Spiritual Practice by Chliodhna Mulhern
On Silent Worship by Lesley Grahame
Christians Together Cherishing Creation by Angela Atkins
Quakers and Future Foods by Ruth Jones
Reflective Walking by Alison Crane
Wilderness Quest by Gill Westcott
Between the Worlds by Simon McIntosh
Letter to the Editor: Money Matters by Kathryn May
Belonging and Sense of Place by Harriet Sams
The Gift of Water by Stevie Krayer
Fyrdd o edrych ar fwlch/ Ways of looking at a Gap by Ailish Carol-Brentnall
Sentient Beings by Kerri Wright
In spring this year, EarthQuaker 100 began to explore the Quaker Earthcare Gathering theme of Nurturing radical worship and witness. Many of you will have attended some of the online sessions, and we have a full house for the residential in October.
For this edition of EarthQuaker, we asked for contributions that might nourish the many inquiries that are part of the gathering. We have a great harvest to share of articles, poetry, music and art.
We hear about spiritual practices including reflective walking, wilderness quests, silent worship and finding a combination that works for each of us. There are personal journeys, as Friends find paths, companions and roles in Earthcare engagement. We are invited to hold plant-based Green Feasts during Quaker Week with its theme of “love your neighbour” And to pay attention to our relationships with other sentient beings, with water, land, food and buildings – and with other people, who might have a different skin colour, life experience, culture or religion from us.
Nonviolent direct action, civil disobedience and practical action remain key parts of our engagement as a community. We are missing voices on these in the current EarthQuaker, probably because Friends who might have written were particularly busy this summer. And there isn’t much here about practical actions and campaigns – but we’ve heard about those in previous editions.
At the 2022 Living Witness Gathering we held space for tensions and community building across the three dimensions of The Great Turning as described by Joanna Macy:
- holding actions such as civil disobedience and protest
- developing life-sustaining systems and practices, and
- shifting consciousness.
We have continuing work to do to strengthen mutual respect, understanding and support among Friends who place different emphasis on these dimensions.
Three years on, there is more of a sense in our community that the current world order is collapsing – though we cannot know how it will unfold, or how quickly. The theme of “decolonizing ourselves” or “hospicing modernity” has underpinned many of our conversations in the extended gathering process. How are our relationships, our ways of organising, our responses to the challenges of Earthcare, being shaped by the patterns of modernity? How are we reproducing the spirit and forms of settler colonialism and white supremacy culture? How does modernity live through us, in our dependence on property, money and material consumption?
Nurturing radical worship and witness calls for attention to the roots of our being, in which we find all of humanity, all ancestors, all of life; all that is, has been, and might be.