BeFriending Creation

Quarterly newsletter of Quaker Earthcare Witness

Volume 31, Number 1

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January-February-March 2018

Senegalese environmentalist Baba Dioum said, “We won’t save places we don’t love, we can’t love places we don’t know, and we don’t know places we haven’t learned.”  This BeFriending Creation highlights voices and projects showing the world how they love, know, and protect their homes.  The theme of water in this issue serves as a common stream that unites these diverse initiatives and outlooks, much like a watershed. 

“A watershed is the area covered in water’s journey from its origination in the hydrological cycle, to how it drains from the ridge and high points of a given geography, to an end point in a pond, lake, or ocean,” shares theologian Ched Myers in his introduction to a collection of essays by young “activists, educators, and practitioners,” entitled Watershed Discipleship. 

Do you know what watershed you live in?  What would you do to protect its health and the health of those that inhabit it?  As Friends, what would it look like to root our transition movement, our faith, and our work for justice in our watersheds?  Myers’ collection challenges us to become Watershed Disciples, “recognizing we live in a watershed moment of ecological crisis, learning to be disciples in our watersheds, and developing awareness of the ways our watersheds act as our rabbis (teachers), pointing us to God.” 

This is a way to make sure that “unity with nature” is not an abstract construct, but an everyday action rooted in the places we care about most.  In this issue, our rich QEW network shares some examples of what this looks like.