Join Us

RantWoman has been thinking lately of some questions, queries, quibbles, qualification, equivocations and querulous, queasy comments about themes related to membership in the Religious Society of Friends..

These questions have congealed as a result of two events. First a friend who is about to move away has requested membership in our meeting. Historically, this just ISN'T DONE, primarily one supposes because of the difficulties of maintaining community and connection from a distance. The more RantWoman considers this person's ministries, the clearer RantWoman becomes that this person is already unquestionably a Quaker and the only question is how best to recognize this, how best to nurture and help her develop real gifts and deep leadings.


RantWoman is clear that provision needs to be made to nurture the spiritual lives of people in this situation. RantWoman is less clear about her meeting's capacity to provide full community at a distance; however RantWoman is considering this Friend's unspoken ministry of sharing the workings of different meetings in ways that, well, cause her to be very grateful for her own Meeting. If RantWoman is unsure of her own Meeting's capacity in this area, RantWoman is also clear and not just self-congratulatory that her own meeting does a much better job of nurturing the ministry of attenders than others do.


The person who applied for membership and her wife are still in the moving around and getting credentials phase of life. It is likely to be a couple more years at least before they settle down and have a home in one place. To make matters worse, different meetings are either more parsimonious or more open-hearted about the extent to which they work to nurture the ministries of people who are not members. Also highly variable: the amount of hopping through baroque processes prospective members are subjected to.


To put it bluntly, RantWoman thinks both of these points may be silly! RantWoman is all for discernment, the good order of Friends and all that Quakerese that is supposed to ensure that decisions are well-considered, rooted in unity. However, it does not appear to RantWoman that the Religious Society of Friends is overrun with aspiring members. Nor does it seem to RantWoman that the society is in danger of getting carried off in the excesses of youth.


In fact, RantWoman notes concerns recently expressed both within her Yearly Meeting and in quick scans of materials from blogs based in other Yearly Meetings: Friends would like the incorporation of young adults who have grown up in Friends Meetings into adult roles to be much smoother and automatic than in currently is. RantWoman also notes vague concern about transfers of efforts to new generations, about renewal of energy, and numerous other cross-generational themes. In short, RantWoman thinks many meetings could do a much better job of incorporating new seekers into membership than is currently the norm. Conveniently, at least in North Pacific Yearly Meeting both youth and weighty Friends are raising questions related to this point.

RantWoman does find herself wanting to dispatch some of those exercised about these topics on a comparative religions research project.

What does membership mean and when does it occur for practitioners of other faiths?

What could Friends learn from studying this? What opportunities occur, quite regularly in RantWoman's meeting, for clumps of young visitors to provide dialogue about this topic, for instance in the process of doing their homework after attending Meeting for Worship?

Does membership involve reaffirming one's community only with others one feels connected to or should membership serve as a bond with a whole network one might or might not know at the time of one's commitment and might be willing or inclined to explore after joining?

Is it too plainspoken to speak of membership in a meeting the same way one speaks of driver's licenses? The assumption is that one gets membership geographically close to where one lives. One then joins the vast universe of drivers, not just 20-something drivers or teenage drivers or whatever but all drivers. There is no need for 20-somethings to invent a special multi-jurisdiction license for 20-somethings. They simply get their local license and move on.

Okay despite the risk of prejudging the conversation by weighing with the last point, RantWoman thinks there is indeed much to consider here and meanwhile she is glad the one Friend referred to here is now a member of her Meeting if only because RantWoman really enjoys having met in person the people whose blogs she reads regularly.

RantWoman unplugs at NPYM

RantWoman is trying to swim against the current of an overflowing inbox. RantWoman is trying to stay centered after all the ways her journey to the NPYM Annual Session in Missoula exhausted--and re-energized--her. RantWoman is also trying to hold onto that lovely sense of relaxation she feels in the slower pace of MT even though RantWoman mostly likes living in the middle of a big city and generally handles the sense of frenzy. RantWoman is also turning over several themes that she expects deserve their own entries.

First though RantWoman must pay proper respect to the work of the Annual Session planning committee. For sentimental personal and family reasons RantWoman always enjoys going to Missoula. RantWoman is also very grateful that this trip was not fraught with as many medical moments as previous trips. Missoula Friends also work so hard to make things work well and RantWoman wants to surround them with gratitude for that.

Perhaps the other reason RantWoman feels so relaxed is that she had to unplug. RantWoman did not mean to have to unplug. RantWoman toted her enormous laptop with vital accessibility software on the bus. RantWoman even noted in the registration materials that the campus charges a nominal fee for conference-goers to access the campus Wi-Fi. Somehow though it escaped RantWoman's attention that she should pay for this in advance or list it on her registration form at the very least.

There are a couple subtleties here: RantWoman was happy to pay for her own internet but was getting financial aid for everything else. More importantly, RantWoman upon even modest reflection has to admit that another time or two recently she has just concentrated on filling in information in blanks on forms and not necessarily made the screen reader read every word of background info on the form. That is pretty much what happened in this case and RantWoman is now resolved to address that oversight for the future.

Alas for Annual Session, RantWoman had just to cope. RantWoman's other conference-goers waxed enthusiastic about where the Wi-Fi was good. The Daily Bulletin, which RantWoman was supposedly editing even said things should work! True, RantWoman arrived late and the daily bulletin was prepared by other people for two days.

RantWoman cranked up her computer and got nowhere helpful. RantWoman solicited info from two different campus employees who seemed unaware of how the university handles Wi-Fi access for conferences.

RantWoman even went to the library. Last time RantWoman was on campus, the library had one computer with accessibility software so that, if one knew how to use the accessibility software (RantWoman did not at the time, sigh) one could at least approximate the same access provided people via the public terminals in the dorms. Some kind of change had recently been implemented so this time, even though RantWoman knew how to use the software, on a Friday afternoon when the techs are all either off or crash-testing software demos, access at the library was not really happening either. RantWoman actually thinks she will write a gentle letter of remonstrance to the university about that.

Somewhere in the middle of this, RantWoman decided to talk to NPYM's own conference registrar. Think of this as another adventure. RantWoman had to explain more than once that no, she really cannot see to use the computers in the dorm. The registrar explained that from her perspective it was perfectly reasonable that RantWoman should pay attention to info on the forms about deadlines just like she did for everything else.

At this point, RantWoman had a meltdown. She had exactly the sort of meltdown that, if someone else were having the meltdown, would cause her to roll her eyes so loudly that it sounds like one of those marble games. RantWoman had Things to Do! The Wi-fi access was vital. The Daily Bulletin even said it should work! Well, no, Daily Bulletins have been happening for years without Wi-Fi. Furthermore, RantWoman as editor of the Daily Bulletin could perfectly well reword the announcement to alert others in her situation to the other options at local internet cafes. Plus RantWoman just travelled 500+ miles to SEE PEOPLE and why on earth did she think she needed to be wired to do that?

On the way back to Seattle, several carloads of conference goers reassembled for dinner at a Mexican restaurant. There someone else commented about the number of laptops and one also imagines cellphones and text messages. The cellphones were really slick at a couple points for making easy connections but are never compatible with Meeting for Worship or even plenaries.

Now that RantWoman has discovered that she can, with great difficulty, survive a whole Annual Session without blogging every zig and zag of her spiritual journey, expect her to bring the convert's zeal to queries for everyone else about whether they really NEED that laptop in plenaries!