Saturday, February 20, 2016

fwcc "living sustainably and sustaining life on earth" minute from 2016 plenary

I am thrilled to see that the plenary meeting of Friends World Committee for Consultation last month put out a minute called "Living Sustainably and Sustaining Life on Earth." They explain why this is important at this point in time, and give a few suggestions of how yearly meetings, meetings, and individual Friends can get involved.
I wanted to share what our meeting is doing. At North Valley Friends in Oregon, we're starting in on a two-year certification program through GreenFaith, an interfaith organization that helps communities of faith green their buildings, incorporate creation care into their worship practices, host educational opportunities for their congregations and/or their towns and cities to learn about practical actions and changes they can make, and learn about and engage in environmental justice activism. Our meeting has already incorporated creation care themes in our worship and education elements, and we have a trail and a labyrinth, open to the public, that passively allows individuals to enjoy this little slice of creation, but we need some help moving beyond these actions into deeper levels of faithfulness.

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

new blog for academic work

I created a new blog the other day, where I can share my thoughts on my academic work in ecotheology. This blog, Quaker Oats Live, with its specific focus on Quakers, will continue to be the place where I post things of interest to Quakers, but didn't seem like the right place to start posting things related to some of the other directions in my academic thinking. Therefore, if you want to hear about my process as I think through ecotheology, and specifically the topic of hope in environmental care, check out my new space! I'm working on the concept of developing an ecotheology of critical hope, and I'll have an article coming out within the next couple months on that topic in the journal Cross Currents. So far on my new blog I've posted an intro on why I'm working on the topic of hope, a piece about my research in the psychology of hope, and a post about the Korean concept of jeong and its application to ecotheology. Also, while I'm at it, I'll direct you to a review posted Monday on Christian Feminism Today of a book by Grace Ji-Sun Kim (who works at Earlham School of Religion, so we'll claim her as an honorary Quaker even though she's Presbyterian), Embracing the Other: The Transformative Spirit of Love.