earthcare | The Australian Friend

Musings on Quaker Spirituality and Earthcare.

1306 June 2013, Issue No Responses »

May 142013

Robert Howell, Canberra Regional Meeting.

A few years ago when I was in Indonesia as part of the project on introducing non-violent conflict resolution training for the Indonesian Police [1], I was introduced to a Dutchman, a senior official working for the European Union. He wanted to know why I was doing what I was doing. I said “I am a Quaker”. “Oh” he said, “I understand –say no more”.

He knew that for Quakers, peacemaking is part of our history. Peace is part of Quaker ‘DNA’. We have a long history of working to prevent war and the threats of war, to resolve conflict non-violently, and to ameliorate the consequences of violence. It goes back to George Fox’s time and there is a steady stream of stories in every century since. They appear in all the Quaker histories, in the stories of our role models such as John Woolman, in the academic literature (examples: Kenneth and Elise Boulding), Advices and Queries, in the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. My EU official in Indonesia knew enough about this to open his door and offer to do what he could to help. I was able to draw on the efforts of many Quakers before me to give me credibility and status because that is what Quakers are and do.

If I had been on a project to do with earthcare rather than peacemaking, what would have my EU official have said? Most probably something like “Well that’s interesting, I didn’t know Quakers were into that sort of thing”. Quakers are not known for their concerns for earthcare. Anne Adams in introducing an anthology of Friends’ writing on earthcare stated that:

There is a huge gap in Quaker writing about the earth between the seventeenth and late twentieth centuries (apart from the remarkable John Woolman in the eighteenth)[2].

So if we believe that the crisis of energy, climate warming, and ecological degradation generally is at heart a spiritual one, what can Quakers bring to the efforts to deal with this crisis that is inherently spiritual and Quaker?

Ninian Smart in his book The World’s Religions describes seven dimensions of religion [3]. One of those is an experiential or emotional dimension. This dimension deals with what Smart calls “the perception of the invisible world” and involves personal experiences often containing heightened feelings. An oft quoted example of such an experience is described by Wordsworth in his poem, Tintern Abbey[4]:

And I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused. …

A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,

And rolls through all things.

… well pleased to recognise

In nature and the language of the sense,

The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,

The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul

Of all my moral being.

John Woolman stated:

There is a principle which is pure, placed in the human mind, which in different places and ages hath different names; it is however pure and proceeds from God. It is deep and inward, confined to no form of religion, nor excluded from any, where the heart stands in perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and grows, of what nation soever, they become brethren.

In his career as a tailor, he refused to use or wear dyed fabrics, because he had learned that many workers in the dye industry were poisoned by some of the noxious substances used. He was concerned about treatment of animals. In later life, he avoided riding in stagecoaches, as he felt their operation was too often cruel and injurious to the teams of horses. Yet for many years Quakers had similar spiritual experiences that did not necessarily (or often) lead to a recognition of pollution or the pain experienced by animals (like Woolman), or respect or reverence for nature where the oneness of the world becomes a spiritual anchor (like Wordsworth).

Rex Ambler has written:

We learn to sense God’s reality by paying attention to what happens within us, by listening for a voice or becoming aware of a light that can lead us to what is ultimate for us because it is the source of all life and all being. But having sensed that and having learnt to respond to it we can then discover it in other people also. Taking that further, but with a slightly different sensibility, we can learn to sense it in our fellow creatures, in animals and plants, but also in mountains and seas and the whole vast universe. What we can sense here – when we are open enough in ourselves to do so – is not the voice or presence of an invisible person, but the mysterious reality indescribable in itself, which sustains all life and all being as we know it. …

We seek to realise in practice the deep bond that we can dimly perceive holding us all together. In the new situation of environmental crisis we can surely perceive another bond between ourselves and the earth. The life of the earth, because it is now vulnerable to our power, is part of our life. Our life therefore can be realised and fulfilled only if we commit ourselves to the care of the earth. Making peace with the earth is now, or should be, part of our spirituality [5].

For Ursula Goodenough, a scientist, it is the mystery of why there is anything at all, the mystery of where the laws of physics came from, the mystery of why the universe is so strange, that generate wonder, and wonder generates awe [6].

Our Earthcare Statement of 2008 said that we must listen to the call of creation, recognise and respect the profound wisdom of indigenous peoples [7]. Karl-Erik Sveiby and Tex Skuthorpe in their wonderful book Treading Lightly [8] tell the Nhunggabarra stories and their lessons for sustainability. Max Dulumunmun Harrison (Uncle Max) in his book My People’s Dreaming writes:

I am trying to raise awareness of Aboriginal spirituality and to explain how we connect to the land. I am trying to capture in words the beauty of the land I see around me. And seeing is so important … really seeing what the land is telling you. Seeing what the land is offering for you to take [9].

Gael and I recently joined a group with Uncle Max on a bush-walk near poet Judith Wright’s former home near Braidwood. He encouraged us to look and listen and observe what was happening over time to the land, and to reconnect.

We also need to draw on Quaker stories about earthcare spiritual experiences. I have told one of mine called The Lighthouse and the Tree [10]. It is not a Wordsworth experience. I did not come away feeling an inter-relationship with and dependence on all life, both seen and unseen. So I have more questions that answers about how to evoke the bond recommended by Ambler between ourselves and the earth.

§ Does a spiritual experience that evokes a reverence for the earth have to come from a realisation from within us first, then others, and then the earth?

§ Does a reverence for the earth depend on having a spiritual experience? If not what are some other paths?

§ Can we facilitate a spiritual experience or does it just happen?

§ Is an earthcare spiritual experience more likely to be mystical than transcendental?

§ Do earthcare spiritual experiences have to happen in rural and wilderness settings, or are built environments also able to evoke reverence for nature?

§ Have we understood our peace tradition too narrowly and excluded peace with the earth from part of our peace leadings?

§ Where does our leading on simplicity fit in?

§ What can we learn from Australian Aborigines?

§ Do you have any personal stories that you can share?

[1] http://quaker.org.nz/indonesia-police-training

[2] Adams, A. 1996. The Creation Was Open To Me. Quaker Green Concern. Suffolk: Lavenham Press.

[3] The World’s Religions: Old Traditions and Modern Transformations. 1989. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

[4] http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww138.html

[5] Written in 1995. Quoted in Adams, A. 1996. The Creation Was Open To Me. Quaker Green Concern. Suffolk: Lavenham Press.

[6] The Sacred Depths of Nature. 1998. Oxford University Press.

[7] http://www.quakers.org.au/displaycommon.cfm?an=1&subarticlenbr=296

[8] http://treadinglightly.sveiby.com/

[9] Harrison, M D.2009. My People’s Dreaming. Sydney: Finch Publishing.

[10] http://australianfriend.org/af894

Water and Cooperation.

1209 September 2012 No Responses »

Aug 042012

Steven Heywood.
Programme Assistant, Human Impacts of Climate Change
Quaker United Nations Office, Geneva, Switzerland.

“Countries have not tended to go to war over water,” Ed Davey, the UK’s Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change recently noted, “but I have a fear for the world that climate instability drives political instability.” There is an increasingly common position among politicians and commentators that climate change will inevitably lead to an increase in violent conflict over scarce natural resources like water – and this is certainly a valid concern, but only up to a point.

If any resource is susceptible to conflict, it is water. Water is vital for drinking, washing, agriculture and industry, and also has cultural significance in most societies, and a large proportion of the world’s freshwater is shared between nations, with 214 major river systems shared by two or more states and 19 countries receiving more than half their water from outside their borders. As climate change effects glacier melt and drought patterns, many countries are likely to find decreasing water resources creating problems for their growing populations and economies.

However, while the possibility of conflict related to water scarcity is real, the ‘climate conflict’ narrative is often flawed in two major ways. Firstly, climate change does not drive political instability but is only one of a constellation of factors that can lead to violent conflict. Rather than causing conflict in a previously peaceful situation, climate change can act as a ‘trigger’ or ‘multiplier’ in situations where the basis for conflict already exists due to economic, social, cultural or historical factors.

Secondly, by framing the problem in terms of conflict and security, we are encouraged to look to the same framework for solutions. In the developed countries, this can include further securing and militarising of borders to keep out refugees from climate-related conflicts (although in reality, most climate change-related migrants move within their own country, or to other developing countries). Countries threatened by resource scarcity may believe they need to act pre-emptively to secure resources from their ‘enemies’.

Instead of assuming the inevitability of conflict, it is possible to see water scarcity as an opportunity for cooperation, with states and communities realising the mutual benefit available to them through working together rather than competing. Creating truly participatory methods and institutions to share diminishing water resources around can be seen as a form of ‘environmental peacebuilding’, allowing connections to be made and understanding to grow in situations that were previously hostile by cooperating over the most vital and necessary resource of all.

One way of doing this is through water treaties between nations. History suggests that cooperative agreements over water tend to be extremely robust, and continue to be adhered to even in times of water stress or conflict over other issues – one of the best examples is between India and Pakistan, who continued to abide by the provisions of the Indus Treaty even during the height of the conflict over Kashmir. Another is the Trifinio Plan in Central America, which began as an environmental and water cooperation plan, and has since expanded to include joint health provision and increased cross-border trade between countries that were in turmoil a few short years ago.

Creating similar agreements in the fragile watersheds around the world will not be an easy task, as countries initially compete for advantages. But ultimately, cooperation rather than conflict is the most ‘water rational’ route, as it allows all countries to reap the benefits of sustainably, peacefully managed water. Countries have not tended to go to war over water yet – and contrary to the climate conflict narrative, it can be kept that way.

Local Care and Quaker Values.

1209 September 2012 No Responses »

Jul 272012

Sue Girard. New South Wales Regional Meeting.

I have a “Concern”; in fact I think I have always had it, but it has developed from just an interest into a passion as I have gotten older.

As a child I felt misplaced; I had a desire to make things, to be as self-reliant as possible. But living in cramped and busy suburbia did very little to foster my wishes to live a more down to earth lifestyle. I married into a family with farms. I loved the open spaces and the rhythm of the seasons. Yet as strange as it may seem, even there I lacked the intimate relationship I desired with planting, harvesting, preserving.

Twenty-five years ago my vision refocused. It was a time when a fledgling Aussie movement called Permaculture was becoming established. It took me many more years to fully learn and appreciate its concepts. I was intrigued with its holistic design system that emphasized Ethics, as well as Principles. It gave me a structure that resonated with my spiritual rummaging of that time and now as a Quaker these ethics meld happily with the Testimonies that I strive to live by.

The Permaculture ethics are:

▪ Care of the Earth by providing for all life’s systems so they continue and multiply.

▪ Care of People by providing for people so they can access the resources necessary for their existence.

▪ Setting Limits to Consumption and Population by being responsible for our own needs, setting aside resources to aid the first two ethics.

In Australia Permaculture has always been a grass roots movement where its supporters have been keen to share what they know about living sustainably within the environment, often with the recognition that the rewards are rarely financial. It is this vehicle that I have been using for over a decade to get people thinking about what ‘caring for our planet’ really means.

Experience has taught me that people seem to respond to knowledge in small chunks and visible at a small but significant local level, rather than the heavily orchestrated propaganda of large and political power structures.

Many people seem to think that Permaculture is all about gardening. It isn’t. However food is one of those vital human needs and, as Costa Georgiadis from the television programme Gardening Australia makes clear, this makes eating a part of an agricultural event – the importance of caring for Earth and People is intrinsically linked.

I am lucky that I have occasion to work with NSW TAFE Outreach. This involves teaching Sustainable Gardening at the grass roots level (literally) in a Community setting rather than within a TAFE Campus. This involves different towns and different surrounding schools, Community Gardens, and Neighbourhood Centres within my Local Government Area. I also do small workshops, when other Community Networks ask me, throughout the Blue Mountains and beyond. I am able to show members of the public how relatively easy it is to grow food whilst still caring for the environment.

In this work I experience Quaker Testimonies everywhere, making life more straightforward both locally and globally. I imagine that with the earth in good health all people can be truly cared for – with an absence of needs bringing about agreement and true peace.

The simplicity of planting a seed in the earth, and meeting its needs for water, light, nutrients…By abiding by the integrity that is right-livelihood, in accepting the role of insects and so called weed species into the paradigm…By living the experience of eating local, seasonal grown produce, be it in a few herbs in pots at the backdoor, or the reward of a crop of home-grown tomatoes, that can be shared amongst friends and community.

Consuming more wisely so that choices today seem effortless when it ensures that any burden will not be passed on to future generations; insights that tap into our planet’s innate way of cycling and recycling. Illustrated everywhere even within the small realm of composting – understanding that kitchen scraps and manure are of value rather than a waste product. That even toilet rolls added to the pile will add air-gaps and carbon beneficial to those microorganisms that tirelessly cultivate and produce dynamic soil generously and unceasingly.

When producing systems that are at harmony with land, water and other natural resources, systems that reduce human demand and allow an equality of human kind and earth kind.

And then to protect this biodiversity, which restores the key ecological processes that, too, are necessary for our food, water and energy security, as well as global resilience and adaptation.

Working against Nature is quite futile unless you are willing to incorporate a lot of valuable non-renewable resources.

I hear people talk about how depressed and powerless they feel in the face of climate change. Personally I feel a sense of power, that in some small way I have a degree of knowledge that I can share with others that will give skills and confidence to move forward in whatever conditions of environmental change may come our way.

Transition to a New Chapter

1203 March 2012 1 Response »

Feb 152012

Robert Howell, New Zealand Yearly Meeting.

A New Zealand Friend wished me well in a new exciting chapter of my life when he heard of my appointment to work with the Peace and Earthcare Committees in providing a Quaker voice in Canberra.

But last December was not exciting.

It was a rush to sort the stuff one acquires that keeps the economy going and books and clothes (the jersey my mother knitted for me as a new university student, and which I had not worn for 20 years finally went to the op shop), sing some Messiah concerts, book airline tickets and luggage transfer, plan for easing out of the Council for Socially Responsible investment, go to farewell parties, and prepare the house for leasing. (

It is strange isn’t it how we want to leave a property in perfect condition for someone else, while we are happy to live with all the little repairs and upgrades undone?

Christmas was with my daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren, then on to Quaker Summer Gathering to run a session on environmental ethics, and quick visits to family and friends in Taupo and Napier before catching a 6.00am flight from Auckland.

So it was with a little trepidation that I arrived in Perth, leaving Gael to follow two months later and the numerous tasks on a seemingly endless list for her to cope with.

However, my trepidation was soon gone. Brian and Vidya (Committee Convenors) soon made me feel very welcome, and then began the wonderful task of meeting Australian Friends. I was amazed, and continue to be amazed, at the depth and breadth of skills, knowledge and experience of Friends here. When I talked with Phillip Toyne was when I began to really get excited.

In New Zealand the National Government was recently re-elected with a policy of dumbing down government and public services (and citizens), promoting dirty coal extraction, furthering overseas ownership and intervention, ignoring the environment and climate change, and generally helping the rich at the expense of the poor. Prophetic voices get sore throats and pushed to the back of the crowd, and it gets a bit depressing and hard to keep going. Here I have felt enveloped and welcomed and encouraged. I know that there is much work to do in Australia for a peaceful, fair, just and sustainable country, but I have felt very much supported by Friends here.

While the job is located in Canberra, I feel it is important to involve Friends throughout all the Regional Meetings in the work. I stayed a few extra days in Perth with Adrian Glamorgan, and then on to Melbourne with Yoland Wadsworth. Both facilitated meetings with Friends. I plan to go to Hobart at the end of April. Gael will attend a Friends School Reunion and Julian Robertson, Lyndsay Farrall and others are planning activities for me. I hope to get to Sydney and Brisbane later this year.

I am interested in learning the stories of Friends: how individuals are walking their talk and modelling the change to a flourishing life within the Planet’s boundaries, how Friends are trying to live simply, peacefully, justly and respecting the Earth. Please send me your stories (1-2 pages) and let me know if you are willing for these to be on the Australia Yearly Meeting website. These stories empower the Peace and Earthcare Committees in bringing a Quaker voice to Australia.

The two Committees will be meeting together for a one day strategic planning meeting late in February. I hope that we can decide the strategic direction and priorities for the Committees and perhaps some targets and aspects of a workplan for my work for 2012 and the next 5 years. We hope to carry out both internal and external reviews. The latter will aim to identify and map the key movers and shakers (individuals and organisations) in the spheres of the environment, business, government, economy, and peace. The strategic questions are likely to include the following.

What have been the successes and failures of the AYM and RM Earthcare and Peace Committees during recent years?
What are the key global drivers that are relevant to the Committees’ work in the future?
What are the key areas that the Committees feel they should focus on to work towards its broad goal or purpose?
Who are the allies that are currently sharing that goal?
Are there any initiatives that are not being taken in Australia to achieve that goal, that Quakers could initiate?
Is there a distinctive or unique contribution that Quakers can make?

Please hold us in the Light as we begin and continue this discernment.

Thank you for your support and love as Gael and I begin this new chapter in our lives.

The Lighthouse and the Tree

A few years ago at Easter, Gael and I visited Cape Reinga. This is the most north part of the North Island of New Zealand. It is a special place. It is where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, and one can often see a line of foam where both meet, with one side bluer than the other. The prevailing wind comes from the west and ma

kes the safer harbours on the eastern side. So a lighthouse is important to guide the sea traffic to the calmer ports.

You walk down the ridge to the lighthouse from the Department of Conservation offices, shop and car park. From the lighthouse one can look down to the finger of land jutting out into the sea. Halfway down on the right hand side is a pohutukawa tree, old and large with trunks spreading out. These trees grow around the shorelines because they are adapted to cope with the salt.

In Māori mythology, Hawaiki is the original home of the Māori, before they travelled across the sea to New Zealand. Polynesian oral traditions say that the spirits of Polynesian people return to Hawaiki after death. In the New Zealand context, such return-journeys take place via Spirits Bay, Cape Reinga and the Three Kings Island

on their way to Hawaiki. At Christmas time the pohutukawa trees grow a red flower, the colour of blood. So the tree is a powerful symbol in both Māori and non- Māori cultures of death and departure. To Friends, the Children of the Light, a lighthouse symbolising life and hope, is a very rich image.

In the late 1980’s, the Māori Commissioner of Names, after much consultation and with the spiritual insight of First Nations peoples, gave the Aotearoa New Zealand Religious Society of Friends a Māori name: Te Haahi Tuuhauwiri. A rough translation is

The people/group/tribe that stand swinging/buffeted/shoved around

by and in the wind of the Spirit.

My head, and the sciences of the Earth, ecosystems, and climate change, take me to the Tree. My heart takes me to the Lighthouse. And that is where I swing: between the Lighthouse and the Tree.

QSA projects and climate change

1106 June 2011 No Responses »

Jul 062011

With so much in the news about climate change, it is interesting to know how it is affecting the work of QSA and its project partners. A series of discussions and surveys among project participants in Cambodia, India and Uganda has revealed comments such as needing to dig deeper wells to reach good water supplies, changes to when the rains come, some seeds don’t germinate as well or crops are not as plentiful, new areas are suffering from malaria.

Our partners in Tamil Nadu, South India have been discussing climate change issues with school children as part of a ‘Young Scientist’ program.

These students from Kottikuppam Primary School in Tamil Nadu gave a presentation to younger school students and some adult guests on chemical elements and the periodic table, vitamins and mineral content of everyday food, herbal plants, solar technology, and significant scientists and their inventions. All of this was done via small plays, puppetry, verbal presentations and song, with some scientific experiments to demonstrate various points.

A drawing competition was held after a series of lessons about solar energy, asking the students to draw their ideas of how it could best be used. (See drawings above.)

A year-long program funded by the Australian Government’s Agency for International Development (AusAID) in Tamil Nadu with support from QSA has been looking into alternative power and water sources in a rural community. The program, located in Devikulam Village, close to Nadukuppam, included the development of a rural design centre, with demonstrated environmentally sustainable methods of addressing water and power supply, and new building designs and materials, all suited to a village setting.

A range of educational meetings and workshops have been held for widespread dissemination of these ideas. Also provided for the community have been a range of solar panels, torches and street lights; repair to the whole water system with every tap and pipe tested and repaired when necessary; and provision of a number of toilets and bathrooms to improve sanitation and hygiene standards.

For some families this has meant they have water coming out of a tap close to their home for the first time in six years, even though the plumbing had been there all of the time, but water leaks and blockages to some pipes meant that the water never reached their home — something we take for granted here.

___

Illustrations: Use of solar power to operate pump for irrigation of rice, by K. Divya, 13 years (above left); Solar power hooked to a bullock cart so that people can see at night, by G. Kamesh, 10 years (above right).