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Friends United Meeting |
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Quaker Life
July 2002
Choose Life!
By Tom Baugh
"I have set before you life and death, blessing
and curse;
therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live."
Deuteronomy 30:19
From as early as I can remember, I have been drawn to other life, perhaps guided by the sentiment expressed in Paradise Lost that "In contemplation of created things, by steps we may ascend to God." This attraction led me to the formal study of life with titles of biologist and ecologist. I have seen wonders in the harshest deserts and deep in the seas, but because of my leading, I have also witnessed the loss of species and habitat and, along with Jeremiah (9:11), have found myself weeping and wailing "...for the mountains" and taking up "lament for the desert pasture." I have watched as "the birds of the air have fled and the animals have gone."
We seem perched precariously on the edge of an age in which only the most careful and studied choices will prevent a collapse in which the Pale Rider of John's vision in Revelations may indeed sweep forth across the earth. Is the whole creation groaning in travail? (Romans 8:22) Will the promise of an enduring earth (Genesis 8:21) with "seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, and day and night..." continue in some reasonable balance? Or, is something else coming our way? I don't know, but I am sometimes greatly bothered by disturbing visions of an earth in dire straits with her systems and processes seriously disrupted.
Involvement in the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting gathering of the Environmental Concerns Network last June in Asheville, North Carolina, led me to think a little more deeply about environmental activities and earth-centered actions among Quakers. I was moved at the tremendous gathering of skills and talents, and the level of commitment demonstrated by such a small group of folks to these critical issues. I was also moved by a feeling, one I'd not previously felt, that others were present — others not visible who had walked before us along similar paths of concern and peril, others who had trod the path of difficulty that eventually led to the abolition of slavery among Quakers and others who had resisted the tyranny and slaughter of war after war. I could almost see the women in their bonnets and the men in their broad-brimmed hats, faces stern with resolve, looking beyond the achievements of the past toward an earth torn and bleeding, her forests shattered, farmlands turned to deserts, herds and herdsmen starving, her nations (millions of species) disrupted and displaced, many approaching the forever of extinction.
I left that meeting realizing that I, a Quaker, am the intellectual and spiritual progeny of all those who walked before me responding to the urgent issues of their times — of George Fox who began it all, of Robert Barclay who tried to explain it all, of John Woolman who tried to live it all.
We need to remember in our quest for environmental justice, the fullness of the cosmos and those silent gray images of my vision. We owe those folks a debt of vision and courage. We need to repay that debt by doing our best to follow their leadership and approach environmental crises and ecological challenges in our uniquely Quaker way. We have much to give in helping to peacefully resolve the critical issues in which we are engaged.
As our telescopes look out to the edge of the universe, our biologists tinker with the very essence of life, our cosmologists try to make sense of the nature of that universe and our theologians help us think about the role of theology and religion, it becomes increasingly apparent we are occupying a unique time in history. We are now attempting to reinsert ourselves into the flow of our little corner of the fullness of creation with purposeful care and understanding. We are seeking to develop lives that are not only integrated culturally, spiritually and physically, but that also place us in some reasonable perspective or context with the fullness of creation. We are looking for a place, a place where we belong. This search for belonging is at the heart of the resurgence of the quest for spirituality that is so powerful today. This is humanity's penultimate quest — to seek the sacred, to touch the holy. In the words of Quaker Francis Howgill, we are looking for a heaven "that did gather us and catch us all."
Tom Baugh lives in the hill country of northwest Georgia with his wife, Penny. In August 2001, at Canadian Yearly Meeting, he conducted four days of Bible study on issues relating to the relationships of humanity, nature and theology.
Copyright (c) 2002 Friends United Meeting
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