Summary, June 14 to July 18
Whew! What a month of activity!
With the deadline of the Friends General Conference Gathering looming, I finally got going on making a presentable Quaker Community Forest (QCF) website. I featured some of our activities where I have good pictures and where the focus is on building our spiritual connection with nature.
Now up on the QCF website we have:
1. An INTRODUCTION to the project
2. Two ANALYSES of our current situation, one Global, one Ecosystemic
3. Some of our VISIONS of what we eventually want to see in a Quaker Community Forest:
Cynthia & Ralph’s and some of my poems: A Suggestion To NYM, Cathedral Forest, and Our Story Forest4. Some of our STRATEGY for creating a forest-friendly culture:
Our memorial service for the three acres of trees that were about to be harvested
Our Teen Retreats
The Student Grove Project
In addition to the flurry of QCF work, I also reported here an experience of guidance.
This provoked a wonderful comment from Liz, where she dared include a reference to “the Adversary.” I am thrilled she would offer this concept to our ongoing discussion. If I try to use it to map my reality, I’d say “the Adversary was present, detected, and argued with, back when I posted on April 7, speaking of my divided self. I said at the time, “we’ll see how this goes…” I can report now, that it was a struggle, from early April until mid-June, and then, as reported above, the floodgates opened.
I am grateful.
And grateful to you, my friends, for your ongoing interest.
Richard
Gaia Voices 
Dear Richard,
As you already know, since the launching of this web site I’ve been absorbed in outward activities. (Read here: Minnesota Universal Health Care Coalition; legislative session; Quaker Universalist Fellowship, FGC Gathering, etc.) As you might have guessed from the essay I sent you, I’ve also been “worrying” (in the sense of a dog and a bone) at trying to express to others the powerful message conveyed to me in the work of Luther Askeland. [Rhoda’s effort, and a pretty good one, I think.–RF] Now I think I have both issues at least temporarily settled, and I can turn more attention to this conversation.
I am overjoyed at what “the floodgates” have released in the past month, both at the Gathering and on the QCF web site. I’ve looked at the latter, and although I’ve seen most of the photos before, they speak to me now more powerfully of the mystery that is Gaia than they did before. Is the consciousness of wonder and awe and participation an essential part of Gaia herself?
Rhoda