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Friends United Meeting |
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July-August 2005
Footprints
By Pam Ferguson
One Sunday this past April, footprints through the meetinghouse led to a forest of tulip trees in the parlor. For the last four years, Winchester Friends Meeting (Indiana) has celebrated Earth Day by giving away a tree to anyone who has room to plant one. To date, most of the 400 oak, red bud, blue spruce and tulip trees are alive and making a difference in our ecological footprint on the planet. This year the Missions and Social Concerns Committee decided to visualize the impact of our footprints with real footprints. Brightly colored footprints were placed on the carpet throughout the meetinghouse. Some footprints were as small as a baby’s footprint, most were the size of a child‘s footprint. One footprint measured over three feet in length and it represented the impact of the United States lifestyle on our planet.
There are only 4.5 acres of biologically productive land per person in our world to sustain life. Yet in 2004, the average American used 24 acres of land to sustain their lifestyle. Our Israeli friends used 13 acres, our Cuban friends used 4 acres and our Kenyan friends’ footprints were 2 acres per person for their lifestyle. The visual impact of those numbers sobered me enough that I checked out the Earth Day website (www. myfootprint.org) to see how my lifestyle compared to the average American’s. Even though I think I live a bit more simply than some of my neighbors, my lifestyle still used 18 acres for my personal footprint, way more than what is available. Is my lifestyle really that much more valuable than my Cuban or Kenyan friends? Does how I live really matter to them?
In response to Winchester Friends Missions and Social Concerns Committee’s focus on environmental stewardship during the first half of 2005, FUM Kenya field staff member Mary Kay Rehard shared several excellent essays with our meeting. Her focus was on reducing waste, refraining from polluting, and simplicity in her western Kenya context at Friends Theological College near Kaimosi. Mary Kay’s essays were emailed and printed for everyone in the meeting. They were discussed at Missions meetings and in book discussion groups. Mary Kay’s essays gave us perspective on statistical numbers. They explained why Kenyan’s footprints were so small and why ours were so big.
More importantly, Mary Kay’s essays helped us put a name and a face to Kenyans. If I choose to live a lifestyle beyond what the earth can sustain, that means someone must do without. Most of us live with that reality with little guilt when our lifestyle affects faceless Kenyans or Cubans. But when I know that my lifestyle affects the lives of Mary Kay’s good friend and the bursar of FTC Josphat, his wife, Violet and their two small children, Lynne and Laverne, then it is difficult to justify my lifestyle. Through Mary Kay’s essays, we’ve gained an understanding of how Josphat and Violet live, why they consume less and recycle more than we do here in Winchester, and why their ecological footprint is so small compared to ours in North America.
Worship of our Creator requires action. Our Missions and Social Concerns committee worked hard to identify actions to make a difference in our world—ways to shrink the ecological footprint of our American lifestyle. The committee educated us about recycling, water conservation and reducing our ecological footprints through ideas in bulletin inserts, quizzes in newsletters and displays throughout the meetinghouse. The committee members offered to pick up recycling for those who find it difficult to get items to public bins. They encouraged planting gardens or tulip trees or buying locally grown produce from the youth’s Compassion Garden and the local farmer‘s market. And they encouraged us to consider how our lives impact our friends and partners in Kenya, Cuba and Ramallah.
As followers of Christ and as Friends, living with truthful integrity, simplicity, nonviolence and equality should be at the center of our being. The actions of our lives should reflect that center and respect the created order that sustains us. And our actions should reflect our responsibility for our friends in Kenya. How we live does matter to Josphat and Violet, and it will matter to their children, Lynne and Laverne. But even more importantly, it matters to God.
Pam Ferguson and her husband, Ron, have been co-pastors at Winchester Friends Meeting, Indiana, since coming back from Uganda in 1998.