We who believe in freedom: Michael Norton Yarrow

Michael Norton Yarrow obituary
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/seattletimes/obituary.aspx?n=michael-norton-yarrow&pid=171319678#


So, um, when there are 400 people, siblings, cousins, LOTS of family, friends, neighbors, collaborators at someone's memorial and two large rooms are both overflowing, should anyone be surprised that memorial blog posts also run LONG? RantWoman does not apologize for timewarp, bits of the memorial, bits of Sunday worship, including a couple messages that even got toward the prickly honesty that works its way into all the best Quaker memorials.

If RantWoman or any of the Fellowship of Reconciliation members wanting to connect with the lives and work of younger people were going to tweet summaries,  comments / possible comments that stick in RantWoman's mind:

A sociologist with a soul

Mike and Ruth: A resounding love story

Good Grief those Yarrows are hard to keep up with. (No resemblance at all to RantWoman on that score? More like WAY harder to keep up with than RantWoman)

Great music, especially for a Quaker event.

And from Eye Roller Friend, endowed with the gift of prophesy that Friend Mike Yarrow's messages would distress him as soon as Mike rose to speak, something like
"It didn't seem like he could tell the difference between a message from God and a political rant but he walked his talk and there is a whole lot of love in the room, and that's what matters."

RantWoman was absurdly happy to be offered a task at the memorial: tender of the guest book and welcomer of all who came including those who trickled in just as worship was closing. RantWoman stayed cool but  heard very little of the actual memorial and was honored to see and welcome many of the people she crossed paths with when she and Mike showed up at the same events in our adjoining 'hoods.

Excerpt from email, including actual first-person pronouns:
--Definitely need to mention service on Peace and Social Concerns and Mike's advocacy for all kinds of things from the AFSC project to send water purifiers toIraq during the pre-Gulf-War ii sanctions to police accountability (see below) to Coffee Strong to tjhe idea of a State bank.

--One thing I remember is Mike's advocacy of an independent civilian police review process. I do not really remember if this was connected with any particular organization. I just remember him showing up at a number of meetings and always being very informed and having a mental storehouse of info related to the topic.

--Another moment I remember has to do with the 1999 meeting of the WTO ministerial in Seattle. I was clerk of Peace and Social Concernsand had a fulltime job and another big time suck. I had  isions of outreach to Quakers and other things, but that was not going to happen on its own. At some point, I think over the summer, someone asked me and some others hwat all we would include in a job description if AFSC were to hire a consultatnt / organizer to help Quakers prepare for unfolding events. It took us all of about 10 minutes to come up with a job description for which Mike was hired.

    A big highlight of his work besides outreach to Quakers was organizing the evening sessions at UFM during the ministerial where some credentialed delegates came and had I think lively exchanges with people out in the streets. I do not know whether I have an email for the staffperson from
the Quaker UN office in Geneva, but I remember he and some folks from the ILO were very connected with these evening sessions.

--A funny followup from Mike's work for WTO: I think it was the 2000 Republican connection was in Philadelphia. Someone from one of the Philadelphia Meetings contacted our Meeting's office manager looking for tips based on Seattle experience with WTO. The office manager gave the person my number because I was still clerk of P&SC. The person from Philadelphia called me and we taled about this and that for awhile. Then I mentioned that AFSC had hired Mike and suggested she should contact Mike. She already had a way to contact him but received my suggestion very warmly. So Mike wound up advising about that and I remember reading that a Quaker meeting in Philadelphia also did hospitality during that convention.

It's going to take LOTS of people to pick up all that Mike was doing and I am holding this time in the Light.

Finally, more or less the message that made it out of RantWoman's mouth at Sunday worship; yes it IS a typical RantWoman wander all over everywhere tying together 27 themes message. If the wandering around gets on your nerves, think of it as spiritual zucchini or blackberry and cope. Yes, peculiarly, RantWoman finds it more helpful if 19 different people tell her than in their own words than if one person keeps trying to collect and filter and cringe on RantWoman's behalf when RantWoman would not necessarily cringe in the first place.

...It's also RantWoman's birthday week, a date shared with Mike's mother Margaret who died a few months after her hundredth birthday. One of the things Mike was proudest of about his family was that at some point his parents sold their house to an African American family even though this caused huge consternation in their Meeting.

RantWoman has been thinking of that story as the group  meandering through  John Woolman's journal has also talked about all the abolitionists who got read out of their Meetings. God is kind of a jokester. Meetings get filled with all these ferocious personalities and the someone goes around telling the world that Quakers are good at peace. But peace is hard work, especially among the kind of fierce personalities found among Quakers.

And RantWoman remembered getting a ride home with Mike after a particularly rocky evening on the path to peace. RantWoman and Mike let the rocky part of even sit. Instead Mike asked RantWoman for advice about talking to his mother about vision loss due to macular degeneration. RantWoman suggested just asking her how she experiences color, light and dark, how wide a space she sees, things like fog and blur but being able to offer Mike and Margaret those suggestions was also a gift to RantWoman.

It's time to let the soul rest, to go where it needs to go, but RantWoman thinks it's a blessing when beloved souls come back at unpredictably intervals too. It's also probably still gong to take a lot of usto keep Mike's soul busy though.