Beloved dead, about the Recording clerk

RantWoman elders her Meeting's Recording Clerk, based on multiple RantWoman experiences, including RantWoman's heroic vexation of the Recording clerk during last Meeting for Business....add an exhortation: if something RantWoman says is not clear consider the options of either just letting God work on it or asking for clarification. RantWoman cannot read faces. RantWoman cannot read minds. If someone is upset or not understanding things a lot of the time someone has to use their words. Otherwise, as another blind person RantWoman is in a lot of meetings with says, RantWoman can offend you with impunity whether she means to or not.

No, RantWoman is NOT just taking up space for herself.  RantWoman  had occasion to think about a number of people in our community who she knows are grieving the loss of a loved one. RantWoman actually did not do this to start because she was overflowing with empathy. RantWoman did it because she made a list of people she needed to talk to and realized several of them were grieving. Then as RantWoman poked at various thoughts arising from that, she recognized that in fact there are even more people in our community who have lost loved ones over the past year. THEN RantWoman decided she should just say some prayers for awhile AND think about what space the topic might need in community conversation.

Okay, so you read on. How about a request to be held in the Light after the fact. The hold in the Light after the fact point is part of RantWoman's sometimes shit happens and the interpreter gets to keep on talking or the recording clerk gets to keep on recording thread.

RantWoman heard that people spoke last week of Doris Ferm of Bellingham who
passed away the Friday after Quarterly Meeting. Doris was a STALWART of
FCWPP Steering committee meetings and she just beamed when she got there this last time even though she was an hour late. RantWoman wound up rooming with her and her 80-year-old sister. That all
wound up being very sweet in a geriatric chaplain and passing of generations sense but that is another story.) But the real kicker came late in the meeting when people were talking about interest groups planned for the next day, one usual one about legislative matters and one about gun-related deaths. A couple people looked at death records for like 5 years and discovered that suicides outnumber homicides and all else by about 5 / 1 across the state. They planned to do an interest group about it and were chattering away chirpily.

One problem for RantWoman: a few years ago a friend of hers shot himself. He had MANY tough circumstances and barriers about getting help. He was able to buy the gun he used despite having been hospitalized multiple times the previous year for suicidal depression. Some of the time when gun suicides come up, RantWoman just thinks "better access to mental health care..."  Some of the time brain just leaves the room! RantWoman's brain was leaving the room at that point in the FCWPP meeting. Even worse, someone else in the room, RantWoman knew from listening around Meeting, might also be having a really rough time. RantWoman looked at that Friend at one point and had definitely guessed correctly, but the Friend was across the  table and saying anything would have been
awkward.

Luckily at that point RantWoman did not have to try VERY hard to focus enough for what was needed in the minutes.

And the Clerk is not sure about there being a God.

And RantWoman has a pretty versatile concept of God getting things done all kinds of ways, but it was only after the brain leaving the room moments repeated themselves the next day at the actual interest group that RantWoman managed to email the presenters with concern about sensitivity if people have stories the presenters say they are interested in. One of the presenters got the  point immediately; the other one RantWoman is not so sure.