Friends have long-standing testimonies
on peace, simplicity, equality, community and integrity. These testimonies
have been proclaimed not in words but by the way Friends have lived out
the details of their lives: in plain speech and plain dress, in refusal
to do hat honor, swear oaths, or gamble; in the avoidance of violence as
a means of dealing with conflict, and in prison ministry and myriad other
ways.
In this century, rapid growth in population, technology and industry have
been accompanied by resource depletion and environmental pollution. These
societal changes lead us, members of Friends Committee on Unity with Nature,
to express our deep concern for ecological sustainability, or sustainable
living, as an emerging testimony, and to seek the Light as to how to carry
it out in the details of daily life.
There is overlap in the meanings and practices of our Quaker testimonies.
FCUN believes that sustainability is a concept that relates to all our testimonies,
relates each of them to the future, and helps to weave them together in
our lives. Peace without equality, or community without sustainability,
or sustainability without simplicity, tend to become meaningless; each enriches
the others in a prophetic way that challenges our work in society and our
care for the earth.
On a spiritual level there is abundance to sustain us: abundance of compassion
and love, abundance of giving, healing, and thanksgiving. On a physical
level, we can start moving toward a recognition of this by working toward
sustainability.
Sustainability as a concept has recently acquired new spiritual depth of
meaning to include a resolve to live in harmony with biological and physical
systems, and to work to create social systems that can enable us to do that.
It includes a sense of connectedness and an understanding of the utter dependence
of human society within the intricate web of life; a passion for environmental
justice and ecological ethics; an understanding of dynamic natural balances
and processes; and a recognition of the limits to growth due to finite resources.
Our concern for sustainability recognizes our responsibility to future generations,
to care for the earth as our won home and the home of all that dwell herein.
We seek a relationship between human beings and the earth that is mutually
enhancing.
Let us ask the Spirit for the clarity to recognize the ways we may be nourishing
the seeds of ecological destruction, and for the strength to make the choices
that will nourish seeds of change, so that sustainability and the integrity
of Creation will be a visible aspect of Friends' testimony everywhere.
We encourage Friends to proceed with Divine guidance, with love, and with
a commitment for action on the above principles in our daily lives. Let
us be called to take meaningful steps to respond to the disproportionate
distribution of the earth's resources; to minimize the effects of cultures
of affluence and over-consumption; and to strive for ecologically and economically
regenerative communities with a creative simplicity -- to be at peace in
this sacred place, our Earth. With humility, we invite Friends and their
meetings to join in this transformation, "Let our lives speak . . .
."
Approved October 12, 1998.
-Friends Committee on Unity with Nature/Sustainability Committee
published in Friends Journal, v. 45 no. 2, Feb., 1999, pp. 26-27. In the same issue, pp. 11-14, see also Keith Helmuth's article "What do we know by how we live?" on John Woolman and the ecological vision.