Bringing Spiritual Intention to our Meetings

I have for many years now been a fan of Wayne Dwyer, author of the Power of Intention, among many books (and often seen on PBS) Dwyers messages is definitely spiritual, but no explicitly Christian, and so not usually spoken about in Friends Meeting - I would like however to bring part of his Light to our on going struggle to have our Meetings support the Life we want for our Meetings.

First I would say we need to have an explicit dialogue in our Meetings - what do we want?  What do we intend for our communities?  Do we want more young families?  Do we want to keep our youth? Do we want more vital ministries?  Do we want a more active and powerful social witness?  Do we want a deeper sense of community?  Do we want our business meetings to be truly spirit led?  Do we want to know the presence of God more deeply?

Whatever the longing - first we must name it - then we must imagine it fully achieved, the spirit of it - not endlessly lamenting the "not happeningness of it" as Dwyer might joke.  Then in tasting what it might taste like we must walk our selves backward from that image.  What conditions would have to exist to allow or nurture that vision?  Would a certain committee of the Meeting be different?  Would worship be different? Would community be different?  Then peel back another layer:  What committees or other activities prepare us for worship or to learn our practice?  What removes the obstacles in worship?  Do we expect to find the Divine on the bench with us? What practices could we change that would better support our cherished intentions?  What practices do we have because "we always did it this way"... or because when we had a lot of children we did x, or because of the force of personality of 1 Friend now long dead, or because we think this is how "all Quaker" do it, etc. etc?

How can we examine our practices and release those who no longer serve.  A number of years sabbatical years were popular for Meetings- laying down all committees for a year and discerning what was essential and bringing back committees only with intention and renewed purpose.  Do our committees match our numbers?  When does a meeting grown to where Ministry and Oversite should be separated (into Ministry and Worship & Pastoral Care)   And when have we shrunk to where they should be recombined into Ministry and Pastoral Care?

Sometimes this conversation becomes a little bit of a "What comes first the chicken or the egg?" conversation because we imagine we cannot do the work that it would take to make a better meeting without more people and yet we feel that without more people we cannot do that extra work.  Here Friends I would remind us that it is not our work alone to do.  This is where it is good to remember God!  How do we invite in God's help?  How do we remember that God also wants these things we want: deeper worship, greater community, etc.  and in fact if we can notice that it is really arranging the practices of our Meetings to let the Light shine through then it is not simply empty form or endless meetings - it is the joyful work of the Holy One and us as the instruments.

To Give Testimony

Early Friends talked about giving testimony to the Truth.  This meant speaking publicly one’s full passion for the Divine.  Speaking even when it was not welcome.  Carrying such messages as:  "I will not take my hat off to recognize your social status", or "I will not swear on a Bible because my commitment to the Truth is always."

I testified on Thursday, but it was not in this way that early Friends spoke of.  I was with the rest of my 350 Group attending a hearing by The Army Corp of Engineers to hear public comment on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the second dock at Cherry Point, WA.  BP built this pier illegally in 2010; illegally because they never did the environmental impact statement required by the law.  Illegally because Warren Magnuson, the very powerful former Senator of WA, added an amendment to a bill that he intended to protect the fragile ecosystem of Puget Sound (or the Salish Seas as the Native people call it), to protect it forever.  The amendment said it would be illegal to export oil through those waters.  The oil industry has already stretched that for decades by receiving oil from Alaska and shipping it to other parts of the US which is not “exporting” technically.

So the Army Corp which allowed them to build without an EIS was sued for not doing the EIS, lost in court and 8 years later produced one.  The public was coming to comment on the study and request that the Corp impose some sort of regulatory limits on them…all the way from tearing down the pier, to restricting to them to pre-1996 levels of shipping, to basically doing nothing.

Putting on my political activist mindset, not my centered is the spirit mindset, I prepared and gave the following testimony about half way through the 35 people who all testified against the dock.

     “My name is Lynn Fitz-Hugh Coordinator of 350 Seattle with over 900 members.  I have come here today to talk about a run away train, although paradoxically there is also an exploding train in this story.  

     Typically when we think of a run away train we think of one with no intelligent life in charge of it, that is dangerous and headed for disaster.  That run-away train I submit to you is BP.

Over 10 years ago they built this dock without environmental review which they knew was required and they did so because they wanted to.  And even though it took months and months to build no one stopped them and so they got what they wanted.   

     About two years ago the whole petroleum industry decided they wanted to start shipping Bakken Shale on trains after having added highly flammable additives to make the shale more manageable.  The result is we have had exploding trains all over this country.  Again they did not ask anyone because they knew there was no regulation against this because no one had ever thought of such a thing.  So they just did it because it was what they wanted to do.  Now the Petroleum industry wants to do away with the Magnuson Amendment and start shipping export oil out of Puget Sound, from the Second Pier.  

       From my point of view, they have a dock, and they have a refinery and they have a supply of oil, and I am afraid that regardless of the law they will just ship it.  Because that is what they do – they do what they want, what suits them, what makes them profit.  So I am asking you to use all of the regulatory tools at your disposal, all of the things people have asked of you today, to stop this run away train that is BP and to protect life.

     We have become confused in this country about profit.  We have put in on an alter and treat it as if is sacred, as if it is an idol.  We tell regulators not to mess with profit.  But we have forgotten that profit and business were created to serve life, not for life to serve profit.   So I am asking you to act for life and to stop this runaway train.”

It was good testimony; it drew the first applause of the night.  The only bigger applause was for a colleague of mine who got up and said he was awed at how the other good people who came out to testify had been able to be polite and keep their emotions in check…because he said raising his voice:  “I am outraged.  I am outraged that this was clearly illegal then and now and that we are even discussing this.”  He went on yelling and at first I was fine with the moral indignation.  Jesus after all entered the temple of the money changers and turned the tables over in anger and outrage.  Sometimes outrage is the only appropriate response.  But then he turned to attacking them personally (and I watched their faces harden and defend.)  He said that they did not care, that they were not doing their jobs, that they were bad.  The Quaker in me said no to this; no to the denial of that of God in them.  I had from a Quaker mindset carefully tried to appeal to their consciences, seeing them as people with that of God in them that could be reached.

Another colleague of mine took a more nuanced approach to this.  He began by saying:  “Boy hard night to sleep!"   He talked about what a difficult decision they had to make, and how later history would look back and judge us in this period of time for not having done enough and celebrate those who did.  He said how tragic it would be to poison the Sound in the last years of our desperate gasp for oil.  He said "we have to give oil up; it is the only way to survive.  All of us in this room".   He asked them to come down on the right side of history.  And then threw in “and if you cannot find a way to do the right thing in your job then time to quit your job.”   It was admirably true Gandhian  Satyagraha  (Truth force).   A third colleague claimed he would talk for the non-human creatures.  But then really just said his own opinion.

So here several days later I sit in the Silence of Meeting and I realize that I did not center down before hand, I did not ask for the Truth to come through me, to use me.  And that I regret.  I am learning, slowly that I will have to have an anchor committee from my Meeting for this work that I do, or it will not be possible for me to stay “low” as early Friends called it.   Now in this silence I see that was waiting to be said (which I had a small bead on) was:

     "Senator Magnuson, Chief Selth, DeCarte and any other number of our ancestors are turning in their graves right now.  Why?

     Several thousand years ago we made a mistake in our scientific paradigm.  We saw ourselves, as part of that already existing and mistaken paradigm as separate from the earth, and as superior, as ones who could observe, understand and control the natural world around us.   The mess we have all around us is pretty much testimony to the falseness of this idea.  In fact, quantum physics now tells us that the very act of observing something changes it and that we are inextricably bound to all of life; there is no separate us and that.   So the problem we have with these EIS’s are they expect you to study the environmental impact to a site.  But the problem with that is how do we define site when any site is part of an ecosystem?   And an ecosystem is part of a food chain that goes beyond its boundaries and etc etc.

     It is commonly objected that when activists request for climate change to be included in an EIS that the request is “too big” and beyond the scope of the study.   But everyone in this room knows that the truth is that this whole Globe is bound by one atmosphere.  

     So I point all this out to you to point out that beyond this dock which you are asked to examine is ecological damage being done to extract this Bakken Shale and also future Tar Sands, then it is shipped on trains with flammable additives’ extremely prone to explosion and more ecological damage and then it is brought to this illegally built dock, where the owners wish to thwart a 40 year old law put in place as one of the last acts of Senator Magnsuon to protect the fragile Puget Sound forever.   And you are asked to study the environmental impact!  Which impact?  Oh yes the extraction site, the destructive path here is all outside your scope of study and the leak into the Sound isn’t suppose to happen!  Well, I would argue all of life is inextricably bound.  You cannot ignore this damage that is all around it.  Nor can you ignore that in making it possible to ship you unleash the carbon to the atmosphere of this WHOLE joined ecosystem.

     If this ecosystem could speak would the oysters cry out to you and say: ‘We already are failing and dying under the acidification of the ocean; we can bear no more.”  Would the Salmon call to you and say:  “We are already endangered because of the damns on our rivers and the pollution within them; do not make it any harder for us. ”  Would the Cherry Point herring chime in: "We are only 10% of the population we were 30 years ago and a should a spill happen during our laying time our entire future generations would be obliterated."   Would the Plankton at the bottom of the Sound say to you “Kill us friends and you have set your own time clock.  We are the bottom of your food chain.  How will you survive without your food chain?”  Would the birds flying over head say we do not want to be coated in oil."  Would the Sound itself speak saying:  “The ocean breaths for the entire planet taking in c02 and returning oxygen.  Kill us and you will kill yourselves.”  Chief Selth is said to have warned us over 200 years ago of this very greed for money and disregard of the land as leading to our own end.

     Oh I know you are only poor regulators expected by your superiors to keep to very narrow parameters.  You exist in a societal framework that has elevated the right to make profit to the Holy and has said that it is bad to interfere with that.  We have gotten to this hearing because the oil companies are so powerful that they did what they wanted and operate outside the law.  But we are also in a moment of history where we can no longer afford to operate in side that old paradigm which pretends that we are separate from the earth or get to make decisions over it.   We can no longer survive and ignore our connection to it.   So just as the Nuremberg tribunal  judges told the former Nazi officers brought before them, there are some evils so great that even if legal we must not obey them, but must act for higher truths.

     So I am asking you to step away from normal expectations, or typical definitions of an ESI, I am asking you to not focus narrowly but to look at this whole big picture and this moment in history and I am asking you to decide what is really TRUE, to listen to the ecosystem of which you are a part of, to do what really needs to happen here.  I am asking you to tear the pier down or forbid it any export!

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?