Clerking with Joy and Confidence: Ben Lomond Online Workshop

 

CLERKING with JOY & CONFIDENCE  with Barbara Babin and Friends    ONLINE

March 3 to April 7, 2022 Thursdays at 6:30 p.m.

REGISTER HERE

Clerking with Joy and Confidence is for all Friends with an interest in Quaker process, meeting for business, and deepening their connection with the Divine.  It is for current and aspiring presiding clerks, recording clerks, committee clerks, and everyone else who is holding the clerks and Friends discernment processes in the Light. 

In this workshop we hope to support those currently serving as clerks and to inspire others to consider how they might take up leadership roles in their meetings and how they might lovingly support those growing into leadership roles.  By drawing on the experiences of experienced clerks as well as sharing with one another in small groups, we will look at the real joys and challenges of clerking.  Participants will receive practical strategies, resources, and tried-and-true processes that can help business meetings and committee meetings run more smoothly.  Topics for the six sessions will include: What is clerking with joy and confidence? What do we mean by unity? Laying the groundwork for unity; Seeking unity together; When things go sideways; and new ways for these days.

Barbara Babin, facilitator Barbara has served as clerk of several monthly, quarterly, and yearly meeting committees and has co-facilitated several clerking workshops. She has been presiding clerk of Palo Alto Friends Meeting, Redwood Forest Friends Meeting, and College Park Quarterly Meeting.  With a passion for supporting spiritual growth in young people, she has accompanied teen trips to El Salvador, has served as an elder for Spring Camp, and has served on various children/teen program committees.

FEES

SCHEDULE

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Pamplin Media Group Civility Project Targets Political Polarization

 Pithy Quote about Ron Mock, professor emeritus at George Fox University. 

In recent years, Newberg, like the rest of the country, has witnessed many instances of incivility. Mock listed the recent school board controversies and the fraught 2017 schism at local Quaker churches as examples.

To Mock, disagreements are "resources" and "gifts" that can help communities grow and succeed. When people are not able to deal with disagreements "creatively and effectively," communities suffer, Mock said.

"We're not making decisions that are optimal," he said. "We're making poor decisions because we're not working together."

Link to article

Detours to Planet RantWoman:

--There is a really great link exhorting readers to support the Pamplin Media Group and local journalism

--There is a LOT of advertising CRAP the screen reader will find first unless reader start with headings.

Anti-War Protests In Russia Test Putin's Dictator Privilege

Because the world needs this picture.

Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb

Fascinating item from the Book Launch Video genre

Nonproliferation. Civil socity.

Sen. Tester Writes a Book, Advises Democrats about winning rural voters, evokes HOPE

MSNBC

Late Night with Seth Myers




Trevor Noah

Should anyone need lessons in BadFriendery: Mrs. Betty Bowers on Dealing With Annoying People and other media diet samples

RantWoman needs to clear her head to work on something joyous, hope-filled and also guaranteed to be challenging. 

In the meantime.

The #pandemic is still getting in the way of people dining together so RantWoman invites readers to indulge in some of her media diet.

Mrs. Betty Bowers: America's favorite Christian

Readers who do not identify as Christian are invited to watch and learn and of course to pretend to be free of any of the interpersonal challenges mentioned here.

RantWoman particularly notes a couple linguistic moments involving worthy translations of excessively plain English into something approaching Quakerese.  

Gazpacho Police

In other news, perhaps we need to thank Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and the #GazpachoPolice for the thought that every day is a good day to throw cold soup on a hot mess.

Hybrid worship, zombie avatars, virtual reality hugs.

Wherein RantWoman will:

--try VERY hard to cut back from howling the words "ableist BS" after every other sentence to maybe only every fourth, fifth, tenth sentence

--actually sincerely mean "poor dears" for people who just don't feel the same thrill RantWoman does when she sees names dear to her in the Zoom participants list or hears the joy in the voices of Friends long separated from shared worship by transportation challenges.

Some of the seeds of this post

go to Western Friend and put Hybrid in the Search bar

Comment part of a LOVELY email discussion generated when RantWoman admitted after worship one day that what she has read of the Western Friend discussion made her cross:

"I am posting this link from an essay in today's New York Times because it contains some thought provoking ideas about the nature of community worship. Admittedly it is from the point of view of clergy in a Christian church, but it addresses right on point the wisdom of continuing a zoom alternative meeting. I hope everyone will read it and that we can discuss it at some point soon."

Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services - The New ...https://www.nytimes.com › church-online-services-covid

RantWoman finds the above headline horrifying. RantWoman has neither read all the items in Western Friend nor ventured beyond the New York Times paywall. RantWoman has listened to the lived experience of Friends on an FWCC call and noted the many configurations of people worshipping together during the last meeting of the FWCC Section of the Americas virtual gathering. So RantWoman is going to comment on the basis of what has come to her so far:

YES, being in person matters, makes a difference. But so does connection, however tenuous and challenged by the modes of mediation.

NO RantWoman does not absolutely HAVE to have others in the same room to experience the presence of God.

Here it matters to have a good interfaith network of people who interact about what nurtures worship. Even better if the network includes people who share RantWoman's zany sense of humor. A friend, the former Senior Warden of a local Episcopal cathedral (role includes a giant ring of keys and "more meetings that God.") spoke of a piece she read about young people who might like virtual church with all kinds of avatars. 

For those not baptized in modern techno-lingo avatars are the persona one creates in digital spaces. Avatars have visual logic. They also frequently represent someone who for any number of reasons is physically or psychically different from who a person is in real life IRL, or as some disability advocates put it "in meat space." 

RantWoman is too blissed and tired in connection with a very cool thing that happened today to want to let all the zany avatars and hyper edgy gaming memes and virtual reality church concepts on her mind spill out into the blogosphere. However, RantWoman has a time or two let her mind wander toward, OH HORRORS, virtual reality hugs. RantWoman first thought about this in the case of interplanetary space travel. RantWoman does not necessarily that interplanetary pioneers will want to pack the whole fam up in a space ship for the whole round trip. Also the several minutes of signal delay are going to need some algorithmic help for any kind of realistic experience. So one might, say want to leave a supply of hug outlines with one's loved ones at home AND pack a supply of hug outlines from the loved ones one can't take along. 

Sound weird? Sound better than no hugs at all while one's spouse is off at sea or out conquering the world for months or years on end?

RantWoman brought up the concept of virtual reality hugs around some younger collaborators who really are all in for virtual reality. Virtual reality hugs had surprising resonance.

And yes, people SHOULD definitely resume visiting in person as it becomes safer to do so..

Sister Joan kicks butt!

The time is now with memorials for DesmondTutu, Thich Nhat Khan and two years ago today Dr. Li Wnliang, the young Chinese Ophthalmologist who died trying to alert the world to #COVID19

Sister Joan kicks butt for all these occasions!

"When I need a kick in the pants, Sister Joan is always a good choice for a pep talk. Boy and how.

"She’s a Benedictine, so she’s pretty out-and-vocal for an Order that’s charism is prayer. But she’s been at prayer finally, and maybe it’s time to offer what she’s been given, at her venerable age, and so she does, and we are all better for it.

"I just heard the last :15 of a recent lecture of hers, and she pitches maxims out like baseballs in that one, too. One favorite: when she counsels women on leaving the Church or not, she says “If you leave, don’t leave quietly, and if you stay don’t STAY quietly.” She refers to herself as a ‘slightly used educator’. She taught history: she reminds that the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan is a functional-fiction: exists on maps and in Westerner’s minds, and we believe in several similar fictions. That lecture discusses how we have a choice between being a critic-outsider or a prophet-insider.

"This link talks more about what she means by propheticalness. Good stuff. Like a good ‘ol still sermon that for-sure isn’t going to end in :15. This one goes :35."

This video was posted two weeks after the #January6 #Insurrection

We still need it.

Because there's plenty to rant about and still there is Compline

RantWoman today while sharing her spiritual journey:

I believe in a God that likes to be venerated, is not too picky about form (or trusts each of us to find the forms that work best for us, and would prefer we do not kill each other figuring it out."

Tonight's part of music to hold God: Compline at St. Mark's: all male choir, white robes, worshippers lounging on the altar but standing when the creed is sung, choir members who cross themselves, the prayers for healing and the singing out of departed souls.

Actually DOING all of it would not be a fit for RantWoman. And RantWoman assuredly wants to appreciate its meaning for others.

Compline on The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany | February 6, 2022 | Saint Mark's, Seattle from Saint Mark's Cathedral Seattle on Vimeo.

PS RantWoman, are you going to post the video of your ARE session?

MAYBE, after I sit with all the thingsRantWoman decided in the moment not to go near.

It's a SPIRITUAL JOURNEY!

 RantWoman has accepted an invitation to speak of her spiritual journey.

Sunday February 6, 9:30 am PST. Zoom coordinates below.

Just exactly how is God / the holy spirit / the divine presence expected to show up?

Will there be Quaker Bible Study meanderings through biblical themes?

Will there be lengthy discourses about the relationship between sidewalks, pots of cherry tomatoes and fighting climate change?

Will there be digressions about civil society in the countries of the former Soviet Union?

Will RantWoman suddenly wander off and need to talk about a  fascinating volcanic caldera in northern China or the discovery / invention of imaginary numbers?

Will there be reminiscences about Great Sit-ins of yesteryear?

How many "do better next time" harangues might clamor onto Zoom?

Will there be blindness-related paraphrenalia? Or vehement opinions about ableism in a recent New York Times editorial?

Will this thematic spaghetti hold together well enough that no one gets lost if RantWoman is an idiosyncratic tour guide for Planet RantWoman?

How many trigger warnings will be needed?

Please hold in the Light and come listen if led.

Topic: Adult Religious Education

Time: 9:30-10:30am

Join Zoom Meeting

Meeting ID: 810 8896 7183

Passcode: 933590

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Black Quaker Lives Matter Film Festival starting February 12

Go straight to the Black Quaker Project page about the Film Festival

OR Read about it and register below:

Add to my calendar

BLACK QUAKER PROJECT FILM FESTIVAL

• When
  February 26, 2022
•  
  1:00 PM
• Location
  via Zoom

On Saturday, February 12, at 1:00 p.m., the Black Quaker Project is sponsoring a screening of “I Am A Woman - Leap of Faith: Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge” (2012). This is to honor Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge (b. 1952), the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO) Geneva Director, former South African Deputy Minister of Health, and former South African Deputy Minister of Defense. It will be followed by a discussion between the honoree and AFSC General Secretary Joyce Ajlouny.

This is a film festival that endeavors to educate all about the importance of Quakers of Color who for too long have remained within the margins of the Society of Friends and the wider world.

The five film sessions will take place every other Saturday on Zoom at 1:00 p.m. from February 12 until Paul Robeson’s birthday on April 9. Each session will include a film centered on a Quaker of Color with an introduction from a guest expert and a follow up discussion facilitated by Black Quaker Project Director Dr. Harold D. (Hal) Weaver.

• On February 26, it will be “Backs Against the Wall: The Howard Thurman Story” (2019)
• On March 12, “Alaska on Line: Red Boucher Interviews Mahala Ashley Dickerson”
• On March 26, “Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin” (2003)
• On April 9, “Paul Robeson and His Quaker Ancestors” (1989)

For details and to register: https://www.theblackquakerproject.org/black-quaker-lives-matter-film-festival

Direct reprint from Bethesda Friends Meeting event

 

Seeking Truth: Kazakhstan’s Fight Against Nuclear Testing

A recent gift of RantWoman's late-night Twitter habits: This TED talk by Dr. Togzhan Kassenova

And because now Twitter makes it easy to embed a whole thread, look here for a couple more articles by Dr. Kassenova.

A story behind the story. On Friday, @inkstickmedia published my piece on the Kazakh medical expedition to the villages near the Soviet nuclear testing site in the late 1950s. I want to provide a glimpse of the research behind it - https://t.co/n7scwsRu88 1/11

— Togzhan Kassenova (@tkassenova) January 30, 2022