| The Canadian Friend
January-February 1998
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What Canst Thou Say?
The harsh, frozen splendour of our icy landscape in Ottawa this January has provided an amazing demonstration of the power of the environment, awful in its glorious beauty, and our powerlessness as the whole city has been encased in solid ice. Ice-sculpted trees, some carrying nearly of two tons of ice on their branches, made walking or driving along the streets extremely dangerous. Falling branches and falling power lines have caused utter destruction, cut telephones and electricity, left people with no heat or water -- stranded in an urban ice desert. Even so, we in this city are not the worst hit. Things are much worse in the countryside, in Montreal, and in Kingston. It's so easy for us to forget how much we depend on technology, insulated as we are in our warm houses, complacently burning fossil fuels for warmth and in our cars, spending little time in the great outdoors, except to use it as recreational space for skiing and skating. We think we have control over our environment until the storm of the century (or is that the millennium?) comes along and we are all stranded. Actually, this may not be the storm of the century if it is the start of a series of weather incidents that prove to us, at last, that global warming is here. In this issue of The Canadian Friend, several articles link our spiritual path with our environment; for how can we be living our testimonies if we are not responsible stewards of justice, peace and the integrity of creation? The Green Movement is inextricably tied to the need for social justice and the right sharing of world resources. This quote by William Penn in 1669 made that link more than three hundred years ago: That the great and tedious labour of the farmer, early and late, cold and hot, wet and dry, should be converted into the pleasure of a small number of men -- that continued severity should be laid on nineteen parts of the land to feed the inordinate lusts and delicate appetites of the twentieth, is so far from the will of the great Governor of the world,... [it] is wretched and blasphemous. Quaker Faith & Practice, 25.13 Our appetites have cut us off from the natural world until we are trapped by our own technology, left totally dependent on a system that this week has proven how fragile it is. What is not fragile is the human spirit. People help each other in amazing ways, as they always do, proof that freeing ourselves from dependence on technology, and following a path to social justice is the way to right sharing of world resources -- the foundation of gospel order. AMZ |