Stephen C. Gates Several years ago, I started a regenerative vegetable garden in the sunniest place on my property. Little did I know then that the garden, immediately next to the street, would lead to what I now understand to be...
Amanda Franklin In 2019, I had a spiritual crisis stemming from an overpowering visceral realization of climate change. I changed our family’s diet, eliminating nearly all animal products (except eggs: thank God for not requiring this baker to go that far.) In summer...
Friends gathered in October at Powell House and via Zoom for the QEW Fall Gathering. Held under the weight of our planetary crisis, the weekend was anchored by a powerful and essential theme: Common Ground. It was a time of deep spiritual grounding and clear...
Unintentional Earthcare: Finding Quaker Activism in the Simple Life Jonny Costello For the past two months, I’ve been doing outreach for the Quaker Earth Action Map. I’ve sent many emails, made many phone calls, left many voicemails, and had the pleasure of speaking...
Keith Runyan When Donald Trump won the U.S. presidency, it was clear the political landscape for climate action had shifted. As the new General Secretary of Quaker Earthcare Witness, I felt a responsibility to help mobilize the Quaker community to protect what...
Claude Leboeuf They seemed to be powerful and majestic Truth is, they were petty and spiteful Truth was frightening to them It made them feel cold and empty They used beautiful sounding lies To hide it from other people The lies were like a blanket Making them warm...
Richard Grossman At the Spring Gathering, speaker Daniel Wahl mentioned “cohousing”. That might be a new word for some Friends, so I thought I would write a bit about my wife’s and my experience after living in a cohousing community for a quarter century....
by Lena Parker, Jess Hobbs Pifer, Ross Brubeck, and Nathan Shroyer Last May, Friends walked 276 miles and canoed five from Flushing, Queens, to Washington, D.C., inspired by the Flushing Remonstance, a 1657 document written not by Quakers, but for Quakers, during a...
By Climate Action Committee of the Radnor Quaker Meeting As Quakers, we’re called to notice how prophetic witness influences our lives. What is prophetic witness? It’s the idea that the spirit may inspire us to recognize an injustice, or to seek what is good, just,...
Poems by Lee Stark 01 In their garden, I learned to splay the roots against their will, ideally with wet fingers but with a knife if they did not want to leave. This would stop the entire plant from bursting forth like a champagne cork, they said, when the ground...
by Sara Jolena Wolcott My grandmother loved moss. We would go on long walks together (well, I thought they were long, as an 9 year old), and look at the lichen on trees together with great delight. Upon a magnificent vista, a special clearing, or a Great Old Tree,...
Passages through the Valley of Dry Bones By Allen McGrew Representative to Quaker Earthcare Witness from Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting Beneath the monotone gray skies of February, before the Cardinal’s first song or the muskrat emerges from its winter den, as I crunch...
Photo by Kathy Barnhart Bathing in wood air by Pamela Haines We all know that a walk in the woods refreshes– great trees, bird calls and breezes pungent scents of earth and pine. Yet our senses fail to name the greater forces here at work. Mushroom...
Simplicity: A Call to Return to Unity and Harmony With Earth and Its Inhabitants By SJM and Lee Hall Climate Action Committee, Radnor Quaker Meeting It’s often said that it takes more muscles to frown than to smile. There is an inherent simplicity and ease in smiling....
A Fight for the Heart of the Everglades: The EAA Reservoir and Big Sugar by Scott Virgin Growing up amidst the ecosystems of South Florida is a blessing. Exploring mangrove channels, spearfishing coral reefs, climbing coastal islands, hammocks, and swamps, and...
The Un-Quaker Practices of TIAA by Laura Hulbert Imagine you smell bleach when you take your class out to the school yard. It’s not a faint smell. The tag-players are short of breath. The kids on the monkey bars are coughing and sneezing, and one girl is dry heaving...
Image by Kathy Barnhart Freeing Ourselves From Possessions By Tom Small If you want to make small changes, change the way you do things. If you want to make major changes, change the way you see things. –Gabe Brown, quoting Don Campbell Burley Coulter is, to...
Last month, Hawaiʻi officials announced a groundbreaking legal settlement to fully decarbonize Hawaiʻi’s transportation system by 2045. Thirteen youths from across Hawaiʻi brought the case in June 2022, arguing that their state’s transportation policies and practices...
This past spring, Quaker Earthcare Witness hosted a vibrant and deeply engaging book group focused on Jennie Ratcliffe’s transformative book, Nothing Lowly in the Universe. From February through May 2024, participants gathered every other Monday to delve into the...
By Nora Lisette Cooke In June 2022, I was in a house in Calvisson, France, house sitting for local Friends who lived just down the road from the Maison Quaker, where my parents were the amis-résidents (Friends in Residence). I had been on the Zoom call for close to...