Sustainability stories - Wimbledon LM
Wimbledon LM
In April 2008 Laurie Michaelis held a spiritual learning day on the Living Witness Project for our Area Meeting. He inspired us with his knowledge and personal commitment. Laurie showed that Quakers are uniquely placed to make a difference as individuals, in the wider community and at government level.
Many of us already live in a more sustainable way whilst retaining an acceptable standard of living and quality of life. This is in accordance with our testimony to Simplicity and an example of how we can truly “let our lives speak”.
We considered how we wanted to work together and decided that we need to develop connectedness in our witness, sharing experiences, gifts and burdens between Quakers locally and centrally, and with others beyond the Society.
- See change as positive – don’t give things up but embrace new ways
- Work as a community on both personal and Meeting issues
- Build spirituality and support into our work
- Share knowledge and have fun
- Be non judgmental accept other ideas
- Accept the world in which we live
An informal support group met 4 times, it was a useful starting point but decided to incorporate it into our monthly speaker sessions.
Challenges and successes?
Mainstreaming sustainability into our meetings and activities and making it the ‘norm’ made more sense, got better results and reached a wider audience. Sustainability issues are now very much a part of how we work together. Although there was some reluctance to give over part of the garden to vegetable and fruit – we all benefited from the produce.
Providing simple information, messages and specialist speakers from outside helped to stimulate debate. It reinforced the message that we were all starting at different points and it was our individual progression that was important and taking small steps together could make a difference.
Key members of our Meeting spoke enthusiastically about and demonstrated their commitment by how they lived and how this is integral to and not separate from our Quaker values and testimonies.
The outcome?
We are more aware of the impact of sustainability on our lives, local community and the planet
Any words of advice to others considering similar activity?
Bring people along with you, don’t make them feel guilty. Inform and engage them in the debate.
Encourage others to move at their own pace but move.
Always keep spiritual issues at the heart of what we do and say.
Next steps
We plan to review what we have achieved, what worked well, what helped us to move forward and what are our next small steps.
By Virginia Donovan
We’d love to hear the story of you or your meeting too. Just email sunnivat@quaker.org.uk and tell us about it.
