Tag Archives ⇒ climate

What Does the Outside Say?

March 7, 2019
· Martin Kelley

Also in Friends Jour­nal’s issue, “Out­side the Meet­ing­house,” a piece from Brad Stock­er of Mia­mi Meet­ing in Florida:

Most Friends have an under­stand­ing of the archi­tec­tur­al mes­sage that our meet­ing­hous­es express. We under­stand the sim­plic­i­ty of the struc­ture. We under­stand the rea­son there are no steeples or cross­es on the out­side and why we have clear win­dows placed so as to invite the light to enter. We are equal­ly sen­si­tive to inte­ri­or design. While we come into fre­quent, inti­mate con­tact with the meet­ing­house exte­ri­or, and the land it sits on, we may be less aware of the mes­sage they convey. 

There may be a lit­tle whiplash to talk about but­ter­fly gar­dens after the recent arti­cle on Quak­er wor­ship from prison but I like the inten­tion­al­i­ty of Stock­er’s obser­va­tions: we are always mak­ing state­ments with the care (or non-care) of our phys­i­cal space. Miami’s the kind of coastal city where cli­mate change is very much not a the­o­ret­i­cal issue and Stock­er is very involved in his year­ly meet­ing’s earth­care edu­ca­tion ini­tia­tives. The meet­ing­house grounds are a place to mod­el good stew­ard­ship; tak­ing the care to have them be invit­ing and qui­et­ly demon­stra­tive of Quak­er val­ues is impor­tant outreach.

How a Small Group of Quaker Activists Took on PNC Bank and Won

July 26, 2018
· Martin Kelley

One thing I love about the Friends move­ment is its abil­i­ty to live with­in the ten­sions of a being both a deeply spir­i­tu­al ascetic prac­tice and a strate­gi­cal­ly focused world-changing social action toolk­it. Some­times the two come togeth­er in won­der­ful ways. Quak­er­S­peak has a mini-documentary about the Earth Quak­er Action Team’s cam­paign to stop PNC Bank from financ­ing moun­tain­top removal mining:

George Lakey: So any way you look at it, this is an offense against the plan­et. It’s an offense against peo­ple. It’s where eco­nom­ic jus­tice and cli­mate jus­tice coin­cide. Let’s tack­le it.

Ingrid Lakey: This bank that had Quak­er roots, this bank that called itself the green­est bank in the busi­ness was in fact blow­ing up moun­tains to get coal which is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change. So we thought, “that’s not cool! We can’t let that slide.” Call­ing on our own belief in our integri­ty, we decid­ed to call them out on it.

I myself could watch a whole video of George Lakey just laugh­ing. I’ve attend­ed a few EQAT actions over the years and wrote a per­son­al sto­ry about my par­tic­i­pa­tion in a pub­lic fast in 2013.

How a Small Group of Quak­er Activists Took on PNC Bank and Won

New York Friends on Climate Change

March 20, 2018
· Martin Kelley

The March issue of New York Year­ly Meet­ing’s Spark now seems to be online, a good dozen arti­cles on the top­ic of “Earth­care Now.” From the intro­duc­tion by guest edi­tor Pamela Boyce Simms:

The NYYM Friends who have shared their sto­ries here­in are farm­ers, chap­lains, hydro­ge­ol­o­gists, shep­herds, mys­tics, home­stead­ers, local gov­ern­ment offi­cials, nat­u­ral­ists, pro­fes­sors, and Mas­ter Gar­den­ers. They till the soil, herd the sheep, insu­late walls, min­is­ter unto many, com­mune with nature, edu­cate, and mod­el resilience in Itha­ca, Brook­lyn, Clin­ton, East Chatham, and Seneca Cas­tle in New York, and in High­land Park and Mont­clair in New Jersey.

I still have to go through them myself. Some that look par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing are Susan­na Mat­ting­ly’s Quak­ers and Cli­mate Change:

This is a spir­i­tu­al call as well as a mate­r­i­al one, to act not out of fear or through accu­sa­tion, but with hope and love. We rec­og­nize sus­tain­abil­i­ty and care for the earth are inte­gral to our faith and our Quak­er tes­ti­monies as we strive to live in right rela­tion­ship with all cre­ation. As a com­mu­ni­ty, we can make a mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion to sta­bi­liz­ing the cli­mate and build­ing resilience.

Christo­pher Sam­mond’s “Our Gen­er­a­tion’s ‘Lam­b’s War’ “:

As I have held ques­tions about how to respond to the divi­sive­ness, the fear mon­ger­ing, the racism, and the tsuna­mi of lies and half-truths char­ac­ter­iz­ing our nation’s polit­i­cal life at this time, I have been clear­ly and deeply called to go deep, and to join the many, many peo­ple of faith who are seek­ing to bring about the nec­es­sary shift in cul­ture, a shift in spir­i­tu­al con­scious­ness, which is nec­es­sary if we are to sur­vive as a species. And, like my Quak­er fore­bears, I know that work to begin with­in myself.

Expanding the Quaker writing pool

November 3, 2017
· Martin Kelley

Shhh: there have been a few times late­ly when I wish we had more options when choos­ing arti­cles forFriends Jour­nal issues. Yes yes, we did notice that the fea­ture arti­cle con­trib­u­tors for the Octo­ber issue on “Con­science” were all old­er men and that the top­ics were per­haps a bit too famil­iar for Friends Jour­nal (non­vi­o­lence, civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, con­sci­en­tious objec­tion). They were all great arti­cles. And I think clich­es can be impor­tant (see foot­note below) for a pub­li­ca­tion like ours. But yeah.

I had hoped the idea of con­science would leap up to new writ­ers, espe­cial­ly in our cur­rent polit­i­cal cli­mate, and that the arti­cles might serve as a bridge between 1960s Quak­er activism and today. Some­times our themes inspire writ­ers and some­times they don’t.

I’ve occa­sion­al­ly writ­ten Quak­er­ran­ter blog posts about upcom­ing sub­mis­sion oppor­tu­ni­ties but I’d like to make it more offi­cial and post these every month from the Friends Jour­nal web­site. We’re call­ing the fea­ture “From the Editor’s Desk.”

I’d also like you all to share these with peo­ple you think should be writ­ing for us, espe­cial­ly if they’re new writ­ers com­ing from dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives. Diver­si­ties of all kind are always welcome.

I was a Quak­er blog­ger (and thus writer) for many years and I worked for Friends Jour­nal for part of that time but I only once sent in a sub­mis­sion before I became senior edi­tor. Why? Was I wait­ing to be asked? Was I unsure what I might write about? What­ev­er the rea­son, we need to always be find­ing and encour­ag­ing new peo­ple. Some of the most inter­est­ing arti­cles we’ve pub­lished start­ed after one of our fans shared an upcom­ing issue top­ic with some­one who was out­side of our net­work. My goal with these posts is real­ly to encour­age you all to share these in emails and on your Face­book walls so we can keep expand­ing the Quak­er writer universe.

Here’s the first one: a call for writ­ers for the March 2018 issue on Quak­ers and the Holy Land.


Writing Opp: Quakers and the Holy Land (closed) - Friends Journal

Writ­ing Opp: Quak­ers and the Holy Land (closed) — Friends Journal 

In March 2018 Friends Jour­nal is pub­lish­ing an issue on reli­gion and pol­i­tics in the Mid­dle East. We…

Friends Journal Friends Journal 

Foot­note: Every once in a while we’ll get some arti­cle in and I’ll sigh because I can remem­ber a pre­vi­ous arti­cle that cov­ered the same ground. When I go to look it up I real­ize that the ear­li­er arti­cle was pub­lished fif­teen or more years ago. We have new read­ers every year and it’s okay to cir­cle around to core themes every decade or so. We also need to remem­ber the inter­est­ing peo­ple and inci­dents that hap­pened long enough ago because our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry is always in the process of fad­ing. I’m a peacenik long­time Quak­er so I knew Dan Seeger was the named defen­dant in a major land­mark Supreme Court deci­sion in the 1960s, for exam­ple, but I don’t assume most Friends knew this. It’s still a cool sto­ry. It still inspires. It’s impor­tant to keep the sto­ry alive.