For being dead

RantWoman apologizes if the title above seems too irreverent. Please accept it as a token of deep affection for several of the 13 (14?) departed Friends and deep condolences for the loved ones of others whose lives were celebrated at Memorial worship at the most recent NPYM Annual Session.

RantWoman, to be honest, is still of an age not automatically to go to memorial worship. Besides comparative youth, NPYM Annual Session frequently falls near the anniversaries of some other deaths for RantWoman's loved ones and RantWoman someimes attends to her own head and heart first.


This year RantWoman already knew of

3 members of her own Meeting including our last surviving founding member.

a former member of RantWoman's Meeting

Bonnie Tinker

The memorial worship also noted the passing of a young woman by suicide, a founding member of Multonomah Meeting in Portland, as well as several others, including a Friend, Vern, who RantWoman knew when he was an inmate member of a worship group at the Washington State Reformatory in Monroe, WA, and very slightly after he was released.


This whole parade of great gifts and vivid lives was crammed into 1.5 hours of worship. Almost every memorial moved RantWoman deeply in some way but the cumulative effect, with barely time to breathe between was almost overwhelming. RantWoman must particularly linger over a couple moments:


--RantWoman thinks family members should never be required to read a loved one's memorial minute. However, RantWoman was awed when Lynn Waddington's partner Margaret read Lynn's memorial minute: walking with one's partner as closely as Margaret did is also a testmony about Margaret's life and especially her life during that time.


--RantWoman is sometimes the sort of solipsist who, in the presence of a memorial or some other intense moment involving someone else, first gets stuck on something about herself. RantWoman knew Vern only a little and when she was very new to Friends. RantWoman only saw Vern once a month when the worship group met at the prison. Time and use of space were very controlled There was very little opportunity for more than basic check-in and there were many things one just did not ask.


When RantWoman joined the Monroe Worship Group, she was still barely handling silent worship at home in her Meeting. It seemed like everyone RantWoman talked to was all into Alternatives to Violence, something there was no way RantWoman felt able to do at the time. However, RantWoman rented a room from Seriously Weighty Friend who was a big believer in the Monroe Worship Group. Somewhere along the way the question of RantWoman joining the worship group came up, and since RantWoman was guaranteed a ride and interesting travelling companions, she assented. RantWoman will write separately of some of her own very short protest-related incarceration encounters. These experiences apparently did not stand in the way of processing RantWoman's application paperwork, but RantWoman does take note of a certain irony.

RantWoman dutifully went through training offered at the prison: the thing which stuck most with RantWoman was the administration's admonishment that in the event of riots, volunteers were to lie on the floor, keep their heads down and only move when specifically told to. RantWoman still thinks of that sometimes when attending to certain news items, but the biggest challenge for the worship group was negotiating space, either in a room run by the chapel or in a different room in the visitors' area,


All RantWoman did really was show up and help hold the space. be present in worship. RantWoman still follows one member's prison journalist work, RantWoaman could also perfectly well check in more intentionally with this Friend's wife. In any case, enough of the guys got released or transferred and energy shifted. RantWoman does not remember the sequence of Vern getting released and the Worship Group getting laid down, but she supposes the whole story is the sort of thing that should be called to mind again just so people new to the story know it happened and can ask questions if led.

Only during memorial worship did RantWoman learn hints of the transformations Vern had gone through in connection with Alternatives to Violence. From the comments later over minutes, RantWoman also gleaned that Vern had laid down his membership, and RantWoman found herself meditating, including in an email exchange with a certain figure of RantWoman's long acquaintance, about the unknown stories behind that.

RantWoman finds herself regretting that, since Vern laid down his membership, there is likely not to be a memorial minute. RantWoman thinks the few words here are in no way sufficient and again.finds herself nagging a certain problematic mentor figure to find ways of expressing these stories, writing them down, both for what they say of his walk and for figures like Vern who might otherwise pass unnoted.


One of RantWoman's driving companions on the Missoula trip has a great deal of experience in different Yearly Meetings. On the long drive home from Missoula, he spoke of how in a non-creedal tradition, people's lives are a testimony of what they believe, what matters most to them. Like RantWoman this Friend thinks that memorials deserve enough time for respectful worship. Friend Driver also spoke of some Yearly Meetings where one or two memorial minutes are read at the end of each plenary. RantWoman thinks that is an interesting way to give a little space to each departed Friend. However, despite the temporal overload, RantWoman's spirit was deeply enriched by all the stories she heard and she would not want to risk missing some if responsibilities or other cares kept her attendance at plenaries as spotty as it was this year.


Holding in the Light...