Britain Yearly Meeting
in Canterbury last year was a historic event for British Quakers. At
that Meeting, Friends from throughout the country
made a commitment
to become a 'low-carbon, sustainable community'. This was largely
inspired by the vision of Pam Lunn, who delivered the annual
Swarthmore Lecture to Yearly Meeting with the title 'Costing not Less
than Everything - Sustainability and Spirituality in challenging
times'.
Over three Thursday
evenings recently, Friends from Sheffield have been watching a DVD of
Pam's lecture, and discussing the themes it raises, so that we can
find ways of continuing to deepen our Meeting's commitment to
becoming a sustainable community.
In the lecture, and the
book that expands on it, Pam Lunn explores images of the Earth as our
'one home', and of humanity and ultimately all life as 'one family'.
The lecture looks at different forms of community life, and what they
can teach us about building communities that are resilient in the
face of hardship. Pam also asks us to consider how we can begin to
prepare ourselves for a future of growing financial, energy, and
resource crises, as the effects of climate change and energy
shortages have an increasing impact on all of us.
In our discussions
after the film screenings, there was a sense of possibility about
engaging the whole Quaker Meeting and the wider community in
practical ways to deepen our relationships and extend our practical
skills. A further meeting is planned for Monday 19th
November, to develop some of these ideas into practical proposals for
the Meeting as a whole, and all are warmly invited to take part in
this discussion.
The decision of Yearly
Meeting at Canterbury, which is now known in Quaker jargon as 'the
Canterbury commitment' (or even more obscurely 'Minute 36') could
mark a turning point for British Quakers, with a potentially
far-reaching influence on our wider society. The model of a
'low-carbon community' is not something new, it is being used by
many neighbourhood groups to support each other in making sustained and
progressive reductions in their energy usage and carbon emissions.
The idea is to work together to keep making year-on-year progress
towards a level of carbon emissions that is potentially sustainable
for everyone on Earth. Although many small groups have been using
this approach for several years, so far as I know Britain Yearly
Meeting in 2011 was the first time anywhere in the world that a whole
religious society has made a collective commitment to become a
national 'low-carbon community'.
That decision was based
on the discernment of Friends from all over the country (every
British Friend being entitled to take part) in the Quaker manner of
vote-less decision-making. It is not a 'top-down' or
centrally-imposed agenda, and the decision will not be translated
into action without the willing, creative participation of local
Meetings throughout the country. Nevertheless, many Friends (and many
Meetings) have significant reservations about the idea of a
collective commitment to 'sustainability', a word which is well on
the way to becoming a meaningless jargon term with little spiritual
or imaginative resonance.
For me, the 'Canterbury
Commitment' is a challenge to Friends to move together towards living
in a right relationship with the Earth our home, and the family of
living beings. Perhaps this is the challenge of our times for the
generation who are alive now, in an era of continuing ecological
crisis.
As Friends we are proud
of the collective action we have sometimes undertaken in the past,
most famously our contribution to the abolition of slavery. Friends
such as
John Woolman laboured for decades with their fellow Quakers,
many of them slave-holders, to develop a shared sense of concern for
establishing a right relationship with the African Americans who had
been sold or born into slavery. Once the Religious Society of Friends
was finally rid of the corrupting influence of slave-holding within
its own community, it was freed to become a powerful influence for
the abolition of slavery throughout the world.
Yearly Meeting in 2011
challenged our generation to a similar deep examination of our
relationship to the 'community of all beings', at a time of
existential crisis for our industrial civilization and our own, and
very many other, species. If Quakers can find ways of living together
that move us away from destructive exploitation of natural systems,
and towards a right relationship with the Earth our home, perhaps we
will also become a 'leaven' that can eventually influence nations and
governments.
If Friends at
Canterbury discerned rightly, and this is genuinely a calling that is
laid on us as Quakers in this generation, then we have a privileged
opportunity to respond, not out of a sense of guilt or duty, but
joyfully with the guidance and power of the Spirit that is leading
us.
Both the book and
DVD of Pam Lunn's Swarthmore Lecture are available to borrow from the
Sheffield Central Meeting House Library. Pam also writes a regular blog
here.
