Becoming an ally with the Beatitudes

RantWoman lately has been called to articulate the concept of ally in terms of both people with disabilities and survivors of abuse / assault / trauma. RantWoman has actually been making this point in sort of scathing terms in email. RantWoman is seasoning whether the blogosphere needs exactly those terms and might respond to a groundswell of clamor from her readers to spell out... . RantWoman is all too conscious that Friends around her:

1. Have not even registered a need to talk of what is on RantWoman's mind. Remember Put it Off Until It's More Convenient Friends number n, n+1...?

2. Are likely, if they register the point, to ask RantWoman what the heck she is talking about.

3. MAY find RantWoman less than completely prepared. Or even whiny, ill-tempered, ungracious. MAYBE if RantWoman reads enough of laboring with.. in John Woolman...

Yeah, and in the meantime RantWoman recommends starting here
http://young.anabaptistradicals.org/2012/01/31/pass-the-toothpicks-becoming-an-ally-with-the-beatitudes/
and with related links on the YAR blog.



One test, for RantWoman, of whether she has made good choices about blog roll relates to finding links that also speak to her.
http://bloggerbyconvincement.blogspot.com/2012/01/afterthought-1.html
If one depends on 2000 people every day, RantWoman thinks that can be a lot of laboring with ignorance if too many of those one depends on are getting something WRONG.


RantWoman will now return to worship and seek further Light.
http://www.quakerinfo.org/quakerism/worship

Pacific NW Quaker Womens Theology Conf. deadline extended

Speaking of...
...narrative theology...

...RantWoman's blogroll served up two women's very different specimens of narrative theology today:

http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2012/02/in-velvet-darkness-i-magic-of-winter.html

http://www.clotheyourselfinrighteousness.com/you-are-not-a-quaker-so-please-stop-calling-yourself-one/

Oh Wait, how about a whole weekend for narative theology of one's own. RantWoman is temporizing about attending herself but highly recommends this for women willing to talk across traditions. RantWoman HAS attended several times and highly recommends:

THE REGISTRATION DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO
FEBRUARY 29!!

Welcome to the 2012 Women’s Conference. We Quaker Women from Northwest Yearly Meeting, North Pacific Yearly Meeting, Freedom Friends Church, and other Quaker groups will gather June 13-17, 2012 at the Menucha Conference Center. In this oasis from the whirlwind and storm of our lives, high above the mighty Columbia River, we will seek God’s grace in the holy and the ordinary.

We will worship, fellowship, and work together as we explore the theme, “Living in the Life and Power: Inviting, Contemplating, and Enacting Grace.”

With grace, we will be respectful and open to each other, trying neither to offend nor to take offense, each woman knowing the power of her own truth and the need to make space for other women’s truth.

If you find your way clear to join us, and we hope you will, we ask you to take time to explore the Conference theme and write a paper to share with other women. You will find this to be incredible grounding experience as you prepare for the Conference.

2 Corinthians 9:8 says there are no limits to the Grace of God. We pray that God’s grace will lead you to be with us.

Becky Ankeny and Nancy McLauchlan, co-clerks


The Pacific Northwest Quaker Women’s Theology Conference welcomes women primarily from Freedom Friends Church, Canadian, North Pacific and Northwest Yearly Meetings. As women from divergent Friends traditions, we strive to articulate that which has been meaningful in the expression and development of our faith. We are open to God’s leadings and willing to make a commitment to prepare, to risk, and to be open to learning from one another.

Our purposes in coming together are:

To grow in the knowledge and love of God, trusting that the Inward Teacher, the Christ within, the Inner Light, the Holy Spirit will be present to guide us;

To create a place where it is possible to talk openly from different perspectives with love and honesty, and without rancor or tempering to accommodate perceptions of what might be acceptable;

To use narrative theology, that is, our stories of faith, as a means of integrating our experiences and our understanding;

To encourage articulation of experience in beliefs, both verbally and in writing, expecting that we will bring what we learn back into our home faith communities.

FOCUS points

RantWoman: "...two or three bullet points..."

RantWoman was raised in one of those big western states where even the music teacher's kid can eat the Second Amendment for Breakfast, where one of the state's Monthly Meetings once sang a song at Annual Session Community Night about an uprising led by cows with guns. So RantWoman is a little stuck on "bullet points."

Other Friend: "RantWoman, NOT bullet points. We're pacifists, remember. ...What about FOCUS points?"

Uhhhh, Friend, Focus? Focus! What a concept....but thee really has not reckoned with the RantWoman visual experience. F O C U S...what an idea!

Faith Trust Healing

Items for the blog as file cabinet. RantWoman is not clear whether she looked these items up before or after the most recent Business Meeting but:

The Faith Trust Institute helps different faith communities think about issues of abuse. RantWoman thinks it is never terrible for Friends to realize something important is widely enough understood that Friends do not have to reinvent the wheel. On the other hand, being a non-pastoral tradition we are full of people, even people on pastoral care committees, who cannot be assumed to have encountered any kind of basic counseling training. "We are all ministers of God/ We have not abolished the clergy; we have abolished the laity." This just means needs for some materials are different.

http://www.cpsdv.org/

http://www.faithtrustinstitute.org/contact-us


An item about testimonies and healing among Friends from one's experiences of other religions. RantWoman includes thishere partly because many, many people come to Friends fleeing religiously-themed traumatizing and abusive environments in other faith communities.

http://johanpdx.blogspot.com/2012/01/trust-first-testimony.html

(RantWoman is pointedly NOT commenting on ... in her own..._

Reading Woolman in January

A flock of hardy readers from RantWoman's Meeting are embarking on a trek through John Woolman's journal. Early indications are that it will be in many respects easier going than Barclay; RantWoman is versatile and still expects stylistic quibbles and stumbling.

We are starting slow, with chapter 1. We are reading from more than one edition. Several Friends proffered other volumes of commentary and biography. RantWoman is shamelessly going to take advantage of the eyeballs and erudition of Friends who have capacity to read much more.

RantWoman has heard the story of the 6-year-old John Woolman killing a mother robin with a stone and then climbing up and killing the chicks so they would not suffer, but RantWoman was enraged anew reading the journal herself. Okay, so Martin Luther King destroyed one of his sister's dolls too and both Woolman and King grew up to be MUCH more civilized than those childish outrages. RantWoman especially wants to note the merits of regular and searching attention to spiritual questions for both Woolman and King. RantWoman notes this with trembling because she has of late been reflecting on a couple cases where this sort of childish outrage did not get nipped in the bud but instead escalated over others' lives into hideous crimes of violence.

RantWoman remarked and others agreed during the book group that Woolman makes reference repeatedly tovanities, moments of youthful indiscretion, falling into bad company, and other circumlocutions: RantWoman and at least some others are moral cesspools of morbid curiosity and might perhaps have really enjoyed knowing exactly WHICH indiscretions he fell into. RantWoman also would have enjoyed a bit more show your work as far as the content of Woolman's Biblical study and his various spiritual openings. RantWoman, though, appreciates the perceptiveness of her fellow readers. One simply called out the question, what does it mean to live under the Cross? Others began what is likely to be much discussion of indenturement, slavery, and laboring with Friends.

RantWoman finds Woolman a very vivid stylistic contrast to Barclay. Barclay strung citation after specific Biblical citation into highly structured logical arguments. Woolman sort of waves his pen in the direction of the meme he has in mind. Oh Holy Jesus: RantWoman initially found the thought of trying to thumb through all 35 chapters of Ezekial extremely daunting, but the second set of pages she flipped opened exactly to Chapter 8, about the behavior of elders in teh temple. Oh Holy Jesus, as if RantWoman NEEDS more fuel on her fire to elder her some elders.

If RantWoman were good at staying centered she would simply close with the following link.
http://sillypoorgospel.blogspot.com/2012/01/hero-of-faith-dolores-huerta.html




Knowing when to quit would not be the RantWoman Quaker seriously still in progress we all know and love.



http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2012/01/postcards-from-india.html

By way of further commentary the postcard RantWoman received of the Birla Mandar, RantWoman is intrigued by the practice in India of naming temples after the patron who funded its construction. RantWoman is also intrigued by a temple to the goddess of wealth and of Mahatma Ghandi agreeing to appear at its dedication on condition that it be open to people of every caste. Finally, RantWoman was intrigued by this wonderful poem about monkey people running amok when people do not attend to what is right. RantWoman finds it interesting to reflect on monkey people before the theory of evolution. Plus the music is just gorgeous and this is RantWoman. RantWoman may need a couple rounds of the Hanuman Chalisa just to clear out her head enough to live under.....

The Hanuman Chalisa, chanted to keep away evil spirits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqHiyRxykZw

Special Report on Special Commitment Center

RantWoman can easily appreciate the possibility that at least some of her readers would prefer the churnings of RantWoman's soul and efforts to aerate her spiritual compost heap in a separate stream from efforts to engage with and intervene in public affairs in a clear and sober-minded way.

RantWoman's readers would probably appreciate that but that is not what they get. Here by way of jogging RantWoman's memory that such exists are some links to a current series in the Seattle Times about the Special Commitment Center where people who are deemed by the courts to be "sexually violent predators" are detained.

RantWoman heard of the series on the radio and has not had time to interact but probably is going to need to.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017316159_civilcomm24.html

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/flatpages/specialreports/civilcommitment/priceofprotection.html

There is more to this series, but RantWoman expects her readers probably have as much or more capacity to find the right links than RantWoman does. RantWoman already had a long to-do list. While RantWoman was poking at these links she also put together some other data that has been roiling her soul and deided she realized in full-on RantWoman to the Rescue Wonder Quaker Cape Streaming mode she also needs to do something else too.

Why he gets to take his dog everywhere

What he says:

Nashua Telegraph
By RICK ADAIR
Guest Commentary

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/opinionperspectives/947468-263/oh-so-thats-why-he-gets-to.html

Would you walk up to a person in a wheelchair and say: "Hey, why do you need a wheelchair?"

Probably not, and yet it's not uncommon for someone to see me with my service dog, Raskin, and ask: "Why do you need a service dog?"

It begs the question: How can you look normal, talk normal, act normal and be disabled?

Here's the recipe: Start by serving a year in a combat zone (Vietnam) at 18 - three months as a combat medic with a mechanized infantry unit, the other nine months in the "rear," where rocket attacks and sappers throwing satchel charges into your hootch are daily threats. Then add "only survivor" status to the mix after your two best friends and entire crew are killed by a mine.

These events were so terrifying for this skinny kid, the death of close friends was so unnerving, that he returned home in 1970 with a problem that grew worse when he was labeled as a "disgruntled veteran" and "baby killer." PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder, had yet to be invented.

I can't quite put my finger on why, but being called a "baby killer" at 19
after a tour in Vietnam, crawling through rice paddies and caring for
wounded soldiers, felt like my psyche had been put in a blender and set to
frappe.

To some, this may reinforce their notion that Vietnam vets are whiners or,
as a friend of mine recently admitted thinking, "wimps." (It seems to have
been media policy for decades to only air Vietnam veteran interviews if the vet becomes emotional during the photo-op.)

Some of us may be wimps, but most of us are soldiers, seasoned veterans who did our job well under some of the most hellish conditions that lie well beyond the imagination of the uninitiated.

For this skinny kid, the nightmares after coming home seemed as normal as
the running for cover at a Fourth of July celebration was embarrassing.
Feeling everything from discomfort to anger to rage when someone walked
behind me also felt normal. Not fun certainly, but normal - any idiot knows that if the guy behind you isn't your buddy watching your back, it's most likely someone who will kill you in the blink of an eye.

That was my reality - that was our reality. Sitting with my back to the wall in any public place while taking note of the nearest exit isn't a
disability; it's being a good soldier. Of course I know I'm no longer in a
combat zone, but try telling that to my body, a body that only knows how to survive and isn't convinced the war is over.

Who can blame it, with common city noises replicating the sound of
small-arms fire, people all around in crowds who aren't in uniform
identifying themselves as "friendlies." Come to think of it, if you mention the term "friendlies" to my body, you will likely hear the story of "it" getting into an accidental firefight with fellow GIs. Oops.

Yeah, I look normal, I sound normal, I act normal. I can have a face-to-face conversation with you, and you won't even notice that I'm scanning the room for potential threats. You are probably unaware that the "disabled" vet you're talking to may be the best person to stand next to if a disturbed person walks into the room and starts shooting, or if a hurricane blows the roof off the building. You may just discover the paradox of a "disabled" vet being the most "able" person in the room.

I'm not a hero. As a matter of fact, that word almost turns my stomach for
reasons I can't quite explain or choose not to; I'm just a retired combat
veteran who feels much safer with a dog by my side who always has my back.

If I say "block," she positions herself in front of me; "cover," she goes
behind me; "snuggle," she puts her paws on my shoulders and says "you're
safe." I only use a fraction of the 80 commands she knows because I can take my own laundry out of the dryer, open my own doors and push the elevator button without assistance.

Being blessed with this beautiful dog adds one more "normal" to my list. I
often get to feel normal, even in a crowd and on busy streets. It's a small miracle.

The next time you see a normal-looking person with a service dog and wonder why he or she "gets to bring their dog" into a restaurant, store, plane, etc., whether they're a military veteran, cop, paramedic or firefighter, or they have more obvious mental or physical disabilities, please remember this story and wish them well.

It's 4:30 a.m. and I'm writing this because I can't sleep, so Raskin isn't
by any means a "cure all" for PTSD, but she's my friend and apparently I
earned the Grace in a rice paddy a world away to be her friend.

May Grace also find you and keep you safe.

Rick Adair, of Amherst, is a speaker and advocate for veterans with service dogs.