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Greetings , from Quaker Earthcare Witness!
We have heard from many of you in Friends meetings across North America that you would like to receive Earthcare resources and stories to share with your meetings. This bi-monthly enewsletter is our answer to your requests. The links that follow will take you to environmental news and upcoming events, opportunities for your meeting to get involved with Earthcare initiatives, and stories you can use to inspire or rejuvenate your meeting’s Earthcare effort.
The most important items you’ll read in this newsletter will come from you. We’d love to receive and share stories, activities, projects, and stirrings from your local meeting. In this way we can lift up the good efforts Friends are making for Earth and inspire and encourage each other along the way.
We hope you enjoy this inaugural issue of QEW's Resources for Earthcare Action. We’d love to receive your feedback to help us improve future issues. To share your comments, links, stories, or announcements, please email Katherine at katherine@quakerearthcare.org.
An Opening Reflection
 We invite you to consider deeply along with us the opening paragraph from the Kabarak Call for Peace and Ecojustice:
"In past times God’s Creation restored itself. Now humanity dominates, our growing population consuming more resources than nature can replace.We must change, we must become careful stewards of all life. Earthcare unites traditional Quaker testimonies: peace, equality, simplicity, love, integrity, and justice. Jesus said, “As you have done unto the least… you have done unto me”. We are called to work for the peaceable Kingdom of God on the whole earth, in right sharing with all peoples. However few our numbers, we are called to be the salt that flavours and preserves, to be a light in the darkness of greed and destruction."
News & Updates
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Friends Speak Out: Australia Yearly Meeting Climate Change Minute & QEW Response. Our concerns for Earth and our leadings about climate change ask each of us to reflect on the impact we’re having on our planet and be open to the possibility for individual and corporate change. In late January, Australia Yearly Meeting called on leaders to make climate change a key issue in the upcoming federal election. As they gathered in Canberra in January, Australian Friends affirmed that “lasting peace can no longer be contemplated in isolation from the significant ecological and environmental challenges facing the world today and in the future.” Read the news release from the National Council of Churches in Australia here: http://www.ncca.org.au/home/news/709--quakers-want-climate-change-action-as-nation-burns
In response to this inspiring action from Australia Yearly Meeting, QEW has formed an ad hoc committee to draft a minute for QEW, which we hope will stimulate climate-change minutes and missives from your yearly and monthly meetings. So stay tuned for developments a little closer to home and perhaps take this time to begin some of your own reflection and discussion in anticipation.
Opportunities: Engage & Connect
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 FCNL Spring Lobby Weekend: March 16-19, 2013. Friends Committee on National Legislation invites you to Washington, DC, for Spring Lobby Weekend, “From Protest to Policy Change in 2013,” March 16-19. The weekend will include a full day of briefings from members of Congress and policy experts, and offer seminars on how you can best lobby your elected representatives to keep climate change on the national agenda and push toward real and positive change. Click here to find out more about the event and watch videos from FCNL on “Why You Need to Come.” Additionally, this FCNL link provides excellent stimulus for meeting and group discussion of the role of faith communities in the political, educational, moral, and spiritual dimensions of climate change: http://fcnl.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/climate-change-is-the-slavery-issue-of-the-twenty-first-century/
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Join Us this Summer in Colorado! The spring QEW Steering Committee meeting will be hosted by Boulder Friends Meeting from June 27 through June 30, 2013, and we hope you will join us as we gather, reconnect, share stories, conduct business, and get to know local Friends. Our spring meeting in Boulder will be held just prior to the Friends General Conference gathering June 30 through July 6 at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley, Colorado. For more about the FGC gathering, click here. We will post information and registration links for the QEW Steering Committee meeting on our webpage and Facebook when it becomes available.
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 Apply for a QEW Mini-Grant. QEW Mini-Grants provide matching grants of $350 to Quaker meetings and their partners who want to create a project that improves their environment. In 2011, QEW Mini-Grants funded a tree planting project in El Alto, Bolivia; the development of a native garden at Miami Monthly Meeting (Miami, FL); a rain garden in Sarasota Springs, New York; a drip irrigation system in Vancouver, British Columbia; LED lighting for the West Virginia Friends Wilderness Center; and sericulture/apiary for the Kenya Munyu Youth Group. Over the years, we’ve participated in the support of projects ranging from nature education projects among Friends to wild lands restoration to the installation of new water-conserving toilets. Does your meeting have an Earthcare project you’d love to do? Click here to read project guidelines and download the QEW Mini-Grants 2013 application.
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Share Your Meetings’ Stories. Climate change and its relationships with other global and local concerns will be the theme of the QEW’s fall meeting in Chicago in October 2013. We want to hear your stories! Please send along stories about the ways your monthly meeting and yearly meeting are engaging the issue of climate change and share information about any resulting minutes, programs, and projects you’ve developed. Your stories will encourage Friends and perhaps inspire future BeFriending Creation articles! Here’s an excellent statement from Britain Yearly Meeting to inspire you, with links to suggested and ongoing projects by monthly meetings: http://www.quaker.org.uk/quaker-response-crisis-climate-change
Resources to Share: Living Our Testimonies
Pamphlets from Quaker Institute for the Future
Quaker Institute for the Future brings Friends’ practice of communal discernment into conversation with active research, and has produced a number of research pamphlets in key areas of Earthcare concern among Friends. You can read the content of the following templates online and also purchase print copies for your meeting if you like:
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 Beyond the Growth Dilemma: Toward an Ecologically Integrated Economy, by Growth Dilemma Project of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and Quaker Institute for the Future; Ed Dreby and Judy Lumb, Editors (October 2012)
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It’s the Economy, Friends: Understanding the Growth Dilemma, by Growth Dilemma Project of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting and Quaker Institute for the Future; Ed Dreby, Keith Helmuth, and Margaret Mansfield, Editors (May 2012)
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How Does Societal Transformation Happen?, by Leonard Joy (October 2011)
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Genetically Modified Crops: Promises, Perils, and the Need for Public Policy, by Anne Mitchell with Pinayur Rajagopal, Keith Helmuth, and Susan Holtz (July 2011)
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How On Earth Do We Live Now?, by David Ciscel, Barbara Day, Keith Helmuth, Sandra Lewis, and Judy Lumb (June 2011)
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Fueling our Future: A Dialogue about Technology, Ethics, Public Policy, and Remedial Action, Ed Dreby & Keith Helmuth, Coordinators; Judy Lumb, Editor (March 2009)
Share BeFriending Creation with Your Meeting
Do you currently receive copies of BeFriending Creation to share with your meeting? If not, would you like to? BeFriending Creation is QEW’s bi-monthly 12-page publication offering Earthcare articles, news, insights, opportunities, and resources. You can subscribe to BeFriending Creation by clicking here. If you’d like to receive multiple copies, please send an email to Katherine (katherine@quakerearthcare.org) indicating the number of copies you’d like to receive.
Until Next Time…
We hope the resources in this enewsletter are helpful to you and your meetings, and we invite you to share it freely as you feel so led. Please consider whether you have stories, ideas, projects, or leadings you’d like to share with the QEW community through this enewsletter, and email them to me at katherine@quakerearthcare.org. As always, we are heartened by your care, compassion, and spirit-led action on behalf of Earth. Please let us know how we can further support you in your Earthcare efforts in your local meeting.
In Friendship,
Katherine
Katherine Murray
on behalf of the QEW Publications Committee
Quaker Earthcare Witness
Who we are: Quaker Earthcare Witness is a network of Friends (Quakers) in North America and other like-minded people who are taking spirit-led action to address the ecological and social crises of the world from a spiritual perspective, emphasizing Quaker process and testimonies. For more information, please contact Anne Mitchell at anne@quakerearthcare.org.
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