Why Slow Movement Builds Coordination

Neuroplasticity: a new concept upon which to meditate during the most excruciating moments of Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business?

http://www.bettermovement.org/2010/why-practice-slow-movement/


Ask RantWoman how this applies to Business Meeting. Go ahead and ask. RantWoman would double-dog dare you except somehow RantWoman suspects there might be some testimony against double-dog daring....

Branford Marsalis & Others Buckshot LeFonque CD1 03 I Know Why The Cag...

RantWoman has spent the last several days soaking up quote after quote from Maya Angelou. Perhaps that is enough said because almost anything RantWoman would try to say, Maya Angelou probably already said it better.

A fun musical setting:




An obit from out.com
http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2014/05/28/why-well-miss-maya-angelou

Getting dead is no excuse

A MUCH-loved member of RantWoman's Meeting is on his way out the door, busy decamping to other realms, getting ready to kick the bucket, achieving total transcendance, gonna buy the farm... The cause is recurring cancer. There are hundreds and thousands of Holding in the Light messages all over his Caring Bridge site. RantWoman does not dispute any of them but RantWOman is not doing so well about the whole concept.

RantWoman is doing the best she can to uphold the whole matter and here is today's offering:

Today's offering a book from Amazon called Being Dead is No Excuse.

http://www.amazon.com/Being-Dead-Is-No-Excuse/dp/1401312837

CALPACT Training: Introduction to Systemic Racism (Part 1)

CALPACT Training: Dismantling Institutional Racism (Part 2)

Part 2 of the same series as above.

Audio presentation does not perfectly include all the visuals. Sigh.

Still really valuable presentation.

Beyond Tolerance / God's Weird People / Where is God

multiple blog as filing cabinet items:

Gretchen Castle: Beyond Tolerance
http://gretchencastle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/beyond-tolerance.html


God's weird People
http://firstdaypress.org/gods-weird-people/

From Walking in the Sea, Where is God?
http://walkingthesea.blogspot.com/2014/05/this-summer-im-auditing-class-at.html

Article link: Jimmy Carter and the Demise of...

Blog as Filing Cabinet Item:

Jimmy Carter and the demise of Progressive Evangelicalism from Christian Century
http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2014-05/jimmy-carter-and-demise-progressive-evangelicalism

More Mother's Day Mementos

Some plausible threads explaining why RantWoman could in fact be terrifying Nominating Committee:

(~~~~~History: testy phone callS that are beyond RantWoman's light to try to smooth over for one thing because they seem to question RantWoman's right to her own experiences. Phone calls are full of go away messages too. After awhile, RantWoman cannot manage enything even vaguely approaching saintly, and another person to add to the "laboring one on one with anyone is beyond my Light right now" list.RantWoman would SO prefer to find some other dimensions upon which to overachieve~~~~~)

Grumbling to third party:
Look, if you are not going to be willing at least occasionally to deal with people's trauma issues, and not willing to be reachable by email or answering machine or finite patience interval for phone tag, then WHY SIGN UP FOR CARE AND COUNSEL?

And anyway, who else gets to fill in when you need a break? I mean Wondrous Wearing WAY Too Many Hats Friend is also available to swoop in for a second or two out of her even more overbooked than usual schedule, but neither of you can do it all alone. Bless you both also for acknowledging that more help would be entirely useful. So what might we ALL do to weave our tangles of caring more easily, more richly?

Meeting for Worship

<<<<<>>>>>

Yes, Thank you, somewhat.

So um, I think you are expecting me to be grateful for coming over and sitting next to me. There was that part about you shushing me every time I tried to speak. And also that part where you grabbed my stuff pushed it two chairs the other side of you and sat next to me, I was in mid sentence and not able to tell you to stop. So NEXT TIME, if there are chairs ahead of me again, please, I would much prefer if you want to move my things, first ASK ME and please  put them where I can see and reach them more easily if I decide I just need to leave.!
And yes, I am telling the whole dang blogosphere because LOTS of people saw and I do not want to leave impression that what happened is acceptable! I know in your job you are probably used to just grabbing and moving things that need to be grabbed and moved. and next time please ASK.

Thank you.

Yours respectfully,
...as respectfully as RantWoman can manage right now.
RantWoman

<<<<<>>>

Just the link for the How can I help you video mentioned in the blog post below.
http://youtu.be/xlP7mCr3LmQ
A whole blog post with annotations and other digressions
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-18-disabilities-awareness-item.html though interesting not one about moving people's STUFF.

Reflection Paper, Redacted, with a glimpse of nudity

RantWoman redact ANYTHING? Um, yup! Below is RantWoman’s reflection paper for the 2014 Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s theology conference, redacted, with a glimpse of well-surveiled nudity. RantWoman thinks she can make her point sufficiently here.

 

Wilt thou Go…? 
Uh, how much choice do I get?
(RantWoman), University Friends Meeting, Seattle
2014 Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s Theology Conference

 

The Roadmap, finding one’s way as the journey begins:

 --the quotes, of course, available at http://www.pnwquakerwomen.org/conference/2014-papers/

 --A Friend’s wisdom in reading further in Isaiah about the going not making sense to anyone around one.

 --themes embroidered into the picture by other papers already submitted: Take Nothing; Go for us?

 --Not-particularly linear timelines. Call it magical realism. Call it triggers or flashbacks or a couple other terms I may be using sloppily. Call it what you will. Think of it as recapitulation, theme and variations from classical music. The point is if the timelines do not seem linear, cope. Or ask. Or sit with it and then cope. Or ask.

 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”

 Who will go for us? Who IS us?

 

Here am I send me, to church, with the rest of the family, ON TIME thank you very much because being choir director is Daddy’s JOB and my children will darn well Cope!

And at church, a sacred breathing place different from frustration at home and Mommy has a better week all week. And I am the oldest so Behave means I get to stay with adults and have a break from tiny kids and “behave or you’ll get a spanking at home after..” rules for siblings. Wilt thou go back in time on my sister’s telephone time machine? Uhhh, is it really a choice? Thank you my sister’s therapist.

 

I run away from home to go to college. Among other adventures Baptist social action collides with the churnings of academic feminism. It took me awhile to give up, despite some enthusiasm for math, on thoughts of majoring in physics. I have a degree in Russian; I majored in political activism. My theological / spiritual path is approximately that windy as well.

 

I need a break from college. I am living in Washington DC, selling the nuclear freeze door to door and then tending data for a small peace lobby. I will assuredly go to peace camp. I do not have language for leadings but I MUST go there. My job has laughable financial rewards so “Must go there” has fewer work-related barriers. I will find a ride at the bookstore or the feminist newspaper collective or. Turns out peace camp is land of what I call the Quaker seamless garment, healing inwardly while striving to bring peace beyond ourselves. There are spiritual traditions in collision all over the place. There is protesting. There is endless process while we decide how to build our outhouse. There are powerful women tripping over all kinds of Big Issues. There are healers. There are women who build things and protest nerds. There are sometimes helicopters flying overhead, to be ignored if one is in the middle of the solar shower. There were women who could at least put on our denim skirts and go visit the local church peace group. There were wise Quaker women who, with a few gentle words could sometimes settle the whole clamor into clear decisions all could unite with.

 

Then God said move to IN. The job I went for left something to be desired but God said Graduate School. Actually God said “Enough of that peacenik stuff outside the military base, you will now go to grad school with several members of the military destined to become Foreign Area Officers. And while you are at it, how about instead of waiting around for people of color to join your organizations, you go and actually listen and join the NAACP? By the way, please note that military service is a way up and out for many people of color!

 

I might have thought to be interested in Quakers but God did not provide / I did not particularly seek out reasonable transportation options on Sunday mornings. As far as seeing my face in actual houses of worship, during this period of my life, God and my father got to cope with my list of monthly social justice meetings held at various local churches. Finally grad school ended, I packed up, moved to Seattle, found Friends in the Yellow pages, and could say much more

 

I was born with congenital cataracts. My brother, father, grandfather all had them too and there are surgery stories for everyone. I have worn glasses since I was two. Ten years ago the next chapter of family DNA lotto caught up with me, detached retinas, becoming legally blind, voc rehab, “Grab the Blind Person and Bless Them,” crossing a threshold into the world of disability, sojourning in whole new circles and dragging others along on sojourns they would not necessarily sign up for either.

 

God said, sure, of course you can want data as much as ever, you just will get it all through screen readers and who cares if the write code yourself thing is not happening anymore? We can add project management, administrative tedium, interpersonal challenges, work place diversity on steroids? Teaching and training that are very rewarding. Things that I really, honestly,  suck at and need to offload. Okay, God, which pieces make a difference? Just HOW much of this am I actually called to? HOW much can I actually do from love?

 

One of the members of my Quaker 8 +/- potluck group is a pediatric neurologist. He so clearly is the kind of doctor I would want if I had a kid who needed a pediatric neurologist. He talks of going to MT, to two cities, once or twice a year to each. He talks of these cities and suddenly I am in a car full of frustrated parents and crying siblings on the coming home leg of our family’s trips to see an ophthalmologist based 200 miles from where my family lived in CO.

 

Wilt thou go on my journey? Your travel options will be the city bus and the internet. What canst thou say? Uhh, I have whole blogs for that. Just ask.

 

One time a weighty Friend hissed that I was “so out of order” when I had in mind four families, 3 of whom are either specifically not white or don’t assume we’re white and two of which had parents living with challenging disabilities. God said, “you thought vision loss was… How about whole new vistas, seeing things other people don’t see?

 

God said “you know how to sit on conference calls and take minutes. How about a stint as Recording Clerk for a local Quaker organization?”  That takes me into the world of interfaith connections. The other blind woman in the room is keeping blindness on the down low but we find each other’s issues instantly. I say I am from the Quaker organization. In other’s eyes, I grow an enormous halo, the kind of halo that is so large one would not get it through the door. Except I am not a Quaker because I am any good at this peace and love stuff; I am a Quaker because I need all the help I can get.

 

On my mind:  what DOES prophetic witness look like in this current century?

FJ Chronic Relativity

Friends Journal: Chronic Relativity
Alcohol. Drugs. Youth. Mutual care.
What's not to like?

http://www.friendsjournal.org/chronic-relativity/

Honor Totem: trailer and full video

Some Honor Totem links, in reference to the Totem pole erected at Seattle Center as part of the community's process of trying to heal after Seattle police office r Ian Birks fatally shot First Nations wood carver John T.Williams.

http://realchangenews.org/index.php/site/archives/8702

Just the trailer which is really powerful itself:





The link for the whole video:
http://www.seattlechannel.org/videos/video.asp?ID=3171207&file=1

Available enough to become fully known.

Can the world HANDLE any more of knoiwing RantWoman?

Can RantWoman go look for something New Testament-y that says the same thing? Uhh, not tonight.

CANCER (June 21–July 22): "If we want the rewards of being loved," says cartoonist Tim Kreider, "we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known." How are you doing with this trade-off, Cancerian? Being a Crab myself, I know we are sometimes inclined to hide who we really are. We have mixed feelings about becoming vulnerable and available enough to be fully known by others. We might even choose to live without the love we crave so as to prop up the illusion of strength that comes from being mysterious, from concealing our depths. The coming weeks will be a good time for you to revisit this conundrum.

Murray Polner on Ukraine originally from History Link

Blog as filing cabinet item from FOR about Ukraine

http://forusa.org/blogs/murray-polner/ukrainian-muddle-lies-manipulation-silence/12953

Mother's Day leftovers

Uh, RantWoman, why did you spam the entire committee with your concern about misgendering that young Friend's name ...?

Friend, you made the same mistake three times while in a public role. I was crawling under the floor in embarrassment and was trying to think of a tactful way to say anything in the moment.

Not to assume anything except the ravings of my own head, could everyone else on the committee have made the same mistake? I might have made it myself!

Ohhhh. And what would be the leftovers of this for Mother's Day?


That young Friend's mother visited recently also and RantWoman has been considering whether it would be helpful and empathetic or appalling and insensitive to say "Gee, my mom thought the sit-in before college graduation was hard to deal with. I really do not know how she would have handled gender identity issues."

And then there would be still yet someone else's mother, who at 90 is the YOUNGEST member of her Meeting. Happy Mothers' Day?

Bus in!

Um, RantWoman why are you asking a question about bus connections between neighboring county and Sunday worship during a membership discussion?

(uhhh, you brought it up....)

(being true to Light but words have not arrived yet.)

Because transit issues are important to many of us!


(hours later, after fog has cleared)
I think we should be darned proud and gratified that someone is willing to ride the regional express bus all the way from Neighboring County to worship with us!

Can't we also get some kind of eco-gold star for enjoying this?

RantWoman is also too happy to bestow a giant peculiar kiss of RantWoman blessing on Sensible Elder for not driving. Or we can skip the kiss and grab the blessing!

Black Swan Fire Dance

This is simply stunning. RantWoman will leave decoding of various things there might be to decode to others.

Enjoy!

A sign: two horses with one butt?

RantWoman regularly engages in the spiritual exercise of testing hrer life against the offerings of Free Will Astrology. Here is the offering for the week of May 7:

CANCER (June 21–July 22): "You can't have your cake and eat it, too," is an English-language proverb. It means that you will no longer have your cake if you eat it all up. The Albanian version of the adage is "You can't go for a swim without getting wet. " Hungarians say, "It's impossible to ride two horses with one butt." According to my analysis, Cancerian, you will soon disprove this folk wisdom. You will, in effect, be able to eat your cake and still have it. You will somehow stay dry as you take a dip. You will figure out a way to ride two horses with your one butt.

An apparently endless supply of cake sounds delightful or gluttonous.

Taking a swim without getting wet sort of misses the point.

But riding two horses with one butt? That sounds delightfully vulgar!

Do Quakers Mean Business: from Western Friend

This Friend speaks RantWoman's mind

http://westernfriend.org/do-quakers-mean-business/

RantWoman is well aware of many ways that Quaker business practice cross fertilizes outside the walls of Quakerism.

Readers are invited to put Regional Transit Task Force into the search engine of choice to learn about an amazing public policy process that took twice as many meetings as originally planned, meetings that lasted twice as long. Amazingly all the participants hung in there AND the facilitators were able to reach consensus about some really big changes to how public transit services had previously been planned and funded. The devil a little is in the details as policy makers from all the involved jurisdictions actually enact what is needed to carry out the consensus decisions but if someone needs a public policy study....

RantWoman COULD go on, but her cup runneth over in other directions for now.

Conflict Resolution in Kiev: AVP and....

Wonderful post about AVP and vision for peaceful developmet inUkraine.

Conflict Resolution in Kiev

Book: Queer revolution, not just Inclusion

Look, okay, RantWoman knows LOTS of happy couples for whom the opportunity legally to marry one's same-sex partner is a VERY BIG DEAL. RantWoman does not at all want to minimize the significance of legal steps forward.

And this author also speaks RantWoman's mind!
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2014/05/lgbtq-movement-fought-prison-abolition-rather-sex-marriage/

The book mentioned in the above interview
http://www.amazon.com/Against-Equality-Queer-Revolution-Inclusion/dp/1849351848

Forgiveness, numerically

Wherein RantWoman witnesses to unholy matrimony involving the Gospel, a pedamtry pissing contest, number theory, and Family Issues:


We are called to forgive 70 x 7....

Uhhhh, do I get to tell you one more time and one more time and one more time all about it first?  How come it seems like I am using up all 70 x 7 of my requirement just on my own family / faith community?

Um, actually, that 70 x 7 is Hebrew for some arbitrary large random number.

Do you mean an arbitrary large number from a countably infinite series or an uncountably infinite one?

RantWoman, WHAT are you talking about? Would you PLEASE  TRY to STAY SOMEWHERE NEAR PLANET EARTH....?

MoveOn Petition re: ICE Detention Center in Tacoma

RantWoman concurs with the concerns expressed in this petition. RantWoman notes that the petition is addressed to specific state legislators and asks that they be willing to speak up for redirecting federal tax dollars. RantWoman is meditating about how to hold discussion that addresses that point and might think for instance also to address our federal legislators. But definitely START HERE.

Prayed, times three

"Please hold in the Light...." at the end of a worship sharing group

Elder Eichardt and  Elder Adnan or names that sound similar, two young men on mission at a bus stop, on the "Grab the Blind Person and Bless them" spectrum even though what they were doing was more stand between RantWoman, seated at a bus stop, and any approaching bus and offer "May we pray with you?"
"Yes, Please and here's ..."
Blessedly, the bus that arrived mid-prayer was not yet RantWoman's bus.

In a phone conversation with one of the Weed Whackin Wenches, "...if you pray at all...(RantWoman is) probably driving ... crazy so maybe praying would help"