Eugene Friends Meeting

Eugene Friends Meeting

of the Religious Society of Friends ("Quakers")

Posts filed under Earth Care

TRUE RELATIONSHIP WITH BIRDS

Besides their intrinsic value as members of the Natural World, birds play many crucial roles in our ecosystems — including pest control, pollination, and seed dispersal — and are essential to human welfare. With an estimated 1,200 species facing extinction over the next century, and many more suffering from severe habitat loss, we must feel the impulse… (read more)

MUTUAL CARE

We are showered every day with the gifts of the Earth, gifts we have neither earned nor paid for: air to breathe, nurturing rain, black soil, berries and honeybees, the tree that became this page, a bag of rice and the exuberance of a field of goldenrod and asters at full bloom. Though the Earth provides… (read more)

CLARITY IN THE NEW YEAR

In winter, one can walk into woods that had been opaque with summer growth only a few months earlier and see the trees clearly, singly and together, and see the ground they are rooted in. … Winter clears the landscape, however brutally, giving us a chance to see ourselves and each other more clearly, to… (read more)

RETURN TO THE LIGHT

For the last few weeks I’ve been writing about the nurturing power of the darkness, and now it is time to return to the light – but very slowly. We’ve just experienced the winter solstice, when the northern hemisphere of the earth reaches its furthest tilt away from the sun; now it is beginning to… (read more)

UNITY WITH ROOTS

Roots are the foundation of a tree, supporting the tree and holding it in place while also taking up water and nutrients from the soil. Many people imagine tree roots as a mirror image of the branches, but tree roots actually grow mostly horizontally from the base of the tree, rather than downward. Buttress roots right… (read more)

UNITY WITH SEEDS

Only when we see that we are part of the totality of the planet, not a superior part with special privileges, can we work effectively to bring about an earth restored to wholeness. Darkness is no less desirable than light. It is rather, a rich source of creativity … First there is the darkness of… (read more)