I think zero waste is a great idea. I know it isn’t manageable in my life at the moment, and the big steps – e.g. home grown vegetables – are impossible in my current health and economic situation.

This post is part of an ongoing process, mostly not visible online, in which I am trying to reduce my environmental impact without going ‘it would be better if I were dead’ or otherwise despairing entirely. What specific, concrete steps are you taking at the moment?

Whilst we are all too aware of modern plastics being used are toxic. Or are unknown to have toxic effects on the human body and its environment. I’m all for reducing the amount of these plastics used in daily items, replaced with plastics that are environmentally and economically viable to reuse, with _zero_ wastage.

The problem is also how much energy is used in recycling those products you’ve mentioned. Glass, Aluminium and Tin aren’t cheap both environmentally or economically to recycle. Which leads me onto the campaigning for “Cradle to Cradle” in the manufacturing of materials for every day items.

This was a very interesting post!

Alas, I am often at Meeting without a rug or extra coat to put on, so I end up trying to curl up as far as possible to keep my hands warm. Sometimes I put them in my pockets, and hope nobody reads too much into that, either.

Standing seems perfectly reasonable to me. I have also met at least one Friend who found her back problems helped by taking time to lie on the floor during Meeting, and at times I’ve chosen to sit on the floor. Friends who shake, cough convulsively, or need to leave the room sometimes are not uncommon either. I understand, though, that it may be harder to come into the community knowing that you have those needs and fearing that you will disturb people, than to keep coming to Meeting if you are already firmly entrenched in the community and develop them.

I do sometimes infer inward from outward, at least so often as it matches what people express in other ways. Rug over shoulders is ‘cold room’; arms folded can be simply ‘arms folded’ but often seems to correlate with ‘Don’t you try to make me believe ten [?] impossible things before breakfast!’

Quakers seem to have been mistaking outward for inward for some very long time; but then this goes back at least to the Pharisees of 1st Century vintage: “Why do you wash the outside of the cup and leave the inside yucky?” Was some concern to me when I went to Pendle Hill and caught myself worrying about whether I’d discredit my real insights via being ‘too weird.’ Lately it’s a friend who after a lifetime of psych-assisted intoxication is afraid to come to Meeting because “I can’t be a Quaker because I can’t sit still!” Really sad, and I don’t yet know what to say. (The Meeting itself– We told one lady who was comfortable standing, but pained by long sitting: “Go ahead, just stand where it’ll be clear whether or not you’re delivering a Message.” Dancing, though…)