Horrors? Oops. Well. Care and Counsel!

The Bedbugs? (Put bedbugs into the search box to see what RantWoman is talking about) Have the Bedbugs hacked up another missive? The bedbugs in RantWoman's Meeting utterly disclaim and disavow any knowledge as to the provenance of the document below. In fact they are shocked, shocked, and also appalled even to appear in the same paragraph.




RantWoman herself handles the material with trepidation. RantWoman writes in a spirit of love and Truth of people and situations she cares deeply about. RantWoman takes full responsibility for crankiness, excessive zaniness, and the glorious gratitude for all the trouble she has fixating visually in actually sometimes getting unspeakably fixated on SOMETHING.



The RantWoman eye view of the world can see between 0 and 5 of any given object; this can be particularly alarming if RantWoman is seeing 0 of a Mac truck barreling alongside. RantWoman also writes with trepidation lest the, um, unique RantWoman eye view of the world and RantWoman's own overly endowed capacity to muddle and misapprehend somehow distort Divine messages as well.



RantWoman IS a recording clerk. RantWoman is aware that there are themes here entangling several recording clerks. RantWoman is holding that role in the Light. The information below is DATA. Sometimes data adds up one way; sometimes one throws data up on a screen, metaphorical PLEASE, no death by Powerpoint for the shared Light of many. Sometimes RantWoman really would NOT mind finding a whole lot less data to collect.



Needless to say, editing has NOT occurred and any resemblance between the events recorded here and actual Meetings for Worship with attention to Business at any actual Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends are pure conjecture.





Minutes? Hours? of Bad Friend Monthly Meeting of the Society of Irreligious Fiends.



Once upon a time a fashion spread upon the land: We must eradicate every vestige of racism in our community's language and especially in our organizational bylaws. Yea verily, people of color are not tramping down the door coming to us. Some among us make a point to go nearer to others and listen and sometimes to struggle together; some among us wonder whether the reason is obscure Quakerese.



For instance, the word Overseers, lurking with greater or lesser visibility in different Friends communities, reeks of enslavement. The word is a veritable cataclysm of racial signification. We are told, the word Oversight, often seen in close proximity with or as a substitute for "overseers" is no better. So, to eradicate racism we would like to....drum roll please... rename the Oversight / Oops Well Committee. We would like the new name to be Care and Counsel.



Care and Counsel .Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel.



First we will publicize the proposed change in the newsletter of Bad Friend Monthly Meeting. Then we will or won't respond to questions we receive about history and consideration of other choices.



Then we will hand guests attending the White Privilege conference a big sloppy "Thank you for coming to town" kiss and discuss it in Meeting for Business right after the conference. And just to eradicate any whiff of discernment in Business Meeting we will bring a proposed bylaws change with Care and Counsel already enshrined as our choice. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel.



Care and Counsel .Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel! Shake those Quaker pom poms. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Set it to Music. Care and Counsel.



Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Next we will bring the change back to Meeting for Business where we will hear more than one person express specific concerns about the choice and we will AGAIN hear an inquiry about the word Oversight as opposed to Overseers. We will also hear notice of concerns about the use of oversee / oversight in contexts such as marriages where RantWoman thought it was God who oversees such things.Foreshadowing, RantWoman has decided that what made it into the final bylaws about this concern is not a change, not an improvement and therefore exempt from one very, very picky procedural point.



Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. RantWoman THINKS she has somewhere expressed concern to hear the "why" of different choices, not just some kind of internet poll of what choices are used.



Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel.



RantWoman had one conversation where she admitted to having trouble with the word Counsel because members of said committee have in the past offered counsel that misses big points in spectacular ways; RantWoman's counterpart did not inquire as to what RantWoman has in mind. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel.



Somewhere in here RantWoman extended an offer to come talk to all of said committee about several things. RantWoman met with one Friend who missed several of RantWoman's points; that Friend is due to go off the committee anyway. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel Care and Counsel



RantWoman had another conversation where "we don't see any reason to change the proposal." LOOK, RantWoman has asked questions about history. RantWoman harbors faint hope that there might be something concise in a b-b-b-book someone has already read. RantWoman finds it really hard to go look things up herself.



RantWoman is still stuck on do we need to change from Oversight, never mind whether she can live with Care and Counsel. But first, RantWoman would be ever, ever, ever so grateful if SOMEONE can just listen to RantWoman's question about history and help look something up, not tell RantWoman she does not need to know, not just chant Care and Counsel, Care and Counsel, Care and Counsel.



Care and Counsel .Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel! Shake those Quaker pom poms. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Set it to Music. Care and Counsel.



RantWoman repeated her offer to come talk to all of the Oops Well Committee, this time with a different emphasis. Instead Care and Counsel Friend was dispatched to visit RantWoman. RantWoman has a fine conversation with Care and Counsel Friend but Care and Counsel Friend again missed several of RantWoman's key points. Care and Counsel Friend is already wearing too many hats anyway and should get to share the task of talking to Rantwoman. Care and Counsel Friend absorbed about the same percentage of RantWoman's concerns as anyone else; it's just that if RantWoman speaks to several people and they all absorb different fractions, the cumulative effect is much stronger than if one Friend missess key points and then a fraction of what that Friend remembers gets lost in the retelling.



Care and Counsel .Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel! Shake those Quaker pom poms. Care and Coumsel. Care and Counsel. Set it to Music. Care and Counsel.



More months pass and Care and Counsel Friend, the principal champion of this effort finally was able to return to Meeting for Business. What is wrong with this picture? If this is such a universal concern, shouldn't one of the other members of the Oops Well Committee be able to present about this? After all, we are all ministers of God, right?



Care and Counsel .Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel! Shake those Quaker pom poms. Care and Coumsel. Care and Counsel. Set it to Music. Care and Counsel.



The week of Meeting for Business, Care and Counsel Friend's husband was in the hospital. Care and Counsel Friend was hurrying and needed to present two minutes, the one about renaming the Oops Well Committee and one with Care and Counsel Friend's Peace and Social Concerns hat on about upholding treaty rights for the Lummi people. RantWoman thinks presenting two such minutes was TOO MUCH and deeply wishes that Care and Counsel Friend had just stuck to the Lummi minute.



Care and Counsel .Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel! Shake those Quaker pom poms. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Set it to Music. Care and Counsel.



On the presentation went. Care and Counsel Friend still presented no information in response to RantWoman's question about history. Care and Counsel Friend did present a brief list of other names for this committee, but she presented them so fast that even RantWoman could not track them. RantWoman is used to gleaning information from Mr. JAWS the screen reader at Squirrels on Steroids speeds and RantWoman thought the delivery was too fast. The rest of the room was all more or less chanting Care and Counsel, Care and Counsel.



Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel.



Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel.





Look, okay, RantWoman is not of one mind within herself about the topic of whether and what to rename the Oops Well Committee, formerly called Oversight and now after a drum beat of months apparently to be called Care and Counsel.



At this point, SOME of the time RantWoman would like to hear a lot more about bigger more profound ways many in RantWoman's Meeting ARE actually engaging about racism and privilege. This includes:



--one Friend who reads widely of US history and keeps summarizing to such as RantWoman who will listen



--Various small but regular acts of faithfulness connected with for instance voter registration and the Friends Committee on WA Public Policy



--the daughter of a founding member of our Meeting who engages in many community connections in her neighborhood and will talk honestly about her mother's work as a social worker and the relocation of Japanese Americans during WWII.



--RantWoman who has done projects with many people of color whose first language is not English and who MUCH prefer that RantWoman t-t-t-TALK to them rather than write email.



--numerous other points of engagement that RantWoman never minds hearing from.



But back to renaming the committee. Sometimes RantWoman thinks well who cares one way or another about anything to do with racism or privilege? Everyone else is renaming the committee, it's a really important committee and Quakers arriving from elsewhere darn well need to be able to find the committee. So we should all just jump on the bandwagon.



Some of the time, RantWoman hears from Arguing Friend something along the lines of "I only know one Friend of Color who cares about renaming this committee...Well, yeah but very international Friends are way overrepresented among Friends of Color Arguing Friend knows. Just because the history of enslavement in the US is not the driving experience of international Friends does not mean that Friends in the US have nothing to answer about today as far as carryover from enslavement.



Further, RantWoman thinks Friend Who Often Opines about the Issue is more likely to hear from US Friends of Color than is either Arguing Friend or RantWoman. For comparison, RantWoman points to her experience as one flavor of blind person: somehow the presence of the white cane causes all kinds of other people to tell RantWoman things about their experiences that fall into the realm of "I didn't tell you about my day" when the people talking to RantWoman are around sighted people. From paying attention to LOTS of different blind people's experiences, RantWoman also knows to ask sometimes about different issues. Attending to this diversity of experience, RantWoman is frequently very reluctant to speak on behalf of all blind people, a tendency that is no darn help sometimes when simplicity and clarity is needed.



Simplicity? Clarity? You mean RantWoman not just being an obstructionist bitch whose sole goal is to drive Recording Clerks Crazy? Ummmm.



But no more Oversight. Oops Well. Care and Counsel it is. RantWoman feels SO thoroughly purified. Not! But RantWoman has PLENTY else to do and suggests everyone just hold the whole circus in the Light.



(Example attraction from current circuses while tending to statewide transportation issues, secondhand, originally from staff of a Republican state senator, "You mean we have to provide those people sign language interpreters?" Well, yeah, unless you want to get sued and put at risk every dollar of federal transportation funding the state receives.)



Care and Counsel .Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel! Shake those Quaker pom poms. Care and Counsel. Care and Counsel. Set it to Music. Care and Counsel.



And next month we are off to the Racism Exhibit at the Science Museum. Really!

(RantWoman DOES want to see this exhibit and definitely invites interested Friends along; MAYBE RantWoman will be on good enough behavior for everyone to appreciate the excursion.)