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A Sustainable Life: Quaker Faith and Practice in the Renewal of Creation
A well-known Quaker historian explores the qualities of Quaker faith and practice that contribute to living sustainably in the world today. He explores such paradoxes as equality and community, unity and differentiation, integrity and personal discernment, and other aspects of life that Quakers have worked to bring into balance through their 350-year history. How have Quakers learned to create the kind of individual and community life that can prepare us to live fully and responsibly into a time of social and planetary change?
210 pages, Paperback
First published June 27, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 2, 2016
this took me a while. it was one of those books that I felt like I read two or three pages at a time. again, as was the case with a lot of the books I read for "spiritual september", which as we see ran into october (and there are still two books in the stack), this wasn't what I thought it was going to be.
I bought this two years ago at our quaker yearly meeting's annual session bookshop. I believe it was a "one book" for the yearly meeting, where all the local meetings were encouraged to read and discuss it. that, for me, is a high recommendation (the new jim crow was the one book the previous year, and it was widely read and discussed and inspiring). george lakey blurbed the back, I think he's awesome. so evidently people and a body that I respect thought this was an important book to read. I thought it was going to be about the environment and living more sustainably. to be honest, I'm not quite sure what it was about. I would say the main message was that quakers need to get back to our roots as a prophetic christian sect, be serious about our individual and corporate practices, and use that spiritual community to set an example for the world to guide it into a new era of sustainable living.
every time the author mentioned the environment, it seemed to be to say, bet you're surprised we haven't talked more about the environment! and then he would talk about something else. he was very big on enumerating things - you see on the cover there is a spoked wheel - all the spokes are pairs, like, "equality" on one side of the wheel and "community" on the other. there's pretty much a big theme in quakerism of getting things straight inside you (spirituality) and then getting things straight outside you (activism). that seemed to be a theme here too. I took a buddhist psychology class in college, taught by a visiting tibetan monk, which I thought was going to be sooooooo coooooooool, and it turned out to be a lot of "the 32 emotions", "the 8 this" "the 16 that". that whole thing left me cold. and this reminded me of that. man, he is in love with that wheel diagram. here, four spokes! one pair! this axis is a plumb line and that one is something else! I just thought it was a rather homely cover picture, but it's more like the graphic heart of the book. I don't feel like that's really useful to me, the way I think, to break things down into an organized set of continuum pairs and combine them on axes. some sort of quaker kabbalah, I don't know.
my other main issue with the book is, I'm not christian. I was raised atheist, as a young adult atheism was no longer a good explanation about life for me and I developed a personal spirituality, which continues to develop. along the way, 17 years ago, I found quakerism and because our particular brand of unprogrammed liberal quakerism is so open and doesn't ask you to believe anything specific, not even in the existence of god, it was a good fit for me. I could be in a spiritual community with fellow travelers where we inspire each other to live up to our ideals and beliefs and make ourselves and the world a better place. but I'm not christian. a lot of quakers are, it's a christian religion, but some quakers aren't. some are jews or buddhists or atheists or agnostics or etc. etc. I'm quaker, but I don't identify as christian and I very much doubt I ever will. I didn't grow up with that story as a central myth and I don't feel attached to it. it doesn't resonate for me much more than greek myths or hindu stories. it's just not my thing. it's very specific, it's patriarchal. and gwyn is convinced that quakers need to get back to a biblically grounded prophetic faith. well, that's not going to be me. I have gotten more comfortable with terminology I don't personally use, like god and christ, but it's all sort of in translation for me and I'm not going to anchor myself in it. I'm not going to get behind quakerism anchoring itself in it, because too many of us don't consider it home.
what I did like about the book was a lot of quaker history.
maybe I don't have a good grasp of what it was about because I read it in such a piecemeal fashion. I'm left thinking, ok, he starts a chapter with a spoke pair, talks about how they relate, then he talks about some quaker history. it all felt pretty random to me. it never gelled for me as a way to think about my faith. and so I'm left wondering if what gwyn wants is us all to get back to magical biblical times or magical early quaker times when it was all intense religious communion and experience and everyone went out to change the world. and I think he wants us to recapture that fire and then go be a beacon for the world and save it from climate change through our communal relationship with the spirit that will speak to the world through us.
and I feel like that's kind of aggrandizing, I don't think one group is going to step forward and inspire the world in that way. if we make it through climate change I think it's going to be through technological advances and political advances. sure, charismatic individuals can play roles, and religions can play roles, and quakers could perhaps play a bigger role, although this isn't the birth of our faith, so I don't see us moving so quickly to take the world stage.
also you know, most quakers aren't even vegan, which I consider a crucial environmental practice (as well as an animal rights practice and a human health practice and a social justice practice). I guess gwyn didn't want to get into any actual specifics of sustainability; spirit will communicate that to us when we get our houses in order, but that's more what I was looking for in this book. here's how our relationship to the quaker testimonies can guide us in living sustainable lives. here's how our testimonies would lead us towards veganism and renewable resources and social justice, and here's how that looks on an individual and community level. and of course, it doesn't say that on the cover, it's not "quaker testimonies in the renewal of creation".
speaking of the cover, it's some weird greasy feeling material.
so yeah, this was not the book I thought it was, and I didn't really like the book that it was. I mean, I like reading about my faith, that's fun, but I didn't find it compelling, I couldn't unite with the central call, and I didn't enjoy the framework. :) other than that, it was great.
I bought this two years ago at our quaker yearly meeting's annual session bookshop. I believe it was a "one book" for the yearly meeting, where all the local meetings were encouraged to read and discuss it. that, for me, is a high recommendation (the new jim crow was the one book the previous year, and it was widely read and discussed and inspiring). george lakey blurbed the back, I think he's awesome. so evidently people and a body that I respect thought this was an important book to read. I thought it was going to be about the environment and living more sustainably. to be honest, I'm not quite sure what it was about. I would say the main message was that quakers need to get back to our roots as a prophetic christian sect, be serious about our individual and corporate practices, and use that spiritual community to set an example for the world to guide it into a new era of sustainable living.
every time the author mentioned the environment, it seemed to be to say, bet you're surprised we haven't talked more about the environment! and then he would talk about something else. he was very big on enumerating things - you see on the cover there is a spoked wheel - all the spokes are pairs, like, "equality" on one side of the wheel and "community" on the other. there's pretty much a big theme in quakerism of getting things straight inside you (spirituality) and then getting things straight outside you (activism). that seemed to be a theme here too. I took a buddhist psychology class in college, taught by a visiting tibetan monk, which I thought was going to be sooooooo coooooooool, and it turned out to be a lot of "the 32 emotions", "the 8 this" "the 16 that". that whole thing left me cold. and this reminded me of that. man, he is in love with that wheel diagram. here, four spokes! one pair! this axis is a plumb line and that one is something else! I just thought it was a rather homely cover picture, but it's more like the graphic heart of the book. I don't feel like that's really useful to me, the way I think, to break things down into an organized set of continuum pairs and combine them on axes. some sort of quaker kabbalah, I don't know.
my other main issue with the book is, I'm not christian. I was raised atheist, as a young adult atheism was no longer a good explanation about life for me and I developed a personal spirituality, which continues to develop. along the way, 17 years ago, I found quakerism and because our particular brand of unprogrammed liberal quakerism is so open and doesn't ask you to believe anything specific, not even in the existence of god, it was a good fit for me. I could be in a spiritual community with fellow travelers where we inspire each other to live up to our ideals and beliefs and make ourselves and the world a better place. but I'm not christian. a lot of quakers are, it's a christian religion, but some quakers aren't. some are jews or buddhists or atheists or agnostics or etc. etc. I'm quaker, but I don't identify as christian and I very much doubt I ever will. I didn't grow up with that story as a central myth and I don't feel attached to it. it doesn't resonate for me much more than greek myths or hindu stories. it's just not my thing. it's very specific, it's patriarchal. and gwyn is convinced that quakers need to get back to a biblically grounded prophetic faith. well, that's not going to be me. I have gotten more comfortable with terminology I don't personally use, like god and christ, but it's all sort of in translation for me and I'm not going to anchor myself in it. I'm not going to get behind quakerism anchoring itself in it, because too many of us don't consider it home.
what I did like about the book was a lot of quaker history.
maybe I don't have a good grasp of what it was about because I read it in such a piecemeal fashion. I'm left thinking, ok, he starts a chapter with a spoke pair, talks about how they relate, then he talks about some quaker history. it all felt pretty random to me. it never gelled for me as a way to think about my faith. and so I'm left wondering if what gwyn wants is us all to get back to magical biblical times or magical early quaker times when it was all intense religious communion and experience and everyone went out to change the world. and I think he wants us to recapture that fire and then go be a beacon for the world and save it from climate change through our communal relationship with the spirit that will speak to the world through us.
and I feel like that's kind of aggrandizing, I don't think one group is going to step forward and inspire the world in that way. if we make it through climate change I think it's going to be through technological advances and political advances. sure, charismatic individuals can play roles, and religions can play roles, and quakers could perhaps play a bigger role, although this isn't the birth of our faith, so I don't see us moving so quickly to take the world stage.
also you know, most quakers aren't even vegan, which I consider a crucial environmental practice (as well as an animal rights practice and a human health practice and a social justice practice). I guess gwyn didn't want to get into any actual specifics of sustainability; spirit will communicate that to us when we get our houses in order, but that's more what I was looking for in this book. here's how our relationship to the quaker testimonies can guide us in living sustainable lives. here's how our testimonies would lead us towards veganism and renewable resources and social justice, and here's how that looks on an individual and community level. and of course, it doesn't say that on the cover, it's not "quaker testimonies in the renewal of creation".
speaking of the cover, it's some weird greasy feeling material.
so yeah, this was not the book I thought it was, and I didn't really like the book that it was. I mean, I like reading about my faith, that's fun, but I didn't find it compelling, I couldn't unite with the central call, and I didn't enjoy the framework. :) other than that, it was great.
August 15, 2021
Valuable insight into Quaker history and the historic evolution of that thought.
The author seems to argue for programmed Quakerism, in preference to unprogrammed Quakerism, which I do not agree with. He also advocates for more structure, organizationally in meetings in the form of elders, etc, justifying such from Quaker history.
And a little to Christian centers, which Quakerism is not dependent upon anymore.
The author seems to argue for programmed Quakerism, in preference to unprogrammed Quakerism, which I do not agree with. He also advocates for more structure, organizationally in meetings in the form of elders, etc, justifying such from Quaker history.
And a little to Christian centers, which Quakerism is not dependent upon anymore.
December 6, 2014
An excellent historical look at Quaker faith and practice and how it can lead us to living sustainably. It's really encouraging us to live whole lives.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews