Every journal needs a proper beginning — and to begin this one aright, I should explain why this journal has the title it does.
In a Quaker context, “witness” might mean either of two things. It could mean religious witness: a speaking of the tremendous good news of the life of the Spirit, as that life and Spirit arise and are known among Friends. Or it could mean prophetic witness: confronting wrongdoers with clear and truthful messages.
“Earth” is less well defined. “Earth” might mean the landscape, or the soil underfoot, or exploitable real estate, or the vulnerable environment, or the spinning planet, or the deluded human world, or the global biosystem, or a spiritual entity. I’ve noticed that people often confuse these meanings, thinking of the earth in a way inappropriate to the situation at hand. When this happens, they can do great damage without intending to. (Perhaps you’ve noticed this, too.
So what does it mean to do “earthwitness”? Does it mean bearing witness in regard to something we aren’t seeing clearly or understanding rightly? Heaven forbid! To be true witness, it must begin by seeing the earth clearly. True earthwitness, then, is not likely to be an easy thing to do well.
A journal, friends, is the record of a journey. This journal, which begins today, will track an interweaving of two journeys: a physical journey over the earth, listening to it and interacting with it and seeking to know it rightly, and an interpersonal journey of listening to the religious and prophetic witness of Friends and others across the U.S.
Perhaps that sounds overly ambitious. But I’m about to be plunged into a situation in which I think it might even come naturally. For in the next few months, I expect to be engaged in an 1150-mile, eleven-and-a-half-week-long walk, eastward from my home in Omaha, Nebraska, to the meeting site of Baltimore Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers) in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Along the way, I’ll be visiting Friends churches and Friends meetings, asking their members questions and seeking to learn. I’ll have many long days, walking along at two and half miles an hour or so, in which I have nothing to do but attend to the earth and its creatures. And I’ll have many evenings in which I may have the chance to hear and learn from the witness of many different sorts of Friends.
There is a point of intersection, I believe, where the earth’s teaching, and the messages of Spirit-led human witnesses, meet and reinforce one another and become one larger thing. That is a point of intersection that greatly interests me. Whatever glimpses I may have of it, I hope to write about them here.
God willing, I’ll start my journey less than four weeks from today, on May 13, 2006.
I invite you to join me in dialogue along the way.