Climate Change: an update on the Emporer's New Clothes.

In 2007 when I first heard the movie: The Inconvenient Truth as someone with a political science degree what I was immediately struck by was the implications not stated: that if we were going to have sea rise and drought that we would have mass refugees and wars over resources like water and fertile land- in short death and suffering on a large scale.   I have been working on climate issues steadily ever since, but still even as I watched the carbon inching up I have been waiting for it the "future" human impacts.

I am also aware that the corporate controlled media has been doing an amazing cover-up on climate change. It is is amazing how you can impact public awareness about something by simply NOT talking about it. Naomi Klein reports that in all of 2010 the 3 major networks did a total of 32 stories on climate change.  Let's face it, just about any gossip about a movie star gets more coverage than that.  I sort of scream at my tv and radio in despair as they report on the drought in the SW and the forest fires, telling how bad they are but without ever a mention of climate change.  It is like some bad episode of the Emperor's New Clothes.  However, since I read alternative media and mostly stuff about climate change, I did think that when the mass deaths started happening from climate change I would know.

I noted the deaths from the hurricane's and the stubborn insistence by some that no single hurricane can be attributed to climate change. I noted also the absence of talking about increased frequency or higher high water marks of these hurricanes.  I noted the death's from fires and earthquakes and tsunami's  and again the line "none can be attributed specifically to climate change as these occur naturally". I was reminded of the tobacco companies line for so many years that cancer could not be attributed to smoking since it has many different causes, and how years later we would learn that they suppressed for decades the studies that did link smoking to lung cancer.  Even once it was linked, they argued that a particular case of lung cancer could not be linked to smoking.   No not if we continue to ignore all that we know- then we will indeed be vulnerable forever to the "whims of the Gods".

I noted with my usual frustration that the deaths of hurricane Sandy were far more real and concerning to Americans than the deaths of the people of Haiti when their country was struck.   Are the lives of people far away or with brown skin or with not much of a house to begin with actually less valuable to us than mostly white strangers who live in far better houses in our own country?  I drove through parts of WA where miles and miles of "evergreens" are brown and dying because the beetles are no longer killed by winter frost and are infesting the trees and killing them.   I cursed the media for not covering that at all.

But still I was waiting for the reports of climate wars, ones caused by refugee influxes, or fighting over scarce water or food during drought.   But the ones I knew about were caused (so I believe) by religious differences, ethnic/tribal infighting, over throws of dictators, etc.   I like most Americans had bought the explanation of "Arab Spring" as a wonderful uprising of democracy - people saying enough to oppressive rulers, all started by a common food cart peddler immolating himself in protest. Then I watched The Years of Living Dangerously the series on climate change that has been playing on cable's Show Time channel.  

First in one episode they communicated the idea that the Syrian war has actually taken place because after the worst drought in years the starving farmers, having gotten no relief from the government, rose up in arms. Then in a later episode it was explained that the Egyptian revolt, televised from Tahrir Square over throwing President Murbarak, also presented as the end of a 30 year dictatorship, in fact corresponded to a year in which world wide droughts had so reduced the wheat available for import to Egyptians that it had left the poor in Egypt literally without bread.  In fact, I remember listening to an NPR story on the radio where they were interviewing farmers in the Midwest whose whole crop had failed and then a policy person who explained that American would feel little impact in grocery costs because the US produced so much food that it would simply reduce our exports.  I remember thinking then:  "Well that is not without impact, the impact is simply being exported".

But now slowly as I listened to this episode of The Years of Living Dangerously, it penetrated:  "People were fighting as result of climate caused droughts leading to famine".  Oh yes, we can celebrate if crisis' are bringing down governments that do not care about their people....but the Climate Wars have begun. Suddenly I realized that like the people watching the parade with a naked Emperor in it, that it had taken someone shouting out "he has no clothes"  ("Or it is a Climate War") for me to finally see what my brain has already known.   Too slowly grock the obvious because the power's that be have been telling another story; the one they wanted me to believe and not the Truth.

Quaker's have a long tradition of "speaking truth to power" and speaking truth to powerful people when it is not convenient.   So Friends who are you going to speak the truth too about the already arrived global warming?  How are you going to deliver the truth?  How will the truth change you? and How will you let your life speak?

Held in the Light - a poem

Dear Comforter, Source of all Light, hold us in our pain

Friends please hold me in the Light as I interview for this Job.

Friends hold my beloved in the Light as he is operated upon on Monday.

Hold this beloved one in Light and give the strength to overcome addiction and turn from it.

Oh God Hold me in the Light as I follow your lead and risk to be faithful.

Hold my parent, my child, my friend in the Light as they lie dying.

In the Light we are held by you all as we broken heartedly grieve.

Friends hold me in the Light as I find strength to speak truth to power.

Hold us in Light as we give birth to new beginnings.


Hallelujah Holy One celebrate with us!

Thank you Creator for the birth of this new life!

Thank you for the blessing of meaningful work and a place to do this work.

I'm grateful for this new love.

What a blessing to watch the joy and the unfolding of our children's lives.

Thank you for the kindness of the stranger today, and for the chance to be that kind stranger.

Thank you Lord for this life well lived, even as it parts from us we are grateful.

Oh Light, thank you for your Presence in our every passing moment!

Lynn Fitz-Hugh
5/10/2014

Releasing Ministers

The March issue of Friends Journal was dedicated to Funding Ministry.  Even the two words together were a little odd for me because Funding is a worldly term not a spiritual one.  But as I was reading along I enjoyed the modern term of "bivocational ministry" and found it helpful, and thought when I saw the second title that it would be about "released ministries".  I really liked the idea of using computer technology and crowd funding to achieve the OLD idea of releasing Friends.  However, I was very surprised that the article actually did not talk about the traditional method of releasing Friends to ministry, but only about the modern problem of no funding.  As I continued to read I started to feel a state of disbelief  "Oh my Gosh is no one going to say it?  Is this state of Quakerism today?  Have we forgotten our own traditions for releasing ministers".  I was relieved when the last article at least touched on it.

So Friends we had a rich tradition in the first 100 to 150 years of Quakerism of releasing Friends in ministry.  What this meant was a Friend would bring a leading to Meeting for discernment, if their clearness committee found them clear and the Meeting united in confirming the leading as coming from God, then the Meeting also embraced the support of this leading.  So for example if someone was lead to travel to an adjoining Yearly Meeting or even another country to minister to Friends there about how faithfully we were testifying to "A Gospel of plainness, staying low and not going to vanity".  Then the meeting provided both 1 or 2 elders to travel with the minister to assure that they stayed grounded and did not outrun their light, but the meeting also provided financial support.  What this meant was providing for their travel and board costs that were not provided for by Meetings they visited.  Some times it meant providing financial assistance to the family left behind or help with child care.  (Since many Friends were farmers often the spouse who remained behind could continue to provide financially as long as they got help from other Friends at key points in the growing cycle.)  But the commitment was clear that the member with the leading and their family were not to go with unmet needs.   It would seem that the articles in this issue point to the fact that we currently live much more self-sufficient not community oriented lives which means we are not providing this kind of support to our ministers.

Another confusion for me throughout the issue was the word ministry seemed to be almost exclusively be being used to apply to what I would call pastoral ministry, either a religious vocal ministry or pastor care for our meetings themselves, serving a Meetings needs directly.  This is certainly a kind of ministry and one that non-programed Friends have much conflicted feelings about because in our split with programmed Friends this was one clear and noticeable difference.   They identified A pastor and paid that person.  But there is another kind of ministry, it is one of leading and is often out into the world on behalf of one of our testimonies.  It is a ministry for sure to the Truth as that person is lead, but it is not pastoral.  I would offer John Woolman as perhaps the greatest example of this.  He was passionately led on the slavery issue and spoke to Friends and non-Friends alike on this issue.

So in regards to the first kind of ministry: pastor ministry I think we need to get over ourselves and our history and decide to compensate fairly as valued employees those Friends who serve us in our Meetings and Quaker Organizations doing work that we value.  But in regard to the second type of ministry: a lead ministry I would like us to remember our own traditions of "releasing Friends".   As we enter into a time of environmental collapse many Friends maybe called to minister to our societal crisis in ways that will be full time work.  I hope that we can unite that they are indeed carrying a calling that we have joined with and just as they may sacrifice a better paying job or free time that others in the meeting sacrifice some comfort to put additional money into the "funds for suffering" (which is what Friends use to call the separate fund kept to support Friends and their family who were in jail for their witness or traveling under a leading.)  The idea here is that is a separate and additional obligation than our monthly tithe to the Meeting.

I would recommend to Friends the long out of print book: Charity Cook: A Liberated Woman by Algie Newlin Friends United Press.  This book describes the released traveling ministry of Charity Cook who lived in the 1700's and was the mother of 11 Children. I would also share that shortly after I graduated college I shared with Elders in my Meeting the passionate desire I felt to speak about peace, social justice and simplicity to others.  My Elders told me "this is a leading" and got a clearness committee for me, and a letter to my Yearly Meeting (Illinois Yearly Meeting) where my leading was brought to and confirmed by the whole body of the Yearly Meeting.  The entire small yearly Meeting paid into a sufferings fund for a year while I traveled to every Meeting in our Yearly Meeting speaking both to each Meeting and to outside engagements that they arranged while I was there.  I chose because of my ministry about simplicity and social justice to live at minimum wage, but none the less all of my living costs and travel costs were covered during that year.  I would like Friends to not think this is a quaint footnote of our historic experience, but that our history can help us, combined with modern tools like crowd sourcing, to release Friends today to minister to the urgent needs of our suffering world, and that those of us not actively engaged in such a ministry can see ourselves bound in community and shared testimony to the support of those lead ministries of other Friends.

Camo Eggs

Recently I was standing in the grocery store and I was drawn to a display that had plastic Easter Eggs for sale.  I was drawn to some one's that had been produced to look like Chocolate with frosting on it.  But then to my horror I discovered that next to it were packages of ....yes Camo Eggs.  I actually felt a little nauseous. I have unfortunately gotten use to that ever since the Iraq war started that people dress their little boys in cameo clothing.  (Really it was not common before that, but we have probably lost site of that in the mean time.)  And I have resigned myself for decades to some men walking around as if they are on a battle field.  I was pretty upset the first time I saw pink cameo outfits for girls (but after all we have to start preparing a certain number of girls to also serve in the all volunteer military!)

But for me the cameo eggs are over the line.  Whether you celebrate Easter as the resurrection of Christ or as a Pagan celebration of spring/new life/fertility....Easter is a celebration of life overcoming death.  It is a fun time for small children.  So the idea that someone would turn an egg, itself a symbol of new life, into a grenade like symbol of death and destruction is more perverse than I can really give words to!

We are living in times where that which is sacred is regularly under threat and frequently defiled.  From the pollution of earth air and water, to the unsustainable mining of every resource from oil, to nickel, to the destruction of our fundamental public support structures like the post office and the public schools.  It is important for us to name the sacred and to act in its defense.

It's not always clear what to do to defend the sacred.  Does it make any difference these words I type and post on a small blog?  Hard to say.  I just know I have to name the profane so that we do not begin to find it normal and unobjectionable.  The woman who cried over the dead Jesus did not do it to be effective.  They did it because they were heartbroken.  The resurrection was unexpected; the transformation that comes unbidden.  I have to focus very hard here on the idea of the egg breaking open to sweet candy insides, to the idea of resurrection that Life overcometh even that which looks like sure death, and the idea of reclaiming the sacred from that which is defiled.

Which One are You?

You are perhaps familiar with the kind of Bible study which asks us to take a particular story in the Bible and imagine that we are each of the individuals in the story to more deeply understand the story.  So for example, in Luke 10 we are asked to consider what it is like to be Mary enjoying having Jesus in her home and hanging on his every word and what it is like to be Martha working hard in the kitchen to make everything perfect for a meal with Jesus, but resentful of doing all the work.  And we are asked to think what it is like to be Jesus observing these two sisters, and telling Martha to concentrate on what is important.  (So then male person how does food get on the table?)

This weekend I went to a symposium entitled Transformation without Apocalypse.  ( A complete aside here would be my complete horror at realizing that there are people who actually welcoming our planet heading over the climate change cliff because they believe this is the way to the Apocalypse and second coming.  I cannot believe that a loving God would ever want us to commit planetary Genocide!) The symposium was about Climate Change and had speakers: Timothy DeChristopher, Joanna Macy, Kathleen Dean Moore, Sarah Van Gelder, Ursula LeGuinn, etc.  A true smorgasbord for the soul.

If you do not know who Timothy DeChristopher is, he is a young man who at the end of the Bush Presidency attended an auction in UT where beautiful public lands were being auctioned off to be mined.  He entered the auction with no particular plan in place but then was asked if he was there to bid, so accepted a bidding paddle (number 70).  He saw a woman he knew from his church at the back of the room, and she began to cry at the sadness of all these lands being destroyed.  Suddenly Timothy began to bid.   Ultimately he won 22,000 acres of land for 1.8 million dollars!  The only thing was he did not own 1.8 million dollars and bidding without the ability to pay is a federal felony for which he was arrested and released on bail. Ultimately he was convicted of two felony counts and sentenced to two years in jail.  The incoming Obama administration investigated and found the auctions had been illegal because the proper environmental impact statements had not been done.  Bush officials were simply rushing to sell the lands while they still could.  The land therefore that Timothy bid on was safe forever.  The Obama administration did not, however, stop his prosecution.  Timothy is considered by many to be a climate hero and in fact a very moving movie entitled Bidder 70 has been done about his story.  I recommend it if this story intrigues you.

But I find myself asking those Bible Study questions:  What would it be like to be one of the other bidders in the room, sent by oil companies to buy land to exploit?  Would you feel anything about your task?  Or only concern for succeeding and winning favor in your company?  What would you feel about this mysterious bidder that keeps winning parcel after parcel seemingly from a bottomless purse?  What would it be like to be the auctioneer?  Do you ever feel bad about what is being sold?  Or have you trained yourself to have no feelings about that which is sold because it is just a job?

What would it be like to be the weeping woman who comes in feeling powerless, only able to be witness to the destruction of the holy?  What would you feel as you recognize Timothy and see him begin to bid?  Are your prayers answered?  How do you feel as they take him away in handcuffs?  Do you feel guilty....like the famous exchange between Thoreau and Emerson where Emerson comes to visit Thoreau in jail for not paying his war taxes.  Emerson asking "David what are you doing in here?"  and Thoreau responds:  "Henry, what are you doing out there?"  Do you weeping woman wonder what you are doing out there free on the street as they take away Timothy who has acted upon your pain?

What does it feel like to be Timothy drawn to this troubling situation, suddenly seeing an action he can take?  Lead by God? Lead by Conscience? Taking an action that will change his life forever? And if all of these people had been listening, like in a Meeting for worship, where was the Creator's voice in the room?  Was The Holy One speaking to one or all of these characters?  Does God speak through a woman's tears or a spontaneous moment of inspiration?

At the symposium this past weekend Timothy's call was for us to tell the truth more plainly, to not white wash the truth of how bad our situation is.  He also said that we will all have to make sacrifices, that we cannot fight Climate Change and live the same comfortable lives we have been living.  Kathleen Dean Moore who spoke after him made a slightly different and yet profound addition to this point.  She said:  "People don't want to have to make sacrifices to save the climate, and yet what they are overlooking is that we are already making sacrifices; huge unacceptable sacrifices.  We are in the process of sacrificing a liveable planet; we are sacrificing future generations lives.  So really the question is which sacrifices do we want to make?"

So which person are you?  The auctioneer, the other bidders living in business as usual?  Or are you the weeping woman, sad but powerless, or are you Timothy DeChristopher, willing to take life changing actions?
Which sacrifices are you willing to make?

Diary of a Quaker Climate Activist

I have this goal to post on both my blogs once a month.  But here it is 3 and half hours before the end of the month, and why have I not written a post yet?  Because as a Quaker all of the testimony's directly interconnect with Climate Change.  (An idea already expressed by Eileen Flanagan.)  How can one embrace the Peace Testimony when Climate change will bring wars over water and food?  How can one embrace the testimony on Equality when the first world has created carbon pollution which is creating severe drought and or flooding in the poorest countries in the world.  How can one embrace simplicity while living in the country with the highest carbon foot print in the world (who are we kidding half of China's is ours as they produce our products.)?  How is there integrity in remaining quiet in the face of such a huge threat to all life on the planet?  There are not words for how this violates a testimony on Stewardship!  Thus for all these reasons and many more I have been a climate activist for the last 7 years.

This month past week I have not been able to write because I was networking with other climate organizations and  attending a potluck for people who have signed the CREDO Pledge of Resistance. 76,000 some Americans have signed this Pledge saying that if the State Dept came out recommending that Obama approve the XL pipeline that they would commit civil disobedience to send a loud message to the President:  "No on XL".  The president has said repeatedly he won't approve it if it will contribute to climate change, and yet he approved the southern leg which last week started pumping it's evil and plentiful load to the Gulf Coast to be exported.  We will risk an oil spill and we will incur the carbon in our atmosphere, but we will not get that oil.  He could have said NO to this pipeline yet we waits for reports.  It does not look promising.  Today the State Dept came out with their second highly flawed environmental study within a year's time.  They again claim that there will not be "significant" environmental impacts ALONG the pipeline.  This is such a strange and narrow sense of the environment that joins us as inhabitants of this planet.  They reluctantly admit because there is no way around it that it will effect GHG emissons.   So it seems that in 90 days when the public comment period comment period ends that about 17,600 Americans will be getting arrested in cities all around this country!

I have also not been writing because last Sunday the 350Seattle chapter I helped to start (last May) held a demonstration on Sunday on the railroad tracks.  We were symbolically blocking the oil trains that are being planned to travel through downtown Seattle - 24 a week!  Because the pipelines were not working or approved yet the oil companies started shipping Bakken Shale on them about a year ago.  In the last 9 months 6, yes 6, trains have exploded.  In one case in the center of a small town in Canada killing 47 people! This shale which has been fracked, from deep within the earth's core, has unstable gases in it which have now been found to easily explode at over 73 degrees!  These oil trains are suppose to go through a tunnel that travels beneath our downtown core and two blocks from our huge sports stadium which can hold 72,000 people!  That is the stadium that you can see in the background of this photo:

That night the HUB (steering committee) of our 350 group met in my living room for a potluck and we told stories of civil disobedience to each other.  We were planning a panel for later in Feb on civil disobedience to help people think about this...because between the XL pipeline and the exploding oil trains and the dirty coal trains also shipping through Seattle (2 went by during our hour long demonstration!) there are a lot of reasons to get arrested these days.  There were a lot of things behind my Hat Honor post of last month where I asked people what they cared deeply enough about to be commit Holy Obedience.

On Wed we met again to plan the general 350 meeting we will have this coming Wed, and the meeting we will have with the newly elected Mayor to ask him to please stop the oil trains and coal trains coming through Seattle and to complete the job, started by our previous Mayor of divesting Seattle's funds from investments in fossil fuel.

Today all I thought I was going to do was go to Seattle's local rally against TPP - a national Day of Action. 350 Seattle has had a work group against the TransPacific Partnership since we started.  While TPP is terrible for labor, for health, for internet neutrality, for intellectual property, democratic sovereignty and yes the environment in general....It is killer for climate change.   If we don't stop TPP we might as well not fight all the things above.  Why do I say this?  Because under the Investor Rights chapter, released to Wikileaks because the whole thing has been negotiated in secret and not even released to Congress who will vote on whether to "fast track it", (meaning up or down vote no amendments on a trade agreement they cannot see), we see a huge corporate power grab taking place.  Just like under NAFTA corporations can sue to a court made up of three judges (with higher standing than any countries own courts) and claim that their "investor rights" (the right to profit!) is being violated by laws (environmental, labor or privacy) of that country!  So even if XL pipeline is not approved, if the TPP goes through, then Morgan Stanley can sue in this court and win the right to build the pipeline, and fracking companies can sue and on and on ....it is nightmare.  So I went to a great demonstration today that brought together union people, environmentalists, children, retired people, people of color, health care workers, etc.  If nothing else the fights for Climate Justice are uniting people who have fought their battle's separately for years.

I thought that demo and writing this blog was all I would do today.  But then the State Dept came out today with its unfortunate ruling and kinda put a lot of stuff on my calendar for the next 100 days.  It means we will have a big demonstration on Monday demanding Obama say No on XL.  People all around the country will be demonstrating Monday.  It also means I will be at an emergency meeting tomorrow to plan it.  Sunday I will not get to go to my Meeting.  I will be at the local Unitarian Church giving a talk on Climate Change scheduled long ago...and again at another church this Thurs.

I keep thinking that things will slow down after this thing or that.  But that does not seem to be the case.  But my nightly prayer for years has been that we as a people will make good choices about climate change and that God will make good use of me.  Some people say they don't know what to do about climate change.  That has not been my experience, I find that if you open yourself there are more than enough things to do about it.

Peace,
Lynn

Hat Honor

It is fairly well known among Quaker's that early Friends refused to doff their hat to those of higher class an offense for which one could be jailed. Friends did this, as well as using differently thee and thou, as a way of making the point that we are Children of God and equal in the Creator's eyes.

I think that mostly modern Friends think of this as another cool or exemplary piece of Quaker history.  However, I wonder how many of us have stopped to actually feel out what this really would be like.  Imagine standing in front of someone who in these modern times has way more status than you and then imagine deliberately doing something which you know will offend them, and in fact will probably get you arrested.  Yeah, you may notice as do I, that this takes some nerve!

Actually it takes faith.  It means that in a non-creedal, non-doctrinaire way that one takes action not as an expected ritual action, but as active witness to a Holy One that you are in active communion with.  I am reminded of the feelings I had while taking part in an active civil disobedience on the White House lawn during the Reagan administration.  I had felt lead to this action and felt engulfed in Light in a most intense way as we sat praying on the lawn.  It felt literally sort of amusing to me when the secret service men read us an ordinance against sitting on the law and ordered us to leave.  I was amused that mere mortal men thought they had any power over me as I sat literally covered in Divine Light.  It seems to me that in the Peace Testimony when it says "we act in the Life and Power that takes away the occasion of all war" that it is this same intense Life and Power that they are describing.  And I think that when early Friends refused to doff their hats that they were faithful to that same Presence.....otherwise it was just a lot of nerve!

Recently I was at an action that was some thing between a demonstration/street theater and an arrestable act of civil disobedience.  A group of twenty entered Ameritrade bank which has funded the XL pipeline and inflated an pipeline replica (made of black garbage bags) and read a declaration condemning the bank for its part in destruction of life as we know it on this planet and imploring it to stop.  One person had to keep reading while the security guard literally jumped up and down in his face, while another person had to try to reason with the guard asking for time to finish reading.  The rest of us sang or chanted to distract or emphasize the point and we all left before the police arrived (although standing out side legally protesting as they arrived and left.)  But as the reader continued to read while the bank manager freaked out I was reminded of hat honor.

On one level if you think of it as getting arrested for not taking your hat off it seems ridiculous.  On another level if you think of it as making the point that all people are equal it is an extremely important point to make where ever that arises.  And yet today, in the totally non-arrestable action of simply what we buy and what we don't buy we are confronted with: bananas, teas, coffees, sugars and chocolates which are planted and harvested instead of food for the citizenry in the countries that provide them to us for dirt cheep.  Also our chocolate and the metals mined for our cell phones are made by child labor (sometimes slave labor) and yet we still buy these items.

We read in the papers the slow chipping away of our civil liberties, our right to privacy, workers rights, etc.  Are any of these important to us on  a level of our testimony's for social justice?  Corporations continue to heat our planet in a thousands ways.  What feels important enough to you to stand your ground for?  To not doff your hat for?  To risk arrest for?  For what will you be Holy Obedient?