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Quaker Kindred Groups
Earthcare activities in U.S. Yearly Meetings

WE ARE STRENGTHENED by the emergence of Earthcare groups operating within many Yearly Meetings in the U.S. (in addition to those who appoint representatives to the QEW Steering Committee).

Baltimore Yearly Meeting
Baltimore Yearly Meetings' environmental work will be posted here in the future. Check back later.

Illinois Yearly Meeting
Click here to see the "Vision Statement" of the Illinois Environmental Concerns Committee, drafted at a January 2006 IYM Leadership Retreat

Lake Erie Yearly Meeting
LEYM will be posted in the future. Please check back later.

New England Yearly Meeting Earthcare Ministries

  • Purpose
    The Earthcare Ministry Committee encourages New England Yearly Meeting and its constituent Monthly Meetings, Quarterly Meetings, committees and staff to actions based on awareness that current rapid destruction of our planet and its fragile ecosystems is diametrically opposed to Quaker beliefs and values, and that the Religious Society of Friends must take an active stand against these trends and practices, inseparable from our other activities.

  • Procedures
    The committee will help Friends to create a collective vision of how we can live peacefully and respectfully in the world, sharing finite goods with other inhabitants. It will work to identify specific actions that can turn this vision into reality, and help monthly meetings and other units of the Yearly Meeting with the national Quaker Earthcare Witness (formerly Friends Committee on Unity with Nature) by sharing information and calls to action. The committee also will encourage a growing awareness of global interconnections among social justice, war, environmental harm, and the emphasis our society places on materialism and consumption.

  • The Sourcebook
    We ask that each Meeting download the sourcebook (~700 KB) and put it in a loose leaf binder, creating your own sections and cover label. Please assign someone from your Meeting to care for the book, and let us know what you use from the book as the year goes on. If you have something to contribute to the book, please e-mail clerk Molly Anderson.

    (Contact: The following web link is currently password protected. User name is "John" and Password is "Woolman".)
    http://www.neym.org/earthcareministry/


Northern Yearly Meeting
Northern Yearly Meeting's environmental projects, such as the Tree Tax Project and the Listening Project, will be posted in the future. Check back later.

Ohio Valley Yearly Meeting
Information on OVYM will be posted in the future. Please check back later.

Pacific Yearly Meeting
PYM Committee on Unity with Nature

  • For more information go to http://members.aol.com/quakernature/
  • [On] our web site... you will find a selection of statements on the concept of "Unity with Nature" and our efforts to re-order our lives toward a more harmonious and Spirit-filled relationship to Creation.
  • One purpose for posting this literature is to enable us to read, comment and add to what has been written on the subject, so that we can come to unity on this "emerging testimony." This is the category under which "Unity with Nature" is found in the latest revision of the book of Faith and Practice of Pacific Yearly Meeting. Will it have fully "emerged" by the time of the next revision 10 or 15 years from now?
  • "What do Quakers mean by a 'testimony'?" you may well ask. A testimony, most Quakers will agree, is one of the essential principles by which we guide the living of our lives. Each Yearly Meeting examines itself every few decades and decides anew what these principles are ... but by and large, they are the same ones Quakers have tried to live by for 350 or so years:
    - Peace - Unity - Simplicity - Equality - Community - Integrity
    From these principles we derive "Advices" - time-tested suggestions for our conduct as individuals and as worshipful communities, and "Queries" - questions to ask ourselves (again, many are the same that Quakers asked in the 1600s: "Do we live in the virtue of that life and power which takes away the occasion for all war?"). Queries are not the same as a catechism; there are no "right" answers. The goal is to remember to ask yourself the question, and the asking will lead you in the direction of the answer.
  • Given the short list of testimonies, the addition of a new one is not undertaken lightly. Is "Unity with Nature" truly (or at least ideally) a principle we believe in with the intensity that we hold the peace testimony? Would we lay down our lives for it? Or is it a variant on the testimony of simplicity, in conjunction with advices on stewardship, and therefore not so new as we think? The 1985 Pacific Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice queries on stewardship include: "How do we cherish and protect the natural world, of which all people are a living part?" Is this what we mean by being in "Unity with Nature?"
  • To help us reach unity on the subject of Unity with Nature, we offer writings by Quakers past and present, from within Pacific Yearly Meeting and elsewhere. The first group comprises material written or compiled by PYM-CUN itself, the second and third statements and quotations by individuals, and the fourth letters and minutes from meetings and other Quaker bodies (including Friends Committee on Unity with Nature, FCUN, which spans the North American continent). The latter, being collective works, will have been seasoned and revised until they convey the "sense of the Meeting" of the publishing organization.
  • Another purpose is to inform each other about ideas and actions that come about because of our sense that unity only within the human species (assuming that is attainable) is still insufficient. There are two new sections to this web site: one on current and prospective service projects undertaken by Young Friends (college age or recent graduates) with the sponsorship of PYM-CUN, and another on assessment of sustainability of Quaker meetings and their members. You may be able to help these new initiatives.
  • After the directory is a text window in which you may suggest other writings to be posted or write comments on any of the postings. Or copy them (see the notice at the bottom of this page) and make changes before e-mailing them back to quakernature@aol.com. Below the text window are suggested readings and links to other web sites for more information about the beliefs and habits of the peculiar people known as Quakers.

    —Eric E. Sabelman, Clerk of Pacific Yearly Meeting Committee on Unity with Nature


Philadelphia Yearly Meeting
One way to consider how Friends can support one another might be to ask who in the Meeting would like more information about a particular suggestion, and then to ask who in the Meeting can provide that information based on their experience with it.
<link here for Philadelphia Yearly Meeting>

Southern Appalachian Yearly Mtg. & Association
The Visioning Process (short and long term goals) How can each of us work toward a greater vision in our lives? And how can ECN connect with those energy points?
<link here for minutes for Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting>

Other Yearly Meetings
Such as: Great Plains, South Central, New York, North Pacific, Southeast, Iowa Conservative, Western, Intermountain, North Carolina Conservative

 



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