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To support the development of this site and the work of soul friendship you are invited to express your appreciation through the spiritual practice of Dana

John Woolman was among many who began the campaign to abolish slavery.  It was left to parliamentarians like William Wilberforce to make their long, spiritual and heart felt wish a reality for the many millions who suffered the passage to slavery

William Wilberforce began waging his forty-six yearlong campaign against the entrenched financial interests in slavery in 1787.  His Slave Trade Act of 1807 put an end to slavery in most of the British Empire, but it was not until 1833 that Britain completely abolished slavery. News of the abolition reached Wilberforce on his deathbed. Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation freeing slaves in the United States in 1863 during a bitter Civil War between the free and slave-holding states.  

Radiant 

Spiritual Cinema

Learn more about William Wilberforce and his campaign to abolish slavery in an evening of spiritual cinema.

 Amazing Grace

Radiant Poetry

The Quaker of Olden Time

by John Greenleaf Whittier

The Quaker of the olden time!
How calm and firm and true,
Unspotted by its wrong and crime,
He walked the dark earth through,
The lust of power, the love of gain,
The thousand lures of sin
Around him, had no power to stain
The purity within.

With that deep insight which detects
All great things in the small,
And knows how each man's life affects
The spiritual life of all,
He walked by faith and not by sight,
By love and not by law;
The presence of the wrong or right
He rather felt than saw.

He felt that wrong with wrong partakes,
That nothing stands alone,
That whoso gives the motive, makes His
brother's sin his own
And, pausing not for doubtful choice
Of evils great or small,
He listened to that inward voice
Which called away from all.

O Spirit of that early day,
So pure and strong and true,
Be with us in the narrow way
Our faithful fathers knew.
Give strength the evil to forsake,
The cross of Truth to bear,
And love and reverent fear to make
Our daily lives a prayer!

 

 

 

The Light of the World - Holman Hunt

The Practice of Integrity 

Preserving Creation 

The produce of the earth is a gift from our gracious Creator

To the Inhabitants, and

To impoverish the earth now to support outward greatness

Appears to be an injury to the succeeding age.

Does this quote sound as if spoken by a contemporary Creation Spirituality theologian? It does have all the hallmarks of someone in tune with environmental degradation, which views the human’s role as one of stewardship with an eye on what legacy is left for future generations.

Yet the Quaker journalist and ‘minister’ John Woolman wrote these words in 1772.  This was shortly before the America colonies, where he lived, declared their independence. Within his lifetime much of the North American East Coast’s virgin forest had been felled to make way for Europeans in search of fortune or freedom of religious or philosophical thought.

Environmental degradation, the suppression and vilification of indigenous people, slave labor, economies that created debt and despair. This eighteenth century visionary saw the whole and how everything was connected and that great care needed to be taken to negotiate the traps and snare by which anyone could create yet another tear in the seam of the Seamless.

To practice the Integrity of all Creation is not an accumulation of actions.  But it is a Call to Love in Action. It is a thoughtful way of reviewing your life and placing it within the great sweep of history and the wider culture’s values. Woolman is an example of how one can live deliberately. He did marry and had a very supportive wife. Their family was small – one daughter – and he kept an orchard that met their own simple living needs and allowed him to travel in the Light.

Today we see many of the same challenges that Woolman saw in his day. The environment is being degraded. Indigenous peoples are not honoured. Slavery is still practiced in agriculture and in what is euphemistically called ‘the sex trade.’ Debt is creating a great deal of despair in homes around the world, where people are lucky enough not to have had their home repossessed.

What can we do? Woolman’s life of being guided by the Spirit and Love created actions in line with that guidance. Woolman’s example is that of examining such important questions: How far am I responsible for this?  and  What am I doing that condones this practice?

Despite the passage of three hundred years we can still consider cotton. While not technically slave labor many cotton field workers are paid a pittance and spray lethal pesticides and herbicides on the crop without any protective clothing. They then become ill and are unable to support their families and the cycle of poverty continues. So maybe the next time you need a t-shirt you could make a point of buying one that is fair trade and organic cotton.

You can learn more about how to become a new slavery abolitionist from the website http://www.NotForSaleCampaign.org. 

Do you give your beloved chocolate on Valentine’s Day? Are you a bit of a chocoholic? Well, it is estimated that 80% of the world’s chocolate is harvested in West Africa by enslaved children. So consider buying fair trade and organic chocolate instead of the corporate chocolate that is cheap because children go uneducated and in unpaid servitude.

The environment is all around us whether we live in urban or rural surroundings. Just because I live in the country does not mean I live in an idyll. I take a personal interest in protecting the local habitat for the endangered and protected red squirrel species. 

If you look around your neighborhood you will surely find some way that you can hold the fraying seam in the Seamless and preserve the integrity of Creation.

This, too, is Love in Action.

© Bee Smith 2009

Another Soul Friend

"click on graphic below"

John O'Donohue is a man of the soul.  His scholarly meditation on the continuing relevance of Ireland's spiritual heritage has become a publishing phenomenon....  This poetic meditation has become a best seller on both sides of the Atlantic......  A lyrical epic prayer

The Times

From Review of Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom