Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Monday, June 23, 2014

Sermons. Business Meeting. Again.

RantWoman is still collecting accounts of several of the finer Quakerism as telenovela moments of her recent contributions to Meeting life.

The most recent meeting for Business went MUCH Better than a couple previous ones. This could possibly because:

    --Instead of just talking ABOUT RantWoman, between Business Meetings a number a number of people actually talked TO RantWoman and RantWoman decided there is some zone between complete scorn and insistently holding in Light for certain Friends who did not deign to talk even when specifically asked...

   --People who previously sat near RantWoman and tried to shush her at every opportunity sat across the room AND RantWoman supposes sat on their hands.

   --RantWoman forgot to find an eyes elder, someone to feed RantWoman visual feedback that RantWoman herself cannot detect. RantWoman forgot to arrange with someone and wound up deciding just to grab all the calm she could from a nearby elder who is generally so placid that he will not even realize there might be something to be upset about until there are volcanoes and thunderbolts and lightning and sometimes not even then. RantWoman is not sure whether exactly to mean this as a compliment but decided to appreciate the trait anyway.

That was IN Meeting for Business.

Oh, and Worse Auntie, remember Worse Auntie? Band Auntie sets bad examples unintentionally. Worse Auntie says "you're darn right and ....," in this case in email.

Excerpts from RantWoman's efforts, a couple months ago, to prepare for Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business.RantWoman requests forebearance about slight repetitiveness from previous posts

Dear....,

Thinking over your concern about length of vocal ministry during concerns last month some more, a couple thoughts come to mind:

--I think my customer service function is broken. Either that or I need to fire my customer service manager which I am reluctant to do because that leaves only the RantWoman School of Tact and Diplomacy, and not even any God as Personal Butler model to guarantee the desired attention. Anyway, what were you HOPING to hear in response to your observations?

--At this point I hope I have conveyed, among other things:

   --I know from sermons and if God tells me to deliver one, I will deliver it, to the best of my ability interruptions notwithstanding.

   (sundry digressions available as stories from my paternal grandfather, Righteous Reverend ... with a radio show and a job as a Sunday School Missionary doing dog and pony shows for God in some of the finer Wyoming oil country community halls after their Saturday night beer bashes; with MT and WY on my mind for all kinds of reasons.)

  --If someone has an issue about the sermon issue in general or any perticular moment, please help facilitate them talking to me directly. Please DO NOT feel obliged to act as an intermediary or try to decide for me or someone else what needs to be said  / heard.

--A point I have not conveyed because it was on my list to speak of in a group conversation: One person on Care and Counsel keeps telling me I am supposed to "be mindful." I do not think that Friend gets the point that I CANNOT BLEEPING SEE FACES and really would prefer to interact with reactions. More to the point I keep hearing that as "read my mind and deliver only what is palatable and to my taste."

Again, may we all invoke the limited experience with God as personal Butler issue, hold the issue in the Light and consider where we are led from there?

In the Light.

(RantWoman)


And yet again:
I assume from recent conversations that you want me to promise not to speak more than once to an issue, to be brief and on-point.... A couple fast observations:

--If people do not understand, there is ALWAYS the option of questions either by having  recognize or afterward.  In meetings I run, Sometimes we literally cannot go forward until a key thing is clear to participants.

--I am thinking about whether I should just sit behind the clerk and uphold the process and try to say as little as possible. This would mean I would have to get up and move if I really were clear to speak. I did this one session last year at Annual Session. I did it for a whole bunch of reasons and it wound up working brilliantly so... But the speak as little as possible thing, I dunno....

--I will TRY to speak only once per topic.

--If I need to introduce an idea no one else has ever encountered and it takes more than two minutes to explain, what then?

Anyway, all of the efforts to shut RantWoman up assume I also am uninterested in effective meetings and I consider that an inappropriate assumption.

More to the point, I have a history of for example not promising federal judges that I would do something they wanted me to do if the requirements of conscience proved otherwise. In practice, I nearly always succeeded at whatever I was unwilling to make promises about, but ...

In college we had a sit-in about divestment. Lots of students would have been happy just to plead guilty but some friends and I all just said, no great nuanced political analysis at all, "it's dishonest to plead guilty if one does not feel guilty." That position turned out to be really important in how the consequences of the sit-in unfolded but I do not imagine that story is what people will most be clamoring for in Business Meeting. On the other hand, if I think if re-energizing gestures in memory of Extremely Weighty Friend who just passed away...

Knowing all of that, can you perhaps imagine that I am any more willing to promise something I might not be able to do in Business Meeting than in these other situations?

--During concerns, as I said a couple months ago, I know from sermons. If God tells me to deliver a sermon, I will. And I do not care how many clerks and former clerks interrupt me, I consider interruptions during concerns on par with Eye Roller Friend's ministries of audible eye-rolling.
(But RantWoman, you talk about all the accessibility advantages of the ministry of audible eyerolling? Yeah, but since I know the behavior fries everyone else's nerves...)

    I do not particularly fancy myself a Rufus Jones and there would be other threads from the John Woolman reading group about Woolman laboring with... to play with, but do you get my point?

In the Light,

(RantWoman)

Who do we think made the caffeine?

RantWoman went to a committee meeting after worship. We forgot the checkins. Here is more than even RantWoman's most obsequiously adoring public probably wants to know about what would have come out of RantWoman's mouth if....

Bless us oh lord for we are all entangled in device vexations.RantWoman in particularly is blessed with two vexatious devices...

All morning in worship, RantWoman kept asking the heavens, God is that you or the caffeine? God asked who do you think made the caffeine?

RantWoman repents of her desire during the recent Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference for more messages involving Buddhism. Thank you to a visiting Friend for reading a long passage about Buddhism. Reading that much text out loud just IS NOT DONE in RantWoman's Meeting in the first place.

In the second place, the quantity of text is more than enough immediately to summon RantWoman back to her usual equilibrium about Buddhism: too much Buddhism frequently makes RantWoman want to punch someone! Sigh!

If we are all REALLY lucky, RantWoman will summon a double dollop of Grace on account of multiple points of disability and someones neeting to be held in the Light. If we are lucky.

RantWoman's Meeting and another nearby Meeting once a month take turns hosting worship sharing for parents. What isWITH this parent apartheid? Why must parents worship separately? RantWoman thinks different parts of the community REALLY need to hear from each other. RantWoman would be WAY too happy to be fairly insistent about this with a number of vocal ministry frequent flyers. Hold this idea in the Light...

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Valentina (Valya) Vasilevskaya

On June 13, long-time participant in Moscow Friends Meeting Valentina Vasilevskya passed away unexpectedly. She is remembered as a translator, scholar ofthe Bible , other world relegions, literature.

This is posted ihere in her memory and with good intentions about perhaps translating one or two of the stunning poems found on the link below.

A link to Quaker Poems:
http://lit-obraz.narod.ru/Vipusk13/vvas13.htm


A memorial from Johan Maurer
http://johanpdx.blogspot.com/2014/06/valentina-vasilyevskaya.html

Saturday, June 14, 2014

High Conflict????

Dear Conflict is a Gift of God Friend,

Thank you so much for the link for the High Conflict Institute.
http://highconflictinstitute.com/component/content/article/78-hci-articles/published-articles/203-healing-is-hard

1. This site looks like quite a useful resource for all kinds of circumstances.

2. Offering a useful resource, and even better one that is accessible for me and that I can share as led, is a GIGANTIC improvement over considerable past abuse: having to fight with you about crossing streets; endless tiresome and disrespectful comments about my family, my work, my screen reader.... So thank you for your efforts to cut back offensive behavior  in this area.

3.  I was also interested to click through to the New Ways for families site:
http://www.newways4families.com/   . I am especially pleased to see at least one person with glasses in the intro video. I consider this a welcome contrast to the High Conflict Institute site where NO ONE wears  visible glasses, though I am not clear about contacts.

4. I looked through the list of HCI clients and did not see any locations that deal specifically with disabilities. I assume people with disabilities might be present in many of the places listed, but I am reminded of a time when Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) residents contracted with trainers from the Dispute Resolution Center for some training in SHA communities.
   One night in a room full of blind people, people with all kinds of disabilities and idiosyncratic physical presentation, the lead trainer for that session chirpily told us all that 90% of communication is body language. On a bad night a comment like that would just make my brain fly out the window no matter how much other useful information there might be in a presentation. So I am wondering, in all your conflict resolution reading, do you know of any materials that explicitly include questions of disability, accessibility, inclusion, respect for different people's capacities?
   As it was on that particular evening I had already exceeded my quota of insistences including measures to help ensure the person with an interpreter gets heard, assertiveness about noise level and general clamor, and I forget what all else. It was the end of the presentation. I was annoyed with a friend for not inviting people to request accommodations in the advertising, I was taking notes in Braille because key things were not available in accessible formats. Generally it was about an average day. Oh, and I deservedly got nailed by a perceptive neighbor for sarcasm, but who needs accessible formats anyway?

I think that question was rhetorical.

Anyway, thank you for the resources. They will now be at least findable again on my blog.

Sincerely,

RantWoman

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Ammo Blammo

What, you thought this is some kind of pacifist blog or something????

Dear lord, Give us our daily delivery of firearms news bulletins.

An item from Jon Stewart about open carry demonstrations. Apparently some of the open carry demos are too far out there even for SOME members of the NRA. Not to mention all those odd members of the public who seem unable to tell the difference between good guys with guns and bad guys with guns. Link offered with comment stream RantWoman has no time to read:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/06/1304851/-MUST-SEE-Jon-Stewart-blasts-the-Open-Carry-Texas-movement?detail=facebook#

RantWoman regretably has neither time nor brain space to read up on the motives of the shooting that generated the #YesAllWomen tag. Sigh.

RantWoman is touched by all the media accounts of the recent gun violence at Seattle Pacific University, #SPUShooting. RantWoman is touched by all the prayer services and how many of the students interviewed pray first, second, third...

RantWoman offers heartfelt prayers always for someone she knows who goes every year near Mother's Day to the Bangor submarine base to protest Trident submarines. RantWoman offers prayers for this witness, prayers for the spouse of the person doing this witness. RantWoman admits, that despite other topical personal history she has never felt any leading whatsoever to go participate in such witness specifically at Bangor. RantWoman's current excuse: too many idiots with guns demanding prayers in RantWoman's own 'hood!

RantWoman complained recently during a committee check-in: look, there are just too many idiots with guns loose in my 'hood. In particular, 4 gun murders within one week and two spells of pairs of cars driving down the street shooting at each other. RantWoman is unsure of the make in one case; in the other case, Why the HECK ya gotta do that in BMWs?  Just sayin'

And in other news, in particular bus-board discussions of Irrepressible Nephew and Nerf weaponry, consider  BIODEGRADEABLE AMMUNITION!?!?!?!? Why, the thought of biodegradeable ammo is JUST ABOUT enough to keep RantWoman from wanting to crawl under the carpet. Oh, wait, no carpet aboard Metro...

Monday, June 9, 2014

Walk in the Light, the Headlights, the Street Lights

Internet portals in RantWoman's immediate vicinity are displaying unhelpful blank stares when asked to point to the http://pnwquakerwomen.org  site so RantWoman is unsure whether this has gotten posted but here is the Interest Group / Workshop / Ladies Sewing Circle and Terrorist Society description RantWoman submitted after a phone call where Wise and Weighty Friend thanked RantWoman for making her laugh!

--Walk in the Light hi visibility gear, reflectors and othervisibility aids for people who go out at night and are allergic to getting run over.
(RantWoman), University Meeting
   This sewing-themed interest group is designed to allow people to create two different reflectivity aid craft projects, some plastic tape zipper pulls and bags enhanced with reflective tape. Includes
special moments of blindness tourism, self-threading needles,Bring a bag if you want to sew reflector tape on something or just plan to hang out make a zipper pull and chat. Warning: considerable opportunity for conversational drift toward other "wilt thou go on my SCARY journey?" topics.

Some recycled blog posts with more informational options:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/08/fall-vis-get-out-there-and-be-seen.html
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/09/hi-vis.html
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/02/make-me-glow.html
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/09/pedestrian-reflectors.html

Sunday, June 8, 2014

Rev. Barber. Netroots Nation

Weighty Friend Dying of Cancer breathed his last a couple days ago. RantWoman owes the world some formal reflection, but right now RantWoman is grabbing the names and activities of people carrying his energy and vision forward.

Here is an item about Rev.Barber, founder of Nashivlle's Moral Mondays. This item is mainly blog as filing cabinet, prompt with search strings when time allows

http://www.netrootsnation.org/rev-barber-to-open-netroots-nation/

Friday, June 6, 2014

Faithfulness in Small Acts and big gulps.

By way of not interacting yet with an email about scheduling the next encounter of the band of earnest seekers wending our way through John Woolman's journal, the texts of the Pendle Hill speaker series on John Woolman, and sundry historical texts as the various book digesters in the group offer for our gatherings:

http://quakerpagan.blogspot.com/2014/06/on-activism-and-ordinary-acts.html

In the realm of the Woolman group, RantWoman is striving to:

--deeply appreciate some others' acts of faithfulness, especially when such acts of faithfulness occur in realms where RantWoman would be clueless, incompetent, and otherwise asea.

--TRY to be humble about what people can and really cannot vs will or willnot do.

--Be true to her own Light, er, Inner Blowtorch, while singeing those around her as little as possible.

RantWoman notes:

--All year, plus or minus, the length of this literary meandering in RantWoman's Meeting time, RantWoman has been going around saying some variant of "I want to hear from some journal where someone writes something like 'Oh, our Meeting had another visit from that tiresome scold John Woolman.' or 'I don't care how many travelling minutes he has. Maybe his home Meeting is glad just to have him out of their hair for awhile.' "

--RantWoman takes peculiar comfort during current moments of Quakerism The Telenovela in hwr own Meeting in the historical fact that lots of abolitionists got thrown out of their own Meetings. RantWoman also deeply esteems the parents of Weighty Friend who Recently Died because, among other things as Weighty Friend tells it, they caused consternation in their Meeting for selling their house in a way that made it possible for an African American family to buy it at a time when that just was not done.

--Any resemblance between the two points above and RantWoman's position in her own Meeting is purely conjecture.

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Yuri Kochyama Dies

One of the deficiencies that results from the small windows through which history gets taught is that one might never hear of powerful figures such as Yuri Kochiyama and only catches glimpses when they pass away.

An extremely modest effort to remedy RantWoman's ignorance, in the form of an obit from a couple days ago with extra impetus to publish while extending the memory of Weighty Friend who Died of Cancer

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/06/02/318072652/japanese-american-activist-and-malcolm-x-ally-dies-at-93

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Syncroblog #1: Digital Truth Publishing

RantWoman does not NEED temptations to procrastinate, to stray from her appointed tasks, to digress from the tedious to-do's in her inbox.

Lead RantWoman not into temptation, not with some syncroblog about publishing Truth in the Digital age:

See for instance with links
http://queerquaker.blogspot.com/2014/06/hello-dear-readers-im-very-excited-to.html


Oh wait: RantWoman is justified in joining the syncroblog on gender equality grounds alone!

Random reflections and topical terms:

...the Still Didn't Get The Memo committee on Email Immoderation....

"I am not sure whether to worry more about God reading my email, the NSA reading my email, or the mad marketers at Google reading my email."

Blog as filing cabinet: an innovation in information science designed however slightly to increase the odds that RantWoman will be able to find internet a second time after she discovers it the first time.
    Corollary question for the fanciers of ink and paper: what might a modernizing Quaker library look like? RantWoman asks this in deep appreciation of many worthy, but not easily accessible to RantWoman-- print items in RantWoman's Meeting library?
   Tiresome question that frequently accompanies RantWoman: "accessibility?"

Quakerism the soap opera / Quakerism the telenovela: maybe no one else's Meeting has anything at all in common with RantWoman's but RantWoman's blog as Quaker journal model of blogging attests to this and God love ALL the starring and supporting roles!

...walk cheerfully in the comments section answering that of God in Everyone...!  EVERYONE?

Quakers in the Movies (+playlist)

RantWoman is utterly charmed by and deeply delighted wit hQuakerSpeak. Here is a Playlist beginning with Quakers in the movies.

Sunday, June 1, 2014

June 1: Anniversary of Helen Keller's Death

Remembrance of Helen Keller.

No mention of the famous oatmeal moment, so what's it doing on a quaker blog?

If RantWoman needs any invitation just to take gloves off...

http://www.onthisdeity.com/1st-june-1968-%E2%80%93-the-death-of-helen-keller/