Spirit in Action

A Sustainable Life

While there are many sources of info on urgent environmental threats and of technological methods of dealing with those threats, few books tackle the major underlying question of how can we make a sustainable life actually be sustainable for the individual. In A Sustainable Life, Douglas Gwyn examines the essential inner work and the myriad complexities of initiating and supporting the choices of living sustainably, mostly using Quaker experience & insights as guideposts to the process.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 19 Apr 2015
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ I've had an important connection with environmentalism since the late 1960s when I was in high school. I was part of a school-wide presentation on the very first Earth Day in 1970, and I paddled waterways doing clean-ups, recycled cans before that was common, and I was in debate, both in high school and college, and ended up debating environmental and energy issues a couple of years. When the federal incentives for energy efficiency were in place, I installed the maximum amount in hot water solar and efficiency upgrades. All of this to say that I have been learning for decades about the different reasons for and techniques about sustainability. But today's Spirit and Action Guest has written the first book that I've ever read, I think, about making a life of sustainability actually be sustainable for the person doing it. Mostly the literature concentrates either on the dire consequences of not being sustainable or the how-tos and nitty-gritty of sustainable methods and technology. My guest today is Douglas Gwyn, and his book is A Sustainable Life, and it considers the broad and deep questions about a life that is sustainable in its foundation and in all the related questions. Again, this is not about the techniques of a sustainable life, but the deep currents that make a lifelong flow of unity with creation possible. Douglas Gwyn joins a spy phone from his home in Durham, Maine. Doug, thank you so much for joining me today for Spirit and Action. It's a pleasure to be with you. I really enjoyed reading A Sustainable Life. And again, that subtitle, which some people may or may not find useful, Quaker Faith and Practice in the Renewal of Creation. I appreciate it, especially that you started with that forward by Steve Chase. Steve Chase has been on the program a couple times, and he's quite an awesome person. How do you connect with Steve? Well, I had met him a couple times before, but he was coming on staff at Pendle Hill, the Quaker Study Center near Philadelphia to be the new director of education there. Around the time I was leaving Pendle Hill for Maine, just found him to be a wonderfully lively and inquiring mind and gentle and loving spirit who overlaps with a number of my own concerns. I was thrilled that he had been persuaded by the editor to write this forward for the book, and I think it adds a lot to framing the book. Yes, especially because Steve has been active. I mean, he's working at the Pendle Hill Quaker Center right now, but for, I don't know how many years, a decade, two decades, he was working at Antioch, New England, teaching at that university, teaching people activism and how to be change makers on a practical sense, particularly environmentally, so very close to the sustainable topic, which is the general focus of your book. Some people who are listening, I mean, sustainability, people want to jump right in and know about that, and we will be dealing with that very clearly. But there's this subtopic of, you know, Quaker faith and practice. So some people might fear that this is a parochial type discussion, which is only for Quakers. There's a part of the book, which I do think probably won't be so appreciated by non-Quakers, although even then, I think the lessons are general. How do you see this book as being useful to the wider world beyond this tiny slice of people called Quakers? Well, I think today Quakers are less sectarian than we were at sometimes in our history, and we're engaging in a variety of alliances with a variety of groups in work for social change and sustainability. I think the book offers an example of how one's spiritual tradition has related to the Earth and has integrated that concern with other concerns for peace and social justice and equality. And so without needing to be something that specifically tries to draw people towards Quakerism as such, I think it's possible to see that spiritual tradition as one that exemplifies how spirit and matter are intimately related in our lives and how communities of faith can be engaged in turning our society towards a more sustainable life on Earth. I was thinking of an alternate name for the book because I was trying to approach what you're trying to convey in the book. In the end, the question I came up with as a title is, "What Sustains Sustainability?" Does that make sense to you? Does that fit? Yes, yes, it does very much. Shell Avery, the editor that worked with me, suggested the word "deep sustainability," which I think gets at that idea of what sustainability is. This is going to be a long struggle for us as individuals and as groups as we try to turn a culture that's living strongly at variance with the carrying capacity of the Earth. We're going to need one another and deep spiritual resources, however reframe that, to go the distance in what's going to be a long-term task. Can I ask on a personal note, what kind of sustainable life do you do? Do you drive a Hummer? You throw everything into the garbage. How do you actually live out issues of sustainability in Doug Gwen's personal life? I try to live an ethic of simplicity. I'm living out in the country in Maine, so I have to have the car. I haven't found a way yet to do without one. I'm fortunate to live in a house with a pellet furnace. I would love to become more solar, but I'm a pastor of a friend's meeting in rural Maine. I live in a parsley. The meeting has taken steps towards making the house more sustainable in a variety of ways, including the pellet furnace. I mean, the usual recycling, composting, turning the thermostat down, all those things. I know many Quakers and others who are more on the cutting edge of the work that I am, both as activists and as experimenters with alternative technologies of various kinds. My work has been more as a scholar in understanding the history and spirituality of friends, so that I've tried to bring that to bear on concern that I see as the overall framing concern for friends and everyone in the 21st century, and what kind of deeper resources from earlier generations can we bring to bear on the quest for sustainability? I love a lot of the quotations that you sprinkle throughout the book. Some of them I had heard of before, but a number of them I hadn't. Do you think you could bring out a quotation relatively easily, access one of the passages that talks about sustainability looked at 200, 300 years ago. Folks back then, John Wollman comes to mind, who obviously was focusing on it prophetically, and that's a phrase you like to use or a concern that you have that we need to have a prophetic faith. Do you think you could grab something like that? Yeah, I think one of my favorite quotations from John Wollman, who was an 18th century colonial New Jersey Quaker minister who had deep concern for the abolition of slavery, as well as a strong sense of our relation to the earth. He wrote an essay for wider distribution beyond friends called a plea for the poor, and it's a very integrative statement published in 1763. On page 139 of my book, I quote this from him. The creator of the earth is the owner of it. He gave us being there on, and our nature requires nourishment, which is the produce of it. As he is kind and merciful, we as his creatures, while we live and shovel to the design of our creation, are so far entitled to a convenient subsistence that no man may justly deprive us of it. By the agreements and contracts of our fathers and predecessors, and by doings and proceedings of our own, some claim a much greater share of this world than others. And whilst those possessions are faithfully improved to the good of the whole, it consists with equity. But he, who with a view to self-exaltation, causes some of their domestic animals to labor immodernately, and with monies arising to him therefrom, employs others in the luxuries of life, acts contrary to the gracious design of him, who is the true owner of the earth. Nor can any possessions, either required or derived from ancestors, justify such conduct. That seems so revolutionary. I don't know if people catch it because of the, from our point of view, outmoded language, but concerns about how animals are treated in this. He says it's okay to have some money, even to have a fair amount of money, as long as it's used for the good of everyone, not for your own selfishness or for your own what he calls luxuries of life. And he does this not, you mentioned that John Wollman was a minister. You used to explain what minister means because Quakers, certainly at that time, didn't have any paid ministry. What do you mean by a minister, in that sense? Well, in the traditional practice of ministry among friends, there were men and women with a recognized gift for speaking spontaneously and discerningly in the reading for worship, who would exercise and nurture that gift through their own prayer, life and reading of scripture on their own, and also travel around among friends in their region and sometimes internationally, so that they were kind of like the, and intended to be, kind of like the itinerating prophets of the Book of Acts or the earliest church, so that it was non-professional, it was not financially supported by their local congregation or meeting, but they exercised this gift. John Wollman sustained himself and his family with a small tailoring business as well as orcharding, so he kept his business small in order to be free to travel as a minister and to live close to the earth, partly through his farming and orcharding, and through a quiet and reflective life, he would observe human nature as well as the natural world around him and came to deep insights that really friends and others continue to draw from down to this day. And you mentioned that's from 1763, that's before the United States is founded. He's got concerns like a plea for the poor, that name of that passage, I mean that passage is from that essay, a plea for the poor, so he has views on economics, he has views on compassion for the brutes, the animals, he led a concern that helped eliminate throughout Quakers long before the Civil War, any participation in slavery. These are things that from our point of view now we take for granted, but even the quality of women, which has been true since mid-1600s, if you think of that in the mid-1600s, how outrageous that appeared to the rest of society. So his concern in environmental matters has expressed in that passage and many others that you share in the book is revolutionary, it's prophetic. So where does this come from? And I'm mainly asking that question because today we have to ask ourselves, what is it that we can draw on to get that vision of the future that we're trying to help move society toward? Yes, that's a crucial question really. And as a Quaker and as a minister, a woman practiced what George Fox and other founders of the movement had counseled in starting in the 1650s that if you quiet your mind and heart and draw close to the center of your being, there is a light, a divine light that's in each person's conscience that can lead into a more just and moral and simple life that nurtures a sense of compassion towards other humans, towards the animals around you and to the creation itself. This light leads into a divine wisdom, the same divine wisdom that created all things will lead you to live in harmony with all things and with all people and in peace. It may lead you to give up some luxuries as a woman suggests in that passage and live more to the benefits and help of others, and it leads you into community of one kind or another for working with others to live that kind of life. And that together we can help each other past the blind spots that we each have of the things that we don't want to see or the things that we don't want to give up or the things that we're not courageous to say or do. And that in community with others we can go further in the light individually as well as groups in a prophetic witness to the rest of society. So it all comes out of that light at the center of our being which woman was sure not just Quakers but people of many different faiths or just on their own can access and do access. So that's the continuous wellspring from which his faith and practice and ours continues to draw. John Woolman in case people haven't ever heard of him before, he's quite a study. He seems to be such a gentle person, not hardly a rabble rouser, and yet he really galvanized just a tremendous amount of change with his gentle persistent and compassionate way forward. I think a lot of people today will connect with him much better than George Fox founder of Quakers who had a much more yell at him type of style I think. One of the things that you said is key to this is about quieting the mind and the heart. And I imagine there's a lot of listeners who say, are you kidding me? I mean that's what we need to encourage is good thinking and deep compassionate hearts. That needs to be our goal not to quiet them. Does that strike you as surprising that you actually quiet the mind and the heart to get to this other center that somehow is going to do such good for the world and for each of us? Well it has to undergird whatever else we do. In fact records of John Woolman's library show that he had an inquiring mind. He got hold of books, not just religious books but other political treatises and philosophical treatises that he could get hold of in colonial America and Quakers. Both sides of the Atlantic did a lot of sharing of books around and so it wasn't all coming out of that center but what he was learning from books and from his interactions with Native Americans and with African American slaves and his quiet but persuasive conversations with slave owners. All that was grist for the mill of that quiet center that would do the deep integrative work that reflects and sees what needs to be done next and brings a person out of just being interactive and reactive and allows us to speak and act from a deeper place. I do hear Doug that in writing the book you're not focusing on the techniques, the technologies I guess of sustainability. You're talking about the motivation that undergirds it. I think you share all of the concerns that anybody who's concerned about sustainability but I think maybe you're adding to it what supports it. Why isn't it simply sufficient for somebody who has a concern about sustainability to just go out and just surround themselves with all the books about the techniques, the technologies, the ways in which we could be sustainable so that they know how all the solar and the wind power and the thermal power and what is the best insulation and how we can use human powered energy. Why isn't that sufficient? Why do we need something more? Well, I think anybody that is out there requesting for the latest in the technological dimension of the task ahead, that certainly is very important work and many people excel at that better than I do, but they can certainly come as I think anyone knows a kind of scatteredness and even weariness that becomes unsustainable at a certain point. So I think my book simply tries to build the deeper foundations, both individual and collective of spiritual and material practices that keep us grounded in ways that will allow us to sustain this work for the decades to come. The book is simply one small contribution to the huge task that we're underway with now. One of the questions that some of our listeners might have is doesn't religion spirituality always end up somehow discounting science? How do you see that juxtaposition of spirituality versus science? Does spirituality mean, I guess I think it is true that there are a number of people who call themselves spiritual or religious who see some kind of disjuncture that they're not particularly interested in the scientific evidence? How do you see that conjunction working? Well, actually I was a zoology major in college and a state park naturalist in Indiana as even while in the midst of that, to my surprise, I received a distinct experience of being called to be a minister among friends. And I never gave up that scientific perspective on all aspects of life and the concern that I had, this was back in the late 60s that I was in college at the beginnings of the environmental movement were happening then, and I knew that I wanted to bring or keep my spiritual and religious work life in communication and then engagement with my scientific understanding of things. So in many ways, this book was a chance to bring that long term concern at integrating those two ways of knowing that really don't need to be separate into a more explicit statement. Friends, actually, it's been just part of our history is surprisingly connected with early science. There were a number of early friends involved in the early stages of the Royal Society in England where, you know, the orderly and methodical investigation of the natural world was being developed and the Royal Society, society meaning a kind of a body of people committed to certain ways of knowing and building knowledge together was growing in parallel with the religious society of friends committed to a spiritual way of knowing in the world and that for friends from the beginning, those were very deeply related tasks so that friends have seen that as a unified field of investigation. I'm a pretty scientifically oriented person have taught physics at university level and math major and all those kinds of things. So in addition to the soft side of my character's spiritual side, I have a need for scientific rigor. So one of the questions I ask whenever anybody hypothesizes that something will have an effect, I say, okay, so show me the scientific. You do the experiment, you see what the results are. So I'm asking, do you have evidence? Do you perceive historically and or by using other methods that this works, that this, you know, standing still in the light ends up producing sustainable lives? Do you sense that that could be quantified if one wanted to do the number crunching? Yeah, I think it's sustaining my own life. I could say that much. And golly, you know, they're just such a strong tradition of Quaker scientists, Kenneth Bolding, a celebrated economist with a strong peace concern who was significant influence on the peace movement in the '60s and the SDS and other radical groups that were really pushing for a more just and equitable society than down to this day, at least Bolding his wife pioneering feminist sociologist wrote the underside of history feminist manifesto of women in history. There's just so many examples in our tradition that people sustaining a serious spiritual practice as well as a serious scientific or academic or other discipline of investigation and thought. This can be an incredibly powerful combination in people's lives. And again, I don't want to be too parochial with the Quaker examples, but, you know, this is just the species of spiritual life that I know best. And we do have some outstanding characters in our tradition that show how this deep sustainability works both in the practical as well as the spiritual. One of the things you just mentioned, when you're talking about Kenneth Bolding, you're talking about people involved in peace activism and somebody who's thinking about sustainability may not see the connection, but you bring it out very well in the book. A sustainable life, Quaker faith and practice and the renewal of creation. Again, Douglas Gwin is with us here today for Spirit in Action, which is Northern Spirit Radio Production. It's on the web at northernspiritradio.org. And you can find the link there to all of Doug's books. You'll find it by QuakerBooks.com. And you can get them, you know, from Amazon or anywhere else you want. Also on that site, you'll find comments from past programs. And when you visit, please do add your own comments because we love two-way communication. There's a place to donate and you can help us out because for us to be sustainable, we need your help. It's not the corporations and it's not government that's subsidizing this work. Even more important than the work of Northern Spirit Radio, I want to hold up the work of your local community radio station. They provide for you a slice of news and a music that you get nowhere else on the American airwaves. That is key to supporting the knowledge and growth of our nation as a whole. So please start before anything else by supporting your local community radio station. Again, my guest is Douglas Gwin, the book, A Sustainable Life. And he's really talking about what sustains sustainability. What is it that makes us able to live a life of sustainability? Some people might put the end goal is sustainability. And that certainly makes sense in terms of a future vision. The question is, how do we get to that spot? At least that's how I'm interpreting Doug. And you should feel free, Doug, to interrupt me anytime you feel like getting correct me when I misstate things. You're right on target, thank you. You did mention, as I said, with Kenneth Bolden, you're talking about peace and you're relating this to sustainability. Did you talk about this kind of delicate web of interaction, interrelation, things like simplicity, peace, integrity. Do those have a role? Some people might think, well, I can just live sustainably. I don't have to be opposing war at the same time, or I don't have to be concerned about whether people lie or Wall Street does. You see them, I think, as very obviously connected and influencing one another. Yes, one of the chapters of the book looks at peace and non-violent direct action, which can be very conflictual. These are a tension that Quakers have sought to hold together since our beginnings. We have a strong sense of the inner peace that comes by centering our hearts and minds in the light, and yet that sense of peace and sense of divine love pouring through us can also very quickly lead to a sense of, gee, maybe this part of my life is not as loving or as simple as it should be, and maybe I need to change something so that we actually find peace and conflict towards changing our own lives and changing society constantly interacting, so that peace and conflict are actually integral to each other and keep modifying one another so that we keep returning to the still center where we feel that peace, but that very sense of peace causes us to look at our own lives or look at society with new eyes and feel ourselves led to change our lives or to work for change in society that we feel we have to do in order to be true to the light that we're given. Early friends had the wonderfully paradoxical term, the Lamb's War, for describing this peaceful form of social change that works non-violently but confrontationally against the structures of inequality or violence in society that need to be challenged if we're to bring the world to a more peaceful and just and sustainable existence on the earth. So that's just one of the many paradoxes that the book explores. Another chapter looks at personal simplicity or plainness which has been a Quaker virtue over the years, but now more consciously practiced within the horizon of concern that we're as a species living in unsustainable ways on the earth and how can my personal practice of living a simple life be engaged with making human society as a whole more sustainable and in more harmony and peace with the other species trying to live on this earth. That creates inner conflict and struggles for clarity and for greater integrity of life personally and often launches us into activism, even civil disobedience for more sustainable life. It's a wonderful initiative that the earth Quaker action team called Shortname Equate has worked in recent years engaging the PNC Bank, for example, taking them to task for financing mountaintop removal and Appalachia blowing up mountains to extract coal more easily and massively they have been engaged in civil disobedience actions as well as other forms of advocacy with PNC Bank in the last three or four years that I'm aware of to try to turn the board of directors away from that investment in mountaintop removal and finally PNC Bank just in recent weeks has decided to withdraw its financial investment in companies that do mountaintop removal so it shows these are sometimes long and frustrating struggles but that example shows that peaceful work towards social change and sustainability really can work and will be more successful in the long run and more violent means of social change on any subject really. And if you're interested listeners in more of that information about Equate, the earthquake reaction team and PNC Bank last summer I interviewed a couple of the proponents of this organization and they talked about some of the specifics of what they're doing and appreciate that you bring up that very concrete example Doug because the kind of discernment that goes into and focusing and George Lakey who is incredible profit and visionary about doing these kind of things they're the kind of people who are doing the very concrete work that you're advocating in a sustainable life. I should mention folks that the cover of the book should be indicative of a lot of the subject matter from a distance I guess it looks mainly like a wagon wheel which maybe has its own sustainable life message to it but on it there's a number of axes that go across and a number of these captured me I mean there's one from simplicity to sustainability there's one from unity to differentiation. One that you talked about that particularly struck me Doug was the one that goes from equality to community could you talk about those polls how they interact and why are they on the same spoke opposite ends. Yes that was as I began to structure the book that was appearing that kind of surprised me in a way and it made a certain kind of sense to me as I explored it further. We tend to organize our Quaker social values or testimonies as five key values that we sometimes work into the acronym spices, simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and sustainability or stewardship. Equality is certainly something that friends have had a concern for and practiced in various ways but we've continued to grow in over the 350 years of our existence certainly beginning with the equality of men and women in leadership of the movement from the beginning in the 1650s when that was pretty radical ideas you mentioned earlier. Also a strong inter-class quality in the movement and that grew into interracial concerns and the Quakers often on the forefront of abolitionism of slavery and civil rights movement in the past century etc. Work for inclusion of different sexual orientations, gender identities etc. down to this day and yet the work for equality needs to be sustained and given its true value by communities of people living, worshiping, working on issues together and creating bonds among one another that really give value to quality and make it not just a formal thing and sometimes a matter of some bickering and envy and resentments. But community gives warmth to equality just as equality keeps community honest in making sure that community really is a free flowing life of energies among all different identities and backgrounds. So that equality and community really give value to one another and need to be in dynamic mutually informing relationship. It really is interesting folks the way that Doug describes in the book how these apparent polls work together to produce the strong support from the center and again envision a wagon wheel with that hub right in the middle and the hub is that divine center that we draw from where we get inspiration, centrality of strength that I think of centering down and phrases that we use commonly in the Quaker world. I've been in Quaker long enough that I've forgotten a little bit about how the outer world talks about these things. And again we don't want to get too parochial about this because you don't have to be Quaker at all to get tremendous strength and identity and resources from what Douglas Gwynne is talking about in a sustainable life. One of the things that I think you talk about as an offshoot of that community quality and some of the continuing development. I mean evolution happens within community. You talk ecologically how spirituality, a way of life has to change as outward conditions change just as species evolve. Some of the thoughts that you had about leadership and what you called eldership seem particularly important. I have been aware of the fact that at least amongst Quakers and I think among a number of leftist groups there is a kind of a disdain for leadership because of what we think leadership means. How do you look at leadership and from your book it's clear to me that you think it's important. Yes, that was one of the, another one of the spokes of the pairs of spokes dynamic pairings of the wheel leadership and decisions made in unity. We as Quakers practice what might loosely be called consensus decision making but we really understand it as decisions that are led by the spirits but they are without voting. We have to agree on a decision together and see that that is the best way forward even if there might be some difference of opinion within the group. The group agrees to move in a particular way together. That requires a tremendous amount of spiritual discipline on each person to be true to their understanding of the spirit or the lights leading but also listening very carefully to what's coming from other people and to be willing to listen deeply and sympathetically and analytically to everything that's going on and to be able to unite and get beyond a divisive conflict of interest to see the decision that serves the group and serves divine wisdom most adequately. That is deep work and it's one of the most exciting but also challenging parts of Quakers spirituality that other more secular groups have learned from friends to use the number of anarchist groups action political groups use that and have learned from friends in that way. In our tradition the kind of spiritual discipline that it takes to act that way and to grow into being able to be a functioning part of groups making decisions together requires certain kinds of leadership at large in the group sometimes they recognize leaders like clerks that help lead the group through that kind of decision making or elders who nurture the kind of spiritual growth. The spiritual growth that it takes to be part of that process together or ministers who teach the deeper tradition and have particular gifts in speaking out of the silence and worship. These forms of leadership are not always recognized officially in the local friends meeting but you find these kinds of leadership at large in the group and if you don't have people nurturing individuals and nurturing the meeting in that kind of spiritual growth then decisions made in unity can be generated to kind of lowest common denominator decisions to sort of well this is the easiest way out of something we can't really agree on and that doesn't really rise to the higher synthesis that the spirit can often take an honest disagreement to. And sometimes just leave the group in awe of where it got to beyond the intentions or interests or best ideas that any of us brought to that meeting for business. And you and I can talk more about this later Doug I have a great example talk about but our listeners probably want to hear a little bit more about sustainability a sustainable life. One of the things that you talked about by the way you talk about anarchist or other groups that have learned from these the this exploration of this other way of making decisions of finding our way forward to where we're really led to go. One of them that you talk about very specifically in later chapters in the book is the occupy movement and which I think both you and I see as a prophetic movement having been a prophetic movement. What part of the occupy movement particularly grabbed you inspired you at Thanksgiving that year we were going around with a big family gathering and saying what we're thankful for. And I said the occupy movement and a couple people were more conservative in the group moaned like I don't know and another person said I don't know here comes the fight. What did you like about occupy what was what did you see it as being particularly powerful in that movement. Well I think it was it just had that kind of spontaneous spark that you can never plan. A lot of the best things in radical political history both religious and secular have just happened in a spontaneous way that there was lots of tinder on the ground but the spark that brought it to flame was not something that anyone could necessarily have anticipated. But yeah there was just you know in the aftermath of the financial collapse of 2008 there was just you know a lot of lessons learned by then if not earlier and a lot of anger and resentment and concern that you know where the financial sector of the economy had taken us and left us with bills to pay as taxpayers and that's you know this thing just rose up and from Wall Street spread to many cities around the world. I was around the Philadelphia occupy a bit and it had this wonderful quality of kind of people's park or a festival of life but lots of religious as well as secular groups converging in a found moment that was really inspiring. I think the longer term life of the occupy movement has been an interesting challenge of from what I understand of it trying to maintain the breadth of the coalition of various environmental racial justice and peace concerns. And yet how do you create a coherent message and how do you sustain a visible presence and coherent action out of that wide spectrum of concerns and the great coalition that came together in occupy. That's I think a real conundrum for today and I really enjoyed Paul Hawkins, "Blessed on Rest" book a few years ago in his struggle to do justice to the broad amazing array of hundreds of thousands of local to regional to world movements for justice and peace and sustainability and the quandaries of naming and focusing that can help move the politics forward and yet can privilege one set of concerns at the expense of others and I thought he balanced that quandary very well in his book. One of the great sadnesses for me, Doug, is that I don't see a lot of evidence of the occupy movement continuing today that is that somehow maybe it wasn't sustainable. I think with early Quakers, there came a period of repression which certainly occupy movement experienced its own version of, but there was this repression of the Quaker movement and somehow it grew even more virulently at that point, but somehow the occupy movement hasn't seemed to thrive and spread. I may be missing something on that. I'm not assuming I really know what's happening currently with the occupy movement. So my question is, was there something missing from the occupy movement in terms of sustainability or historically is there something we should learn about what makes a movement sustainable? Are there glittering examples up there about folks who did innovate and found the key to being sustainable in their movement towards sustainability? Yeah, that's a good question. I've talked to some people who insist that the occupy movement is alive and well and continuing in small groups here and there, some around Washington, D.C., still occupying in various ways and doing other forms of political action, but they certainly are flying under the radar at this point. And of course, we always have to remind ourselves that the media are not always reporting a lot of very good action of many kinds and peace, justice and sustainability work. So there's always more than any of us is aware of. But again, that quandary I was just referring to of maintaining the rainbow of the coalition of occupy and sustainability, balancing that with focus and more visible concerted action is, I think that's still a big quandary for us. Certainly, the prophetic revolutionary witness of the early Quaker movement faced its own sustainability crisis after some years of heavy persecution by the English government and some of the colonial governments in America in the 1600s. They found the sustainability through a form of organization that favored network and shared decision making in ways that kept innovation flowing even across the Atlantic to the various kinds of Quaker communities that kept it evolving and kept it growing in a prophetic witness against the mainstream of colonial development. John Wollman is certainly a great example of a prophetic critic of the way in which American life was developing even in its first century. On the other hand, Quakers did get very involved in banking and industry and trade in ways that sometimes compromised our integrity and we've had to rethink some things. And so every attempt and strategy of sustainability may carry with it that the risk of compromise and accommodation to the mainstream that has to be constantly reevaluated and critiqued. I don't know whether Occupy will find its way forward again or whether another spontaneous spark will create something that does prove more sustained in its visibility and ability to fire the wider public imagination. I'm hoping for it. I'm hoping that perhaps the insights that you've gathered in a sustainable life are going to help people be aware of what supports that, which we are eventually heading towards the Holy Grail, which we might call a sustainable society. I had one quick question. You referred to way back in the past when you first felt you're leading. I mean, you're already in zoology and you're working in parks. And so you've already got this natural orientation, but then you felt a call and leading towards this Quaker leadership position, the Quaker ministry that you're doing. Were you raised Quaker? Did you get to it from something else? I grew up in the pastoral stream of Quakers, which is predominant in the Midwest and where I grew up in Indianapolis. And I've kind of moved back and forth between the pastoral stream and the unprogrammed stream. I've been often a teacher in Quakerism at Quaker centers like Pendle Hill and Woodbrook in England and really like the unprogrammed tradition in many ways. But the pastoral tradition, particularly in the kind of semi-programmed wing that leaves some good space for silent worship, it has its strengths as well. So I like both for different reasons, I guess, and have tried to be a figure that makes the two streams a little more intelligible to each other. But it's always been as a Quaker. You've never been a Methodist or I grew up Catholic and you've never been a non-practicing. Did you go through your fallow period where you let the fields lie empty for a while? No, not really. I pretty much once that call came, I didn't know quite what it meant and it was a thought that it never occurred to me, but it made a certain kind of sense and I followed it. But I must say that in particularly the unprogrammed tradition is a wide range of friends today, many of whom kind of hyphenate their Quakerism with Buddhism or Neopaganism. And I've learned a lot from a wide variety of more universalist and non-theist friends over the years that keep challenging me. And even though I'm still happily a Christian friend, I grow from those conversations and from worship and fellowship with a wide variety of friends today. My wife who is a British friend is also a Dharma teacher in the inside meditation tradition and spends most of her life in the Buddhist world and as a Dharma teacher. So I get plenty of chances to keep my Christian Quaker face on a larger canvas. One thing I wanted to end with, in each of the chapters that you have in your book A Sustainable Life, you include at the end of the chapter some queries and advices that are from Quaker groups, from Quaker publications called Faith and Practice. And I particularly liked the ones and I thought they might be generally valuable and accessible to non-Quakers at the end of the simplicity chapter. Could you pick out one or perhaps two of those to share? I think you've got three at the end of that chapter. I'd be glad to. The queries are an old Quaker form of just asking ourselves questions, questions that you never outgrow about the way that you're actually living your life, whatever you believe. George Fox said let your lives preach and that we believe that the way we live demonstrates what we really believe, whatever it is we think we believe. So the queries keep asking us questions, how are we living out our Quaker values and faith and the advices were traditionally a kind of statements that kind of restated in statement form, what the queries were asking. And so today's advices and queries kind of interweave questions and statements. The advices and queries that are featured at the end of each chapter of this book come from Britain Yearly Meetings, Quaker, Faith and Practice. And I think are sort of the state of the art in my mind of asking ourselves the tough questions. And so these are two on simplicity and sustainability from Britain Yearly Meetings, Quaker, Faith and Practice. Try to live simply. A simple lifestyle freely chosen is a source of strength. Do not be persuaded into buying what you do not need or cannot afford. Do you keep yourself informed about the effects your style of living is having on the global economy and the environment. We do not own the world and its riches are not ours to dispose of at will. Show a loving consideration for all creatures and seek to maintain the beauty and variety of the world. Work to ensure that our increasing power over nature is used responsibly with reverence for life. Rejoice in the splendor of God's continuing creation. I hope that those statements, those advices and queries are useful to all of our listeners, Quaker, non-Quaker, doesn't matter. I think they touch at the center of what sustainability has to be. It's the point of view that we stand on the place where we leverage our change for the world because we're standing in that perfect clarity and integrity. The statements really capture that for me. Yeah, thanks. That's a good reflection. Again, the book is A Sustainable Life. The subtitle is Quaker, Faith and Practice in the Renewal of Creation. I hope this conversation with Douglas Gwynn has helped you see that the concepts, the ideas, the history you reviewed here in will help you, whatever your point of view, with helping move the world towards a sustainable future. And my guest has been Douglas Gwynn, currently out in Maine. He's originally from the Midwest. He's got a number of books. If you come to the NortonSpiritRadio.org site, I have a link to the QuakerBooks.org site, which points right at a number of his books. There are a wealth of them. Many of them focused within the Quaker realm. I hope that you'll find them all useful in terms of whatever spiritual journey you're on. Again, Doug, I thank you so much for focusing on the sustainability. I'm glad that you studied zoology and that you're living it out in common with your theological, your philosophical, your metaphysical pursuits in life. And that you brought that together in the book A Sustainable Life. Thanks so much for joining me today for Spirit in Action. Thank you, Mark. It's been a real pleasure. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of NorthernSpiritRadio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)