It is some forty years since I last ate meat but the moment when an in-law, giving me lunch, told me she thought it very bad manners to let your host know ahead of time that you didn’t eat meat is etched on my brain from all those years ago. Her view was that you should just quietly eat whatever accompanying vegetables were provided. I was stunned that our views on what it meant to be a host were so different and that the idea of suggesting a meat-free meal could feel almost insulting. That experience, however, could go a long way to explaining my current ambivalence about sharing with any present day host that I would much prefer vegan fare.
This internal dilemma came up for me quite strongly in one of the online preparation sessions for the Earthcare Gathering and at the Gathering itself it emerged that similar challenges/quandaries about sharing our lifestyle choices with our nearest and dearest were not at all uncommon. So much so that it prompted one Friend to suggest the topic as a session for the Open Space. The session was well attended and it became clear that feelings could run very deep in this area of Friends’ experience. In-laws are one thing but immediate family quite another and such rifts can be painful indeed.
A particularly difficult issue that many identified with was the question of taking flights. How to discern what flights might be justified for oneself, perhaps as “love miles”, and how to view or raise concerns about the travel plans of other family members, friends or colleagues? As a baby boomer I was lucky enough in my earlier life to visit many parts of the world (and to live in one or two) without any attendant guilt about the environmental impacts. Those experiences have definitely helped broaden my outlook and sense of affinity with those beyond our shores. How then can I feel easy with a desire to deny my daughters a similar opportunity or to load them, whose futures are so much more uncertain, with a burden of guilt that belongs much more closely with my own generation?
We each have to find our own way through these internal, and sometimes external, conflicts – our own responses to the “promptings of love and truth”. From hat honour to slavery Friends have long struggled with how to be true to leadings which challenge prevailing social norms. At the very least we can hope that our own choices and the explanations we give for them will help those close to us give more thought to their own decisions. But, as the Earthcare Gathering flagged up for me, we are not alone in these dilemmas and sharing them and the distress they can generate, and exploring our different approaches and pathways, can in itself be a really supportive and strengthening experience, and perhaps will help us find better ways in the future.
Cilla de Lande Long