourn when necessary, and also share radical dreams, proposals for action, or experience of witness, and perhaps seed and nurture concrete initiatives.
This is something that Quakers are uniquely placed to do. Friends have often been good examples over the years through personal lifestyles, public protests, research, or community or corporate initiatives. I see this gathering as offering great potential to step up the momentum through sharing our experiences and connecting in different ways with Spirit, Earth, other species, and each other. Exploring and sharing our hopes and visions can be part of the journey towards the future, in changed ways of living and being, and concrete projects engaging with the wider world and society.
I look forward to a time of weaving our diversity to enrich and strengthen all the threads we bring to the gathering. I hope this will further build our awareness of how seeing the Earth and all who dwell here are sacred, and of what that might mean in all our discernments, actions and lives. I hope we can also enjoy being creative, talking, laughing, playing and – perhaps – singing together, all of which could be rooted in a spirit of worship if we so choose. This would strengthen our resources as we consider particular initiatives and address challenges ahead. It would also help build the radical, spirit-rooted confident Quaker voices needed if we are to share our values and insights more widely. The world could do with more and better listening to leadings of Love and Truth in everyone’s hearts, alongside various examples of how we can live accordingly.
Linda Murgatroyd