Year of Discernment Retreat Review

RantWoman is about to give up on any prayer of making it to Meeting for Worship today. Between a retreat all day yesterday, a lovely symphony concert last night, and a nasty spell of middle-of-the-night sleeplessness, RantWoman is just going to acknowledge the state of affairs and write up some of her thoughts on what is supposed to be the last Year of Discernment retreat.


RantWoman really likes:


--that it happened at our Meetinghouse instead of out at some retreat center. This fits RantWoman's (and she suspects others') budget. It makes the event accessible for people who cannot give a whole weekend. We get to do things we're good at like potluck. We strengthen our ties to our building and the area around it.


--The opening go-around and VERY well-designed sets of queries and goals for different parts. RantWoman was somewhat appalled to learn that one young Friend was told no one would take her seriously unless she wore a nametag and that it took someone THREE WEEKS after another Friend filled out a new attender card for someone to contact him. RantWoman herself only wears nametags when she is a greeter and cannot see the darn things on other people anyway. As for the three-week followup interval, RantWoman simply notes it for now.

--Combining worship with work party. There are plenty of chores around the Meetinghouse. If our recently renamed Building and Grounds committee holds a work party by themselves, no one comes. If we combine well-defined chore lists with a get-acquainted circle and lots of opportunities for discussion and seasoning in groups of varying scale and awesome potluck lunch, TONS of stuff gets done. Can you say dusting, weeding, window washing, mass changing of social hall lightbulbs? Can you say purge and shred of such a pile of out-of-date files that, when RantWoman peeked into the office, she hardly recognized the place? RantWoman herself set to work purging a contraption intended to hold both signs and umbrellas of everything she herself cannot read. The thought would be to purge the whole contraption, but RantWoman, feeling obligated at least to freecycle it could not go that far quite yet.


--mention of the concept of staging and impacts on renters and other meeting processes in connection with discussion of further construction projects.

--A thought from the religion and social action discussion group that for many kinds of events, some after event debriefing would be highly nurturing.

--Further comments that a cycle of reports to Business Meeting from different committees could help Friends feel more connected with the life and variety of our ministries.

RantWoman wonders about:

--Even though poverty and war will always be with us, gloval warming, the global information revolution, other global economic trends affect all of us and how are we led to respond?


--what our old minutes say about how our spirituality was expressed in our actions at other times.


--Are we really better equipped for discernment on the financial front? There is probably no way of finding out except to try. RantWoman is glad that those led to devote the afternoon to matters of our facilities came back with a ringning endorsement of getting on with our remodel. RantWoman notes we have been talking about some parts of this long enough that certain pieces could have been done and already worn out again. The world has not stopped for the items not getting done,

--RantWoman is reflecting about the number of people who say it's hard to get to know people in Meeting. It's TRUE that if a lot of basically huge introverts come and sit in silence every week and then are all shy about either reaching out on either side, it's NO WONDER people feel gaps. RantWoman is not sure that our Meeting is doing so well about newcomer potlucks--or any kind of potluck now that we have changed to Business Meetings always on Sunday with minimal responsibility for the accompanying meal. RantWoman notes that spiritual sharing groups have had mixed experiences. RantWoman notes all of this and also notes the number of times people new to meeting mentioned being invited over to some Friends' house as part of their first time at Meeting. RantWoman explicitly is not in a position to propose solutions, but is considering various dynamics.

--The Year of Discernment committee wants to lay itself down. RantWoman is thinking about how to retain the kind of focus and coherence we got from the committee's work if for example the task of planning a couple onsite retreats / year is devolved to some kind of intercommittee task force.