Meeting for Napping

For those who want a bullet point or two to respond to without the telenovela angles,

What do Meetings do specifically to support the presence of the parents of young children at Meeting for Business?

What about business meeting is important to
you or to your sense of being part of Meeting?

Is there something you wish people planning your Meeting for Business would take into account to make it more accessible for your family?


RantWoman has discovered that for two families who have young children, NAPTIME is the defining barrier to the parents' participation in Meeting for Business in the early afternoon. RantWoman has also independently observed dropoffs in attendance as children are born, patterns about who exits at lunch, and other things causing her to meditate about what is important in getting Business done.

RantWoman means to make her readers scroll down for the telenovela aspects of this discovery but first the crackpot suggestion that wandered into RantWoman's head on awakening this morning: Meeting for Napping. See, naptime was RantWoman's favorite part of kindergarten.

WHAT IF we held Meeting for napping at a designated time on Business
Meeting Sundays. Kids could bring a blanket and a love animal. There should be some kind of routine and dimmed lights and... all our usual child supervision practices. Depending on the schedule, provision could be made about timing of lunch or time for kids to eat. The idea would be to make a sense of special time for kids but still time to do what is needed, nap.

Okay, RantWoman is Auntie, not Mom or Dad. This would not be the first outlandish RantWoman idea vetoed by those in charge, but hey....

The other problem: At it's best, RantWoman finds Meeting for Business very rich in connections, mutual learning, and movements of Spirit. But in other cases, RantWoman knows some Friends for whom Meeting for Business can induce SEVERE temptation to stray from "living in the light and power that takes away the occasion for all war." RantWoman wonders whether having Meeting for Napping available would tempt too many adults to participate too.






















The Very Large Three-Year-Old angle:

WHY was naptime RantWoman's favorite time in kindergarten?
--The young RantWoman had probably outgrown her rage with her mother who spent a lot of time prying her glasses off her face before naps when she was a toddler.

--The other things RantWoman remembers about kindergarten were things like a
lot of trouble coloring in the lines until at some point midyear there
were new glasses in the picture and multiple rounds of struggle with
the zipper on her coat in the winter in the mountains in CO.


The telenovela aspects:
RantWoman discovered these families' concerns by being more or less the star of one of those festival of Quaker Drama events that happen sometimes in the zone of the Quaker seamless garment about healing inwardly and healing outwardly or in larger circles. RantWoman has NO idea how the telenovela angles look to others present. RantWoman feels REAL efforts to listen. RantWoman is extremely grateful for a Friend who was reflecting back quite a bit of what RantWoman said. This was, um, not perfect but feeling heard really helped RantWoman pay attention to other themes. RantWoman hears HUGE conversational openings in the areas of:

--what it means to be present in different categories of events, media and conversations

--different people's sense of safety, need to talk about same, and need to feel safe to talk.

--what is important about Meeting for Business.

--people being able to have conversations with space for difficult topics.

RantWoman is, all in all, DEEPLY grateful.

RantWoman, being RantWoman hears many other issues but RantWoman feels so many openings there is ample space to move forward. RantWoman is not ecstatic about some very important points that are stuck. However, between the meeting and some followup emails, some really loud alarms sounding in RantWoman's head have settled down at least to slightly below average. RantWoman now needs to tend several sore points and she has a mind to do some by phone for a few different reasons. Sigh.