Quaker Study at CYM: Mark A Burch….

Come All Ye Who are Heavily Cumbered: Simplicity as the Radical Path to Peace, Justice, Community and Care of the Earth.

The testimony to simplicity was one of the foundations of early Quaker praxis. Today, popular culture portrays simple living as quaint, utopian, nostalgic, eccentric, marginal, or naive. Contemporary Friends cannot help but be influenced by these stereotypes. But such portrayals tell us as much about consumer culture’s discomfort with radical critiques of its values as it does about simple living itself. The voluntary cultivation of a simple way of life is one of the most powerful skillful means for uprooting all occasions for war. Simplicity invites us back into communities of equality, sharing, humility and love. Our sessions will open the treasures of simplicity, rooted in our biblical heritage, nourished from the inner springs of worship, that blossom in a radical, lived testimony to care for the Earth and care for each other that is very much needed today.