Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Add Water and Stir

Add Water and Stir?

RantWoman is reflecting on the work of collecting the history of our Meeting's walk with The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet. Today RantWoman is meditating about two themes.


--Instant Support Group. Add Water and Stir. RantWoman is helping review some history which indeed speaks to the following point RantWoman previously wandered past in http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2012/09/evolution-draftily.html

Survivors of sexual abuse working to support each other spiritually [does anyone besides RantWoman wonder about the expectations inherent in this categorization?] may meet in the Quaker House living room on 2nd and 4th Sundays following the rise of 11:00 meeting. To confirm the schedule, call [Friend willing to have her phone number listed for this purpose.]. She, and possibly others, can meet to hear concerns, share experience, or help discern what meeting actions or resources might address survivors' needs.



RantWoman expects that this paragraph may soon evolve. RantWoman notes that history includes a number of people restimulated by different things to do with the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet. RantWoman has been wondering about community expectations that these people would instantly form a mutual support group even if the individuals have really different needs and concerns. RantWoman is holding history tenderly and upholding more discernment. Enough said for now.


When is t0? Please excuse the numbers geek terminology. Do we date this walk from:

--The date the future Safest Sex Offender first walked through our door?
--The date the Future Safest Sex Offender... announced his situation to RantWoman?

Should we consider alternative candidates for t0 such as the date Friends from Meeting first organized Alternatives to Violence workshops in WA prisons? Or the organization of the Monroe Worship Group Or the first time RantWoman attended some kind of event where trauma recovery issues were handled with love and sensitivity. Here is what RantWoman wrote in an email with additions about ways the ground was already well-tilled in her Meeting when the future Safest Sex Offender on the Planet first spoke to RantWoman

--Consistent welcoming of people's different ways of talking about their spiritual lives in general including the Divine in general, forgiveness, reconciliation, other forms of revelation such as trauma recovery.


--People astute enough when someone was dealing with some kind of trauma recovery during different random worship sharing or other activities to recognize the problem and sit with the Friend


--A recognition in some of the same events that one could name someone as an abusive jerk and still love them.


--REALLY blunt clarity riding back and forth to the Monroe worship group with someone who worked for the Department of Corrections, Conflict is a Gift of God Friend and another Weighty Friend. These Friends were VERY precise in their opinions about which of the guys in the worship group and in AVP in general they felt had done their work and would be a productive citizen on the outside and a few cases where they saw some clear NO, the limits of redemption.


--LOTS and LOTS of adults modeling efforts to deal with conflicts openly and respectfully. Okay, RantWoman achieves this VERY unevenly. In fact, RantWoman has been known to say she is not a Quaker because of being any good at this peace and love stuff; she is a Quaker because she needs all the help she can get. But respectful efforts to address conflict do exist in RantWoman's brain as something to keep striving for!


RantWoman would not mind in the least if "Add Water and Stir" were a viable pathway.



Wednesday, April 17, 2013

Oops, Well? Phonetically Infelicitous? Anyway, not yet.

Oops well

RantWoman takes note:
The word "oversight" is included in the following list.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/49834/14-words-are-their-own-opposites

RantWoman for sheer geek nerd delight in connection with another matter reread her Meeting's bylaws and discovered that the word Oversight appears about 14 times throughout the 3-page document. Even worse, the word "Overseers" also appears.

Just in time for the recently-ended White Privilege Conference, #wpc14, the latest edition of our Meeting's monthly newsletter includes the following item:

Oversight Committee is considering changing our name. We have discussed potential names including Care and Counsel.

Why?

Let’s consider the query from North Pacific Yearly Meeting’s Faith and Practice, 1986:

“Do you endeavor to cleanse yourself of every vestige of racial prejudice, and firmly but lovingly oppose it in your home, among your friends and acquaintances, and in business?”
Here is one Thesaurus definition: oversight - a mistake resulting from inattention, or an unintentional omission resulting from failure to notice something.We may be making a mistake resulting from failure to notice that the terms overseer and oversight have hurtful connotations to some people. In an online discussion about ending racism among Friends one Quaker says:“I was on Nominating Committeefor a Friends group, and we really were hoping a certain African American Friend would bewilling to serve on our Overseers Committee. The Friend in question gave me and my fellow Nominating Committee person (both of us white) a long look and then, as best I can recall, thanked us for thinking of him, expressed his affection for both the organization and the committee in question, and then said there was really no way he could even consider serving on a committee with such a name.

”Perhaps “Overseers” conjures up images of slavery more readily than “Oversight.” But why risk using hurtful language? Vanessa Julye, who led sessions for UFM on racism several years ago, in an article entitled “Racism Hurtsand Challenges Everyone” asks us: “Most of the racism I have encountered in Quakerism has been subtle. It is present in the language and some of our traditions. When we celebrate our history and traditions, is it done in a manner which is inclusive? Do we use terms, or focus on certain aspects of history, leaving out the painful parts? “

Here is a second Thesaurus definition of oversight: “management by overseeing the performance or operation of a person or group.”Depicting oversight as management, also made us question our name. It feels less like what wedo than a name such as Care and Counsel.

There are many precedents for name changes. The National Congress of American Indians issued a resolution opposing continued usage of Native team names, mascots, and logos. Wikipedia notes that over 70 sports teams have changed their names, including the Eastern Washington Savages who became the Eagles in 1973. Similarly, when Stokely Carmichael coined the phrase “black power” in 1966, “Negro” was how most black Americans described themselves.

By the mid-1980s even the U.S. Supreme Court had largely substituted black or African American. Many Friends Meetings have changed the name of their Oversight Committees. We hope Friends will help us think about this issue and consider changing the UFM bylaws to allow a name change for our committee.

[A draft minute specifically proposing to change the name to Care and Counsel was included with the agenda for this month's Business Meeting; RantWoman does not in the least repent of the part she played in Business Meeting not getting to this item.]

RantWoman opines:
(RantWoman THINKS she is going to maintain enough discipline not to spell out all the reasons she herself could be thoroughly delighted just to call this the "Oops Well" committee right now. RantWoman urges readers, Lead RantWoman not into temptation.)

--Well, gee, it's nice to see this just in time for the White Privilege Conference, but i hope changing the name of Oversight is not the only thing we do to re-examine issues of racism

--Rantwoman definitely unites with the thought of changing our name but HATES "Care and Counsel" for two reasons:

--Confusion with the Care Subcommittee. The Care subcommittee (of what is now known as Oversight) helps arrange committees of support for Friends with individual specific needs. Rantwoman means to write more of this topic elsewhere.

--Counsel implies more training and perspicacity than the Nominating process at our Meeting by itself generates. Pretty much does not matter what words might come with Counsel;RantWoman does not like the word Counsel because it sets up unrealistic expectations. One nearby Meeting calls this committee Community Spiritual Life, a name RantWoman is not crazy about but it works for them.

--RantWoman thinks "Care and Counsel" promises way more than can be assured. Precisely because RantWoman is prepared to live with people doing their best in Faith, Rantwoman really likes the thought of Community,Faith and Discipline committee. (Okay, this first came to RantWoman as the Faith, Community, and Discipline Committee. Can anyone see the phonetically infelicitous acronym that results?)

But the most important point: RantWoman wants the whole community, not just the soon-to-be-renamed committee to grapple with the theology and historical associations of the different words. Can you say "Word nerd?" Hold RantWoman in the Light while she tries to stay centered about this. In any case, the Friend presenting is not available until the June business meeting.



Monday, April 15, 2013

As stated?

Reviews in Business Meeting of the State of the Meeting report below, from those assembled: "Beautifully written" x about 5

Review from RantWoman: excellent, high-quality happy talk and twaddle. Not only is there barely any room for disability or difficulty or the next chapter of a long history, there is not even room for pain and challenge hanging silently on a clothesline. WHAT kind of wimpy divine presence are we talking about anyway?

The text after the authors and Business Meeting declined not only the extensive edits RantWoman previously proposed http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-meeting-as-stated.html but the two items she reiterated in Business Meeting, one about disabilities and difficulty, and one about marriage equality, imperfect as the WA measure is without federal changes.

State of the Meeting Report (April 2013)


University Friends Meeting


Our worship this year has been rich and balanced. Our meetinghouse hums with life: in addition to two First Day meetings for worship and midweek worship, our Social Hall is rented out most nights, a preschool thrives on our ground floor, and 20 homeless individuals find shelter in our worship room each night. At Quaker House, we welcome both travelers and six new social service Fellows each year through our QuEST program. This year we’ve had three new adult members, two new junior members, two transfers to other meetings, and three deaths of members: Rich Beyer, Bill Hanson, and Frances Hain. It has now been a few years since our Year of Discernment, a process many of us found to be quite enriching and strengthening, and this year we ask where the clarity we found that year might again serve as a way to reset our compass.

One question that weighs on us is how to respond to some members’ feelings that we are overcommitted or overstretched. With our numerous committees, care committees, two buildings to maintain, and a full roster of staff positions, some members wish for a greater lightness in our Society’s step. Are we attempting too much? Are our tasks and roles the right ones? Do we work in simplicity and Light? At a threshing session on this topic, a suggestion emerged that we might try a drastic winter pruning—cutting back on the number and size of our committees and endeavors, and from that cleared space, seeing what structural needs emerged. We wait to take action until we are clear we fully understand the challenges faced by staff, member/attender-volunteers, and staff support.

We have been quite clear in our commitment to properly welcoming and supporting our youngest attenders. To this end, in addition to our permanent preschool teacher, who is in her second year of working with our infants, toddlers, and preschoolers, we’ve hired two permanent First Day teachers, who provide regular programming for our elementary-aged children. (RantWoman is unsure of the precise wording re Junior Friends). A group of Junior Friends from our Meeting and South Seattle Friends Meeting meets the first week of each month.  We gather quarterly with young families at our meeting and South Seattle Friends Meeting, in order to grow our community and to share our experiences of raising children within the Quaker faith.


Our worship community includes survivors of sexual abuse as well as sexual offenders. We hold this balance carefully and with deliberate transparency. From this attention has grown a set of policies and practices geared towards the safety of our children.


At our fall community-building retreat, we considered how our worship nurtures our community. We are a large meeting, and there are many ways members and attenders find their home here: in play with our children, in connection to the homeless individuals sheltering with us who lead us to consider the plight of the homeless across our city, through the dozen individual care committees that allow us to focus our Light, through attention to the act of ministry in all its guises, by reaching out to the QuEST Fellows whose service work inspires us, enjoying each others’ company at Light Lunch, engaging in collective social action and political advocacy, tending to the native plants that surround our meeting house, and by greeting with open and attentive hearts the newcomers and old-timers with whom we meet for worship.


Thursday, April 11, 2013

The Race Card Project, among other things

Blog posts topical to #theracecardproject, assembled partly in preparation for #wpc14
Wherein RantWoman confesses to having designed an intake form that does not include an option for mixed race / mixed ethnicity and statistical hilarity (?!?) arising from further bad assumptions
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/01/fixity.html

Wherein there are numerous places in a muddled narrative where race is one big part of how actual data looks and maybe RantWoman should pull together some maps to make her point.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/03/relic-edge-of-new-millenium.html

Wherein RantWoman manages NOT to hyperventilate about differences in possible perception because Irrepressible Nephew and his father are of Guatemalan heritage.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2013/03/nerf-war-morality-moments-conflict.html

Wherein RantWoman makes an uncharacteristically gushy observation about an activity run by her college alumni association.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2012/01/princeton-prize-in-race-relations.html

Wherein RantWoman dumps a whole bunch of posts tied in some way or another to interactions across race.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/search/label/Twenty-Three-and-U

Special bus geek terminology notes: RantWoman has experience with more than one bus system where drivers develop comparable shorthand about significant bus stops. RantWoman's experience and awareness of history in Seattle, the intersection of Twenty Third and Union represents many cycles of redlining, cross-race dialogue, gentrification, and intra-family dialogue as different members of RantWoman's extended family have come and gone from RantWoman's immediate orbit. Hence the blog tag, which is as idiosyncratic as many of RantWoman's other blog tags.

Further meditations for all the other Quakers come to town for the White Privilege Conference:

--RantWoman is not sure why, but RantWoman had not even the faintest leading until after registration has closed to forward info about the White Privilege Conference to the contact list lurking in RantWoman's email for the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference.

http://pnwquakerwomen.org/conference/

RanWoman IS all about doing what she can to have the next conference do the work to include women from Spanish-speaking Friends churches. Many are eager and see this is both possible and reasonable; others are still to be labored with. RantWoman would be happy to talk to visiting Friends about the dialogue across Friends traditions which are woven through the Pacific NorthWest Quaker Women's Theology Conference.

--RantWoman will post a separate item extracted and expanded from email about leadings she is seasoning related to the Friends Committee for WA Public Policy,
www.fcwpp.org

Monday, April 8, 2013

The Gospel of Disaster Preparedness and Checkbox Theology

RantWoman is always ready to preach the gospel of disaster preparedness. Here is a link about awesome opportunities in Seattle with additional commentary from RantWoman as to her Meeting's previous interactions with preparedness and presence in different circumstances.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/04/faith-based-disaster-preparedness-forums.html

A small warning of theologies in collision:

The blog post includes a link to sign up for one of the upcoming fora.

http://seattlefaithbasedforums.eventbrite.com/

RantWoman nearly got stuck on

"Please tell us whether you are a Faith-based leader or a member / ambassador representative of your congregation."
RantWoman internal dialogue:

I am definitely faith-based. We are all ministers of God. We don't HAVE leaders. The only leader I recognize is the holy Spirit.

But I do not feel like a member ambassador either. Today for instance someone suggested getting thrown off a bridge sounded like more fun.


RantWoman, it's the Fire Department. How many meetings have you sat through in large rooms with interprettation to and from several languages.

Question from group 1: this is what we think in our country.

Answer: We're the fire department and this is how we do things.

Question from group 2: In our country....

Answer 2: We're the fire department and this is how we do things.

RantWoman, thinking, gosh it's really helpful even to know what my neighbors might be thinking, not to mention "single standard of Truth" as far as the Fire Department!

Now, as to earthquakes .... tsunami...volcanic eruptions ... rain...severe winter storms and snow...landslides ....flooding...meteorites? . sundry Acts of God...climate change?

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Mental Health Care: HARD even with good insurance and great personal support.

RantWoman notes this item about mental health care in another state. It's pretty daunting even for a native English speaker with good insurance and excellent support.
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/04/05/mental-health-new-hampshire

RantWoman has anecdotal and observational information to the effect that realities in WA are just as hair-raising. RantWoman has further information that needing interpretation or having other language access barriers makes the challenge of living with mental illness even more daunting.



Once upon a time, long ago, RantWoman also worked as a bean counter in an organization where the norm was--and RantWoman thinks still is--to expect primary care doctors to manage most mental illness in primary care with medication. Enough said for now!





Thursday, April 4, 2013

The Meeting as Stated?

Dear World, God/dess...


The annual State of Society report is gestating and RantWoman is as usual having trouble exercising restraint. Here are notes and a whacked up draft RantWoman inflicted on our brave and intrepid drafting team.

RantWoman insufferable? HOW could this be? Let us count the ways:

--RantWoman's hyperactive Inner Blowtorch keeps showing up a certain "This is your mother speaking" insistence about sharing many points of experience not necessarily at the front of other Friends' minds; RantWoman is also richly endowed with the gift of hearing others' protestations about this insistence only as "shut up."

--The clerk nearly forgot to begin the process of drafting our State of Society report until RantWoman reminded him at about the last second of the Business Meeting where drafters are customarily recruited.

--After Business Meeting a pair of parents of young children stepped forward. RantWoman remembers her role as idiosyncratic verbal documentarian about Irrepressible Nephew's early years. Little Sister just was NOT writing much at all and she still occasionally thanks RantWoman for the collection of electronic dispatches 500 characters at a time RantWoman served up on her device of the age. For comparison, RantWoman needs to congratulate this year's drafters for getting anything on paper.


--Next, RantWoman can be both a ruthless editor and extremely ungracious in response to others' editorial efforts. RantWoman offered considerable enhancement to the first draft circulating. RantWoman tries to be somewhere in the vicinity of humility, but...There are LOTS of words and RantWoman assumes others might be at least somewhat generous as well.

Some things that rise from a first read of the draft:

--RantWoman is the sort of nerd who actually reads these reports either at Quarterly Meeting or at Annual session. RantWoman reads for:

--some kind of interesting language about spiritual life

--what are challenges and how is the community addressing?

--something interesting about what Quakerism means within that community.

--are there any big changes or news?

--What political issues is the community engaged about and what are they doing?

--is the font big enough? Usually RantWoman has eyeballs for 1 or 2 at a time; and tends to skip the ones with the smallest font.

As to this year's drafting:
--RantWoman liked some pieces of the first draft a lot; other pieces seemed repetitive and invited substitution to expand the snapshot of community life.

--RantWoman has some opinions about census type info that get tested in the course of generating the final report.

--The area around our Meeting is changing. We are three years away from a new Light Rail Station opening within a few blocks of us. Both because of the new dorm impinging on a view to the south and because of a new apartment building across a street, some among us are thinking about what this will mean for our worshipping community.

--RantWoman shares a concern about not just doing laundry lists of activities. RantWoman is TRYING to be at peace about what the authors are led to write but RantWoman is a student of the Our Lady of Perpetual Community Responsibility: RantWoman seems to be about shoving the authors toward words that reflect the whole community.


--Our library is both a treasure trove of historical Quaker literature and a place for Friends to gather in love and community.

--There are many poets lurking among us; the monthly cycles of art exhibits in our social hall connect us to other circles within Meeting and beyond. Even the discussion of what to do with the Rich Beyer fence and other artworks reflects care of heritage even if modern realities nudge us in hard directions.


--RantWoman thinks just the fact of doing things like a travelling minute is sometimes important. This year Meeting prepared a minute to....send Conflict is a Gift of God Friend off to....teach conflict resolution in a foreign land.

Along the way, RantWoman felt called to have a spasm in the direction of her perpetual "What do I take away / What do I bring back?" query. RantWoman felt compelled whether others wanted to listen or not, to share a story of a weighty Friend RantWoman heard at a Quaker event looking to get her travelling minute endorsed. RantWoman was thinking about when the Weighty Friend had spoken at Annual session about getting to have several roles over time, mother, famous astronomer, excuse the odd phrasing, Quaker theology bon vivant out talking about science and theology at places like the World Council of Churches.

RantWoman notes how this quaint Quaker custom can connect a local Meeting who might have very limited time and energy with big questions that can be nibbled at in small local but meaningful bits. RantWoman is also thinking about how, even though she is a huge fan of electronic connections, the travelling minute is this wonderful token of in-person contact. But in the process of expressing that thought, RantWoman found herself called to further vex ...Worship and Ministry committee. ....


But enough. Here is what RantWoman did to whack up the draft. RantWoman is speaking only for herself and perfectly well knows it would be FINE, FINE to let others speak for once. And this is RantWoman…



++++++++++
State of the Meeting Report (March 2013) DRAFT
University Friends Meeting


Our worship this year has been rich and balanced. Our meetinghouse hums with life: in addition to two First Day meetings for worship, lively Adult Education and midweek worship, our Social Hall is rented out nearly every night, a preschool thrives on our ground floor 20 homeless individuals find shelter in our worship room each night; this ministry draws in enthusiastic supporters for benefit concerts and helps us consider many concerns related to affordable housing across our city At Quaker House, we also continue to welcome both travelers and six new social service interns, newly renamed QuEST fellows, each year through our QuEST program.


It has now been a few years since our Year of Discernment, a process many of us found to be quite enriching and strengthening This year we ask where the clarity we found that year might again serve as a way to reset our compass. Are we doing too much? Are our tasks and roles the right ones? Do we work in simplicity and Light? At a threshing session on this topic, a suggestion emerged that we might try a drastic winter pruning—cutting back on the number and size of our committees and endeavors, and from that cleared space, seeing what structural needs emerged. For example, we consolidated both financial management and care of facilities for our two buildings within one meetingwide committee each; now we are discerning what makes most sense for managing our several personnel


We have been quite clear in our commitment to properly welcoming and supporting our youngest attenders and their parents. Our permanent preschool teacher is in her second year of working with our infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. This year we also hired two permanent First Day teachers, who provide regular programming for our elementary-aged children. We also host a quarterly gathering with young families at our meeting and South Seattle Friends Meeting. Junior Friends from several Seattle-area Meetings gather once a month to create a sense of Quaker community as well and to share our experiences raising children as Quakers . Finally we also honor the care and sporadic participation of Friends’ grandchildren, nieces, nephews, and young people in our activities.


Our worship community includes survivors of sexual abuse as well as sexual offenders. We hold this reality carefully and with deliberate transparency. We maintain a set of policies and practices geared towards the safety of our children. We always have two adults with our children’s program activities. From time to time we hold educational activities about abuse awareness and prevention; we hold abuse survivors tenderly along with the other struggles of many in our community.

A number of challenges are trying the spirits of Friends right now. In addition to deaths in our community (…..) several among us are grieving the loss of parents, spouses, or other important people in their lives. Our community holds this with care even when Friends are grieving people not directly known by many in Meeting.

Many Friends are beset by the demands and darned inconveniences of aging: hearing loss, rheumatism, Parkinsonism, various forms of vision meltdown, digestive obstructions, dyspepsia, disinclination to leave the house, and multitudinous other distresses. A certain Pendle Hill pamphlet may well go on as to "Hallowing our Diminishments" but what if Friends really need is "Howling about our Diminishments"? We focus the Light of ministering to specific Friends through over individual care committees; we also strive to pay attention as a community: a new disabled parking place, for adaptations in how we distribute information, and other gestures of care and accompaniment.

Our community welcomed …. New members and …. Transfers out. One transfer especially stands out; one member of the first same-gender couples anywhere to ask their Meeting to call their commitment to each other a marriage and to take it under the care of the Meeting like any other marriage. This couple broke up amiably after over 10 years together and each found and in that Friend's case lost a beloved new partner. This year That Friend has moved back to CA where she grew up to live near her grandchildren.

The arrival of grandchildren is especially touching in light of WA voters this year voting in favor of full marriage equality for same-sex couples within our state. University Meeting and North Pacific YM have been on record in support of civil marriage equality for over 15 years. Echoing George Fox, "we marry none but only witness whom God marries. Interestingly, pride in WA voters notwithstanding, none of the same-sex couples in our Meeting is in any hurry to head to the courthouse for the new paperwork.

One illustration of our rich community life; our fall community-building retreat / work party first asked Friends to explain their experience of worship in one verb then divided us into small groups for worship sharing. Over lunch a clothesline provided space for Friends to hang their verbs. There some Friends shared difficult and prickly words also present though not necessarily spoken aloud. After lunch Friends dug into a number of needed work projects; when everyone gathered at the end of the day, Friends were grateful for many completed maintenance project and re-energized with new verbs.

We are richly blessed, enjoying each others’ company at Light Lunch, engaging in collective social action and political advocacy, tending to the native plants that surround our meeting house, and greeting with open and attentive hearts the newcomers and old-timers with whom we meet for worship.

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

War Tax Resistance: Could not say it better myself

RantWoman would absolutely consider having enough income to need to think about the share of her taxes going for war a VERY good thing. It even occurs to RantWoman that this thought would be among the more unusual things a vocational rehab counselor might ever hear.

RantWoman, for better or worse, is in Make Your own job mode so RantWoman simply gets to highlight this excellent item from Waging Nonviolence about war tax resistance and trust that seeds might fall somewhere fertile.

http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/what-if-they-gave-a-war-and-nobody-paid/