Changed Mind?

RantWoman is meditating on dribs and drabs of conversations / minutes. RantWoman recognizes that in some cases it might be better to call up the afflicted parties and try to continue conversations by phone. RantWoman also recognizes that social media can be risky. And RantWoman needs physically present somewhere where phone yakking is problematic.

Hence this set of popcorn kernels:

"RantWoman, I have never seen yhou change your mind."

RantWoman to herself: that is because you have not been listening, a continual problem, but never mind.

RantWoman to Friend: okay cite some examples.

Friend offered a moment in a clearness committee when RantWoman was absolutely crystal clear not only that she needed to be discussing her spiritual life with someone besides that Friend and that further conversation about the topic was pointless.

But to cite other moments from this blog:

Consider the renaming of committees to rid ourselves of the term Oversight due to its association for some with slavery. The first time RantWoman encountered this must rename perspective, it took several months for the one Friend most passionate bout the topic to be availabe to present the topic in Business Meeting. RantWoman thinks if the renaming is that important, why couldn't anyone else do it?

RantWoman is also a word nerd and likes considering the linguistic variety and provenance of some names for that committee. RantWoman did not know at the time how more precisely to ask for help about that. Sigh. But the main point: RantWoman has come around to understand why it is important to make thee changes as soon as possible. Rantwoman still also likes word nerd stuff but does not always want to be having to go to the same Walking Encyclopedia Friend.

Starving Orcas and transit
Recently RantWoman's Meeting considered a minute that ultimately help articulate the point that embracing all the transportation changes near the Meeting has everything to do wtih saving the planet and at least addressing the grief of the starving orcas. RantWoman, humbly, has admitted in public more than once that, basically at first the minute made her roll her eyes. However the friend led to bring the minute is very persistent and at some point RantWoman just Got It: dealing with the passion and grief is just as important as policy wonk stuff. RantWoman is VERY glad Meeting finally moved forward about that minute.

Alternate formats, exasperated shrieking optional

Alternate Formats: the tip of an iceberg

RantWoman is meditating about "alternate formats," non-print ways of accessing information In connection with various Quaker matters RantWoman has email in her inbox about the following:

--QuakerSpeak videos, one of RantWoman's recurring non-print go-to's when talking to people curious about Quakerism. Stay tuned for other riffs from this info stream.

--Hallelujah. Praise Jesus. Manifest whatever gratitudes neededas exuberanltly as possible: NPYM Faith and Practice is now online in a format RantWoman can actually deal with without all kinds of electronic standing on her head. Even better, part of the reason is someone else mentioned eBooks and even possibly in the future Audio! Not only is RantWoman not the only freak on the planet who needs this stuff, but there is that continuing revelation and Quaker materials in the media of this century and able to reach Friends of the electronic age.

--"For this workshop we will of course provide large print ..copy machine...." Friend, thank you so much for thinking of me, but in this case if you wait for me to ask for what works for me, life will be much easier. In the meantime, RantWoman will think about how to address items that really are not available in electronic format, as well as the option of suggesting some options that ARE available in electronic format.

Refuses to change

RantWoman is meditating about an item from the newsletter about "RantWoman refuses to change her behavior." RantWoman is trying to be faithful to her Light as kindly as possible. RantWoman truthfully does not understand what behaviors a certain Care and Accountability Committee was hoping to change, whether or not it is in her Light to do so for instance if the Care and Accountability Committee repeatedly claims their charge does not include dealing with disability for a Friend with a disability, and whether she can in fact do as desired. So far, RantWoman's sense of integrity keeps hitting full stops.

One full stop: RantWoman is pretty sure there are some behaviors Friends would prefer she NOT change.

The same information as everyone else: testimony on equality?

Consider a quest awhile ago for a presentation handout in electronic format. The persentation was part of Meeting's annual educational effort related to sexual abuse awareness. RantWoman forgot to ask in advance but afterward inquired whether the workshop handout was avillable in electronic format. No. However, RantWoman got two email responses to her quest for access to the same content as everyone else. One Friend had torn up the handout and thrown it away but offered to retrieve it, tape it back together and scan it. Ummmm, aside from the technical difficulties likely from this approach, RantWoman found herself wonering, um Friend, you are on a pastoral care committee (and the Care and Accountability committee as well). RantWoman might hope these roles mean you have some sense of what is needed for community resources, and since the topic of the workshop sometimes makes RantWoman's head explode due to issues in her own family, RantWoman will just be breathing deeply for a good long time so she does not break out in shrieking or have her head explode. RantWoman has practice about  head  NOT exploding issues around this Friend. Shrieking from said experience optional?

Another younger Friend who is NOT on a pastoral care committee had the handout and access to a scanner. and the document was shortly in RantWoman's email inbox. OCR capabilities are now built into lots of screen reading software,and it was fine. RantWoman had access to the same content as everyone else. The content in question a checklist of indicators someone may have been abused is probably available lots of ways on the internet, but the POINT of shared experience is everyone having access to the same content.

RantWoman wrote back thanks but no thanks for the tape together offer and profuse thanks for the option that got her the material. RantWoman assumes Friends would NOT prefer that she add more shrieking to the Friend with the tape it together offer?

Nostalgia?

Late-breaking news: RantWoman realized she should add another moment to these meditations, another rant related to being creeped out by a sense RantWoman gets from some Friends that she is much too freaky to talk to about life now as opposed to life in the past. At a recent memorial, the Subcommittee on Interpersonal violence came up. This subcommittee as created when the person RantWoman sometimes refers to as teh Safest Sex Offender ont the planet first came to the UFM community, with a stop along the way for one of RantWoman's several Hospitality Committee / Coffee Hour is pastoral care plus knives and hot liquids moments.. Find tangled narrative and RantWoman's reflections on this blog tagged "Safest." 

One of the things the Subcommittee on Interpersonal Violence did was creat a big thick notebook of printed resources from the ear related to sexual assault, trauma recover, and other topics the community collided with while supporting one offender's treatment program, caring for people surviving their own experiences of sexual assault and educating ourselves and our children about safety, empowerment. Repeat: in print. From now almost two decades ago..Oh, yes, and the next increment of electronic presentation was, when the offender's various legal obligations expired, to scan all the materials in the notebook and put them online as one big file. RantWoman has looked at the file but not recently.
RantWoman expects that some of the material might be out of date but NO, RantWoman did not shriek about everything on her mind when the notebook came up at a potluck. One Friend who had served on said subcommittee as being her usual plainspoken forthright self about how the committee work resonated with her life experiences. She was also gushing about having the notebook online but somehow, maybe it was the curried chicken, RantWoman decided that that particular audience was probably not the best place for her current resource concerns.

For no reason RantWoman feels compelled to explain, places to start for resources:

https://www.adwas.org

https://wscadv.org

In light and Faithfulness.

RantWoman

Worship off site?

Dear Beloved Community

This post comes with a prayer: the right wordsare not going to make it out of RantWoman's mouth in conversation, especially in multiple conversations and progress needs to happen, so please read and hold in the Light as you are able and consider whether responses rise.

News Flash! RantWoman is VERY clear in a call to continue worshipping among you and to respond to a call from God about how this might occur. Please understand, RantWoman believes God sometimes asks people to do things they would rather not do but wind up better for.  RantWoman has become clearer about this listening to some voices who clearly just want RantWoman gone, gone, gone; RantWoman is particularly annoyed by voices that do not realize that rantWoman wears multiple hats and is unable to turn off interest in a number of topics just because someone at meeting suggests it.

Furthermore RantWoman has not spent multiple decades of her life tending to this Meeting just to disappear when someone says it is "not good for the community" for someone to deal with midlife vision loss and to have to challenge many people's assumptions about many things. Talk about othering! RantWoman admits, she has no patience with "It's too hard so RantWoman should just go away," a thread now evident for several years. There would also be the process of interacting with an offer for separate and very unequal worship away from Meeting. But RantWoman is getting ahead of herself.

RantWoman thinks she is supposed to be grateful for Friends who have offered to come worshipwith RantWoman in separate and very unequal circumstances and without reference to a number of people very dear to RantWoman,. At Meeting RantWoman can see all these dear people at once on First days and not have to spend huge chunks of time travelling around by bus to visit these Friends individually. RantWoman really cannot see how it can be called "community building" simply to shred these connections.

At first, RantWoman attempted to think through logistics of Business Meeting's request basically that RantWoman stay away for awhile.

FULL STOP. We interrupt this post to hold in the Light a Friend who works for a local transportation agency. Local transportation agency does not get to, say, tell all the deaf people to go meet somewhere else because other people are uncomfortable with interpreters. If the deaf peoplle forget to request interpreters, in advance they can show up and cope, something LOTS of people with disabilities have plenty of practice about though.  Nor does the agency get to tell wheelchair users just to forget about peeing when they come to meetings. Nor does the agency get to say, okay come back in six months or a year when we have figured something out. Why should RantWoman deprive that Friend of the opportunity for a life of integrity and a single standard of truth as far as Meeting and work?

RantWoman is clear there are things to figure out. Despite assertions to the contrary, RantWoman IS willing to try to figure things out and is NOT willing to promise to do things she really canot do. Plus, RantWoman would happily ask Friends about a number of behaviors, do you REALLY think RantWoman needs to change that behavior?

Back to the matter of worship. RantWoman discovered that, based partly on a previous moment where she felt completely bullied, RantWoman has ZERO leading to invite Friends to come worship where she lives. RantWoman further does not want to promise travel any further than one transit segment for herself, comparable to her journey on First days. Nor does RantWoman want to ask Friends to travel any furhter than they do on First Days. RantWoman also requires a space that is free and wheelchair accessible.

Hence, two options for  Reasonable Accommodations requests::

--RantWoman would be happy to discuss a schedule alternating between 9:30 and 11:00 worship along with business meeting every other month. RantWoman is happy to discuss with  Worship and Ministry some options to address concerns; RantWoman however will NOT promise to do things she cannot do.

--RantWoman respectfully requests that the Friends willing to worship with RantWoman outside the rgular First day schedule be allowed to meet at Meeting on the schedule selected by the group.

Here one Friend ever so helpfully suggested public libraries, of which there are several that meet RantWoman's one transit segment constraint. RantWoman thought there might be some restriction on explicitly religious activity and RantWoman finds it inconsistent with the testimony on integrity to soft-pedalm, prevariacte, lie. Helpful Friend has checked:  there is no restriction on religious activity, but no word on availability in the time windows Friends want to meet.. Events simply must be open to the public. RantWoman finds herself intrigued by the location point and open to the public issue in an "I didn't know Quakers were still around" Light. However, RantWoman will be unable to be less than faithful to her Light about, um, a number of difficult topics.

But RantWoman needs to know, would the open to the public issue bother anyone?

In Light and faithfulness.

RantWoman.

PS Helpful friend is also eager to have RantWoman talk of her, RantWoman's mistakes. RantWoman would be happy to talk of her own mistakes provided others are also willing to talk of their mistakesas well.

AboutThanksgiving?

Dear Beloved Community

Thanksgiving worship is VERY meaningful to RantMom. RantMom has also been spared details of the muddle currently passing for Business Meeting decisions, and it is only out of respect for the process of business, not the ill-informed decisions that sometimes result, that RantWoman is making it clear to all and sundry that it would be VERY nice if someone were led to specificaly invite RantWoman, RantMom and such of the rest of the RantFamily as feel inclined to join whatever occurs for Thanksgiving.

Rantwoman's clarity about making this suggestion comes partly from what RantWoman reads as very dismissive notes about a disabilities committee and from various moments she is picking up incoversation.

RantWoman is perfectly well aware that this seeking provides the community an opportunity to reconsider its inability or unwillingness to include RantWoman in anything at Meeting except talking about dead people. RantWoman is also perfectly well aware that for many people holidays come fraught with abundant history of conflitive moments, but when people can stay centered, gifts occur.

RantWoman means elsewhere to spell out in the starkest terms possible some serious issues with separate and unequal opprotunities to worship AND to talk about dsability. In the meantime, in honor of  many points s where RantWoman has been TRYING to express gratitude, how about JUST INVITE RANTWOMAN TO THANKSGIVING amnd maybe make a point of listening harder for the gratitude points!

RantWoman applauds the energy of a Friend who has been lead to offer to help organize. RantWOman has visions of an relaxed affair where waht food comes is enough, where worship precedes a meal.  RantWoman offered to help weeks ago and  will be happuy to go onabout what help might look like.

RantWoman also wants a nice non-drama-filled celebration.

RantWoman wants the kind of celebration reflected in:

--the easy childhood nerdiness of looking at hydroelectric dam slides with beloved Great Aunt and Uncle

--high-school age holidays with an honorary grandfather who had been deafened by a stroke in his late 50's. He lived in a retirement community, smoked a pipe, always brought wine which never got completely drunk, and could lipread for hours with RantMom and talk for hours if RantWoman wrote a good question.

--RantDad's younger sister who had a fused hip, a transfer routine from wheelchar to car and a way to get into the RantFamily door even though there was a small step.

--RantWoman would also express gratitude that Little Sister's life has settled down enough and with enough ways to manage all her issues that there has not been a holiday 911 call in quite some time.

This year, RantWoman does not really see a path to include homeless people in any celebration--EXCEPT to note teh passing of "Stanley, Meeting's most enduring unhoused presence, not counting everyone in the community who is "housing insecure."

Finally, however RantWoman and RantFmaily wind up celebrating, we will be noting that RantDad would turn 85 this year, except that he lived only til past 60. RantWoman remembers Rantdad's 60th birthday. That year it fell on Thanksgiving. RantWoman surprised everyone by flying home and showing up on the doorstep. Flying ON thanksgiving is cheap and RantWoman cared more about the surprise than getting there in time to eat turkey. The surprise still makes RantWoman smile.

Do you have a story of a memorable Thanksgivng, especially one with disability as part of the picture? If so consider sharing the story as a comment.

In Light and Faithfulness.

RantWoman

Blind?

RantWoman is struck by this tweet. There is a picture of blind justice nicely captioned if readers click through to the actual tweet.

This Miss Molly (@mholzschlag) tweeted at 8:02 PM on Fri, Nov 01, 2019:
Justice - true justice - cannot be be blind!

We must look at the ugly and the beautiful. Feel it in our bones. Know it through all sensory perceptions available to our humanity.

Love - true love - cannot be blind.

We must use all sensory perception available to our being. https://t.co/tv519KYADr
(https://twitter.com/mholzschlag/status/1190464106442051586?s=09)

Listen

With smiles about a truly amazing "God is watching out for someone" story and reflections from the latest Calvin seminar at RantMom's church.

The Chinese character for Listen

The latest #DisabilityInChuurch meditation. Someone Rantwoman is a big fan of was complainign on Twitter about accessibility problems in an online faith community site. Yes, indeed, another faith community that maybe needs to be educated about why some people simply cannot use.. if nnot accessible and then does not know what to look for in accessibility concepts in the first place.

What? You mean quakers are not unique in such problems? Shocking!

And finally, from a site with too many ads but helpful content:
Trauma is not your fault but healing is your responsibility

Desfile / parade Dia De Los Muertos?

RantWoman missed her Friday afternoon tactile graphics fix--for the second week in a row! Sigh. RantWoman instead, in honor of The Day of the  Dead / El Dia de los Muertos offers a linke in Spanish about the celebratory parade in San Miguel De Allenda, Guanajuato, Mexico and an awesome image that unfortunately probably would not make good tactile graphics. And there is more. Stay tuned after the link and the pic. Link provided opartly to ensure proper attribution

Dia De Los Muertos Parade, San Muiguel De Allenda, Mx 2019

Come now random RantWoman thoughts about memorials. Rantwoman has been asked not to come to anything at Meeting except memorials. RantWoman pledges to be true to her Light and cannot predict how that is going to look on ahny given First Day.

Memorials?

Literature brain could have REALLY a lot of fun turning all kinds of events into memorials.

Lead us not into temptation.

Or at least lead us into MORE QUAKER PROCESS experiences first, hope, pray. pretty please with Day of the Dead sugar on top, so much more culturally interesting than Halloween sugar.

For now, RantWoman's highly idiosyncratic observations about a memorial for a Friend RantWoman will call Bees and Bulletin passages friend. Basically it was a lovely memorial with a good selection of cookies after and no mention in the memorial of this Friend's funky hip brace that made her look like a StarWars storm trooper.

A Friend (who should be horrifed by the nom de Blog RantWoman would assign( did nice intro but RantWoman does not think there was anyone there except the late Friend's sons who was unfamiliar with Quaker memorials.

A Friend mentioned elsewhere with multiple noms de blog did a nice job of reading the excerpt of the memorial minute in the program. He also toward the end had one of his sort of standard
it's the Light messages.Ordinarily RantWoman finds he talks well and listens poorly and other people find him more scintillating that does RantWoman but this time somehow he was fine.

--The subcommittee on interpersonal violence came up multiple times along with library committee. Readers who want to know what RantWoman is talking about, put "interpersonal" into the search bar. The committee has now been laid down and its role rolled back into Care and counsel, sort of.. Rantwoman still finds the name of the committee sort of odd: is the committee for or against interpersonal violence or do they just talk about it? Further thoughts possibly available elsewhere; No, that moment of snark does not do justice to the intent of the committee but oh well.

--RantWoman thinks all three of the Bees and Bulkletin Passages friend's sons were there. Two of them spoke, one about a swarm of bees and RantWoman does not remember the other. Rantwoman opted not to go fogging up to ranom people she did not recognize and ask. That would be one of those points of social difficulty when visual cues do notwork...

--RantWoman liked whoever it was who said Life is for the living and enjoyed the images from the message about the swarm of bees.

--RantWoman was kind of a zombie aft er her weekend away so she just closed her eyes and has NO idea how her  message came across. People at least tolerated:

    --Appreciation that we are having the memorial because RantWoman misses seeing polly on the bus

    --It was sweet to learn she was friends with this blind guy who used to live in Rantwoman's building and who RantWoman is certain tuned the RantFamily;s piano long ago when we lived in CO. They probably had Bible interests in common.
   --RantWoman  loved the little passages that Bees and Bulletin moments Friend put into the bulletin and
loved that she read contemporary stuff not just old voices.

   --RantWoman mentioned that we read Julia Esquivel's poem "They have threatened us with resurrection" one time in a spiritual sharing group but passed up the opportunity to make everyone listen to her  phone read it aloud.

    --RantWoman offered a hold in the Light thought because The late friend alluded to
tensions among her children. Decades after RantDad's passing, the RantFamily is still sorting out...

Other people were not as lengthy or multi-threaded and not everyone even fathoms that of God aboard Metro.

Miscellaneous additional moments
--Is it possible to make sign up to help set upand clean up for memorials for people you don't know sound like fun, and maybe people who helped with the prep found ti part of the memorial process, but RantWoman repeats her thought from another memorial that there would be some point about inviting newcomers into the
process.

Other than that, it really creepsRantWoman out that the only thing people think anyone should have to handle around RantWoman is talking about dead people. There would be that part about FIGURE IT
OUT as far as living!
In Light and Faithfulness.

RantWoman