Worship through play on planet RantWoman

Illustrate Mess

RantWoman is in a party mood, sort of, as much as RantWoman is any good at partying. Hang on because a party really did occur, it's just that RantWoman has to get STUFF out of her system.

RantWoman, why ya gotta bring up all this STUFF? This is supposed to be fun, play, worship, SAFE.

--because what is safe and what is safer and...?

--because very large overwhelmed four year old shows up sometimes even when it is not always "safe" and is not good at sticking around when "Go talk to your therapist" is kind of on-point?

--because anxiety because RantWoman cannot think of a more anxiety evoking comment than "go away and deal with your anxiety?

--because baby Quakers wilt and run away from the concept of "Clearness committee.," never mind any sense of whether anyone knows how to do a clearness committee anyway?

RantWoman, Baby Quakers? okay, Friends needing to be labored with? Friends God keeps trying to get messages to? 

RantWoman, CHILL, let the experience be. So what if a bunch of scary figures are running in and out of the season?

RantWoman's party history: As a kid, at slumber  parties, RantWoman had a tendency to, well, slumber. Oh boy. This sounds promising.

Ice Cream or crafting a minute: tell us a fun fact--appropriate for this party's audience--about yourself.

RantWoman recently was listening to a radio program about one of the first openly lesbian parents in Britain.  The main story was about a woman who had a child through artificial insemination. At some point her relationship status became public and some hair raising child custody concerns arose. RantWoman sometimes wonders what it would have been like for kids growing up in NPYM to travel all around the Yearly Meeting being spokes kids for same gender relationships, so different from the complicated families who now show up at holiday parties. 

RantWoman's forms of outspokenness were some of the time a lot more subdued. Blind Roommate spent really a lot of time reading up on the case of Sharon Kowalski and Karen Thompson. This was the early days of the AIDS pandemic where partners all over the place were being denied access to gravely ill loved ones. RantWoman remembers for example sitting in a hearing in college in support of a physics grad student's request for the university to add something about sexual orientation to the university's anti-discrimination statement, hanging in spaces where every woman there was assumed to be queer regardless.

RantWoman's best (?) queer themed party moment: one year at NPYM Annual Session, most of the queer quakers were nearby eating ice cream. RantWoman and another word nerd holed up to wordsmith the minute.

Inclusion time?

What happens if the blind kid wants to plan the office holiday party

 Nasturtiums in Salad Friend keeps beading.

Nasturtiums in Salad Friend, aka Friend with a Ministry of Beading came up in a conversation with RantMom. RantMom and Nasturtiums in Salad Friend now live in the same retirement community. Nasturtiums in Salad Friend used to bring lots of beads to many Quaker events. Now she mostly doesn't bring her beads and knack for both beading technique and creating space for people to talk. Her centeredness is also inspiring RantMom right now as retirement community goes through changes.

RantWoman, what is Nasturtiums in Salad Friend doing at this party?

Uhhh, RantWoman does not always recognize fun until well into...

Just come to the party. Be in the moment.

RantWoman recently participated in a wonderful Adult Religious Education session dedicated to worship through play. RantWoman found it a wonderful event, perhaps partly because of having spent time in book groups with some of those present talking about body reactions to stress and suggestions about behaviors related to racism. Still, it took RantWoman a bit to settle in and just go with it. RantWoman's impressions are in no way meant fully to encapsulate the process of the work.

The first step, a query: What gives you courage? For RantWoman, a sense of being loved by God no matter what. Okay RantWoman recognizes this could be problematic for several reasons. Also a sense of both drawing inspiration from and wanting to make the world better for people younger, and just sometimes dogged tenacity  / subborness / bullheadedness.

Okay, now draw an object with your dominant hand without looking at the paper. Tell your inner critic just to cope for now. RantWoman has done this exercise before and knows how it will turn out for her. RantWoman's eye's don't fuse so if RantWoman tries to draw what she sees, odds are really good that the lines won't line up, the closed figures won't close properly, and if everyone is really lucky there may in place be two lines where other people would see only one. RantWoman was also needing to deal with muscle cramps or some bodily glitches and twitches and wasn't sitting down. RantWoman is glad others commented and reported experiences similar in some ways to RantWoman's previous experiences. RantWoman at that point was fine with not even trying to look at pencil drawings over Zoom. 

Somewhere in here there was some kind of invitation to openness, to listening through the whole body. RantWoman must have taken it to heart in spite of not remembering more detail.

Okay, now, a longer time. Use your non-dominant hand. Practice gratitude... RantWoman does not remember the exact terms of the invitation to draw or capture. The word that stuck with RantWoman was mess. Draw and we'll report back.

RantWoman by this time was also having trouble feeling gratitude for highly vision-intensive exercises. Since it was Zoom, RantWoman admitted in the chat to being grouchy and asked Friends to describe their next drawings a little more. RantWoman is grateful for the Friend who asked RantWoman to say a little more about her comment in the chat. It felt so nice to be seen that it was easy to be a lot less grouchy out loud. Then RantWoman went outside to do some of the thinking part of the exercise.

The 20 minutes passed really fast. RantWoman decided she needed a visual and the picture at the top of the post is what came from RantWoman's phone camera.

RantWoman really liked the report back and Friends sharing about what the experience was like for them. RantWoman remembers Friends sharing the blobs with better explanations: more than one Friend reported either drawing class or some work or academic reason to draw. More than one Friend reported being in some kind of creative practice. One Friend realized they were trying to draw wings and need more practice. RantWoman made everyone else go before she did and was glad everyone had time. Most importantly, RantWoman had plenty of time to talk about weird visual experiences, ways she uses her non-dominant hand, the weird and wacky world of RantWoman's visual experience. 

RantWoman is very grateful to feel listened to, very grateful for Friends presence even if it's a pretty weird journey. RantWoman is also grateful, after YEARS of making what to RantWoman seemed like simple doable requests to deal with issues arising because of midlife vision loss, to have people say "yes" and even have fun about describing their blobs! 

RantWoman is tagging this #NDEAM because plenty of work places include exercises where for one reason or another a person with a disability has to make decisions about how much to disclose of what is painful, difficult, and even impossible. RantWoman likes to think of one Friend from eastern WA speaking about a transgender person who came to her workplace: that person talked about how much more energy they had for work when they were not spending all their energy hiding. RantWoman realizes she has probably said this many times before but RantWoman has no energy to cover, hide her disability. RantWoman is working REALLY hard to deal with the overgrown 4 year old. RantWoman is NOT called to go away and RantWoman is happy to suggest ways Friends could spend a lot of energy more elegantly for everyone.