The Secretary of War Crime' pastor gets his very own post

" Douglas Wilson's version of American Theocracy"

So glad to know that someone with exactly NO respect for the separation of church and state, freedom of religion.....

So how's your sex offender, 2022 edition

Let's hear it for "Oops. Ouch Whoa?"

First, Readers are permitted to wonder how RantWoman ALWAYS finds some way to encounter sex offender issues in conversations at large gatherings

Second, no, RantWoman is not going to comment in detail about specific individuals beyond suggesting holding in the Light. RantWoman means to post separately about worshipping with...but one topic at a time.

Tonight after the suggested dialogue for this year's NPYM Annual Session Oops Ouch Whoa training had been tried, there was space and Friends present for RantWoman to blurt out something she has thought a lot about:

RantWoman exactly understands the systemic racism of the Criminal (in)Justice System. RantWoman understands horrifying statistics about how violence, abuse, and neglect replicate themselves from one generation to another. RantWoman also understands the horrible conditions which prevail in most "correctional" institutions.

AND

RantWoman wants to scream OUCH every time young Friends proclaim themselves prison abolitionists. 

1. As far as RantWoman is concerned, UNDER the jail would be a good place for the serial molester who victimized a Rant Sibling.

2. It is not hard, if one talks to Friends involved with Alternatives to Violence, to find people who will say honestly that prison was the best thing that happened to them.

3. Sometimes RantWoman finds it more fitting to attend to survivors' complex experiences than to spend too much time on offenders.

RantWoman is VERY grateful that a review of NPYM child safety practices has hopefully settled down. RantWoman is grateful to have heard consideration of the policy in more than one place. RantWoman is deeply grateful for committee members who endured complaints of racism and prouncements which sounded to RantWoman like unexamined privilege. RantWoman is grateful for the clarity and emphatic voices who share RantWoman's perspectives about responsible positions. RantWoman is grateful for efforts to create positive safe spaces for youth to talk and learn. 

RantWoman is not quite sure what to do with the reality that everything to do with sexual assault can plow into Yucky Topics zones SO RantWoman will digress to efforts to digest related conversations elsewhere.

CW / TW: abuse, sexual assault, racism homophobia

And in non-Quaker news, at #ACB22 while coping with elevators RantWoman bumped into a lawyer and ACB Board member and had a brief conversation about continuing efforts by the National Federation of the Blind, those other blind people, to address issues of sexual misconduct.

RantWoman has no detailed knowledge of anything beyond what is available in multiple published articles. RantWoman simply notes that as of 2022, insurance companies have a long list of best practices for helping ensure the safety of program participants, students, people involved in religious congregation activities. Problems arose for the NFB because for a long time they were doing exactly none of those best practices. Those best practices should be a minimum. RantWoman wants to appreciate very important progress and commitments to training. RantWoman is also vexed not to see training about some of those best practices explicitly included in the descriptions she has read so far.

Raising Expectations NFB PResident Marc Riccobono

NFB Sex Crimes Abuses Cover-ups

Former LCB students allege toxic culture

Ministry Seasoned with Pizza?

Warning: this post is tangled. RantWoman is completely sober and the post is still tangled. Perhaps RantWoman and everyone mentioned just need to be held in the Light.

 

 

New Material at the bottom of the weekly bulletin with our material about sex offenders.

 

(RantWoman is omitting the material specifically about sex offenders. RantWoman deeply appreciates the person willing to be a phone contact for people with personal concerns but would slightly prefer that a person willing to be a phone contact list professional credentials. [RantWoman has a very able mental health professional whom she sees as often as she can afford; RantWoman is not clear that phoning the Meeting contact person will be helpful for what is on her mind about Meeting] Here though, what is on RantWoman’s mind, RantWoman thinks may cause enough consternation just by reporting data about following the instructions in the invitation below.)

 

Invitation?

“University Friends Meeting is also a place where individual behavior may not always live up to the ideals of community and peace that are at the heart of Quaker life. You may experience individuals whose comments, ministry or other communication appears aggressive, harsh, or rambling.

[ Excerpt from a Care and Counsel committee member email awhile ago comes to mind: “Please take good and gentle care of yourself. This is going to be painful and I do not even want to hear until after Business Meeting…”]  

Some in our community may misuse Quaker process, speaking their minds without the full light of the Spirit.

[Does anyone on Care and Counsel maybe MAYBE have challenges in this regard TOO?]

We are committed to engaging with these Friends from a place of love and spiritual discernment.

[If there were no love involved, RantWoman should have run away screaming a LONG time ago. PS How about matters of lawand administrative practicality on Planet Capitalism, single standard of Truth for Friends where awareness of the ADA and or really welcoming diversity and inclusion statements are part of their work lives and Meeting is a glorious learning opportunity?]

We are also resolved to hold these Friends accountable for their words and actions in the interest of protecting the integrity and spirit of our meeting. If you experience or witness harassment, either in person or online, please notify Care and Counsel Committee. [Who does RantWoman contact if the word silencing leaps out from…; can we maybe possibly just think “Opportunity to Grow. Oh Goody! Opportunity to Grow?”]

 

“If you have questions or concerns about how University Friends Meeting creates a safe and welcoming environment, please feel free to speak with the individual closing meeting for worship. […University Friends Meeting creates… How about movements of the Holy Spirit? Any room for that?] You may also bring questions or concerns to a member of the Care and Counsel or Worship and Ministry Committees. The co-clerks are …(Friend who usually embodies other nicer noms de blog than the email above and Friend whose Nom de blog RantWoman is trying NOT to reconsider.”

 

 

RantWoman offers the following data.

Vocal Ministry from Couples Counseling Friend

Recently Couples Counseling Friend offered vocal ministry. Couples Counseling Friend frequently does drama presentation well. This was true this time too but parts of her ministry just creeped RantWoman out.

 

Couples Counseling Friend, a member of Care and Counsel, acquired her nom de blog because she is attached in RantWoman’s mind with terminological landmines related to a conflict resolution effort already freighted with  vexed elements.  RantWoman one of these days will just write a Giant I FORGIVE you characterizing a number of circumstances, but that is neither here nor there for the ministry (ministries?) discussed here.

 

 

The ministry as RantWoman heard it, after children had entered worship.

First a bit about Benjamin Lay and whether he was difficult on purpose. RantWoman has no basis for knowing but would consider the possibility that Benjamin Lay lived in a cave because that was what he could afford. RantWoman also imagines, since Benjamin Lay was a person of short stature, that his cave might not have been large enough for people of normal height to stand up in but that it probably was a much-needed refuge from the ableism of people around him. Well RantWoman imagines.

 

The next part of the message mentioned Couples Counseling Friend’s former professional work with many children who have been sexually abused. The first part of the message was about something wonderful coming with something terrible.  RantWoman is not unfamiliar with the concept of unexpected blessing.  Something though about the delivery together with Couples Counseling Friend’s refusal to respond by email to a simple email inquiry “Do you remember what you said?” Do you remember what you intended?” somehow gave that part of the ministry a creepy edge.

 

Pizza?

 

Couples Counseling Friend, as RantWoman heard it, next talked about asking her young clients what they wanted on a pizza so they could forget the bad things forever.

 

Huh??? What kind of treatment modality is that? How does that work neurologically? Does the pizza also whack things one wants to hold or only bad stuff? It’s not one RantWoman remembers from her stint as a behavioral health bean counter. How does that work? Is God just showing off some weird sense of humor showing up with this message?

 

More to the point, eat a lot of pizza (or whatever) and just try to forget… pretty well encapsulates the emotional atmosphere a good bit of the time in the RantFamily household. That eat and forget and never mind emotional nuances or skills atmosphere also contributed  to between 0 and 2 threads of sexual assault per kid among the 3 RantChildren. RantWoman is the 0 which still leaves plenty of work for a mental health professional and plenty to keep washing away in the well of good spiritual practice. . Pizza and /or the possibility that no one has figured out the kid is violently allergic to pizza, is its own digression. Expectations about forgetting are, on Planet RantWoman completely unrealistic and also a little beside the point: If expectations of forgetting are to be part of the therapy, should one just run screaming from the room, even if it has been a lot of trouble to get into the room in the first place? If one is not going to forget, understandings and healing “I see you” conversations can evolve over time.

 

That is where RantWoman has gotten to while seasoning her creeped out reaction. By seasoning, RantWoman means a group email including Couples Counseling Friend and others who were present or not. Besides the inquiry above to Couples Counseling Friend, RantWoman also asked others what if any elements they remembered. RantWoman did not have high expectations, but now simply notes data collected.

 

Couples Counseling Friend repeated a frequent request of RantWoman, basically not to email her except regarding matters related to Couples Counseling Friend also being Recording Clerk.

 

Helpful? Uhh, today the Benjamin Lay reference has sent RantWoman’s recollections of many matters to do with disability and Minutes so guess what, RantWoman in her role as serial recording clerk to many Quaker bodies invited Couples Counseling Friend back into the picture. [RantWoman also notes at least two batches of minutes where Couples Counseling Friend either ignored RantWoman’s words entirely or seemed quite at sea with what RantWoman was trying to present. In the second case others were at sea and conversations continue.]

 

Friend Whose Nom De Blog RantWoman is trying not to Reconsider generously told the entire recipient list they do not need to respond to RantWoman’s honest questions. RantWoman’s excessively plain English to Quakerese language filter may yet melt over this Friend’s presumption to know more about the intent of RantWoman’s choice of recipients than RantWoman does. People are adults. They can take responsibility for managing their email. This Friend also offered an opinion about inquiries as to the meaning of Vocal ministry that RantWoman is having trouble squaring with the invitation listed in the bulletin.

 

RantWoman then wrote back that often for her inquiries as to something about her ministry are often very welcome and deepening; Madame Clerk also wrote back even more movingly than RantWoman AND expressed unspecified disquiet with the previous Friend’s response. Another Friend wrote back also noting disquiet and expressing various strands of blessing.

 

Back in Worship

RantWoman returns to the Meeting for Worship in question.

 

RantWoman offered the ministry summarized here.

https://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2019/01/benjamin-lay-comes-to-worship-and.html

 

 

Than another Friend offered the ministry from Corinthians about “love is kind, patient…”  And Meeting closed AND RantWoman needed to ask in person to be held in the Light.

 

Sure. Now what?

 

In Light and Faithfulness

 

RantWoman

 

 

 

Book Launch Second Edition of Concrete Mama

book launch & panel discussion   celebrating the re-publication of Concrete Mama: Prison Profiles from Walla Walla   January 22, 2019 6:00 p.m.  (doors open at 5:30 p.m.)   North Creek Events Center   Light refreshments will be served

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The University of Washington Libraries, the Washington Prison History Project (      @waprisonhistory), and the University of Washington Press are pleased to invite you to the launch of the expanded new edition of Concrete Mama. The acclaimed photojournalistic collaboration between reporter John McCoy and photographer Ethan Hoffman won the Washington State Book Award in 1982, offering unprecedentedly frank dispatches from inmates’ lives inside the Washington State Penitentiary. Concrete Mama’s long-awaited rerelease contains a new introduction by prison scholar, author, and educator Dan Berger.

 

An on-site exhibit of the late photographer Ethan Hoffman’s striking images of life inside of Walla Walla offers a glimpse of the experiences of incarcerated people during a transitional time in the state’s prison policy. A panel of compelling speakers will discuss imprisonment since the 1980s: 

 

·        John McCoy, the book’s original author

·        Dan Berger, contributor to the new edition

·        Gerard Boseman, UW student, Black Prisoners Caucus

·        Amani Sawari, independent journalist and national spokesperson for Jailhouse Lawyers Speak

·        Ed Mead and Mark Cook, activists both formerly incarcerated at Walla Walla (Mead is featured

in Concrete Mama’s Ch. 9; Cook co-founded the Black Panther Party chapter at the penitentiary)

 

This event will also feature contributions from people currently incarcerated in Washington, and showcase

The Washington Prison History Project: http://waprisonhistory.org/,

presenting scholarship reflecting the history and ongoing reality of mass incarceration,

with materials from the project’s archive:  http://diglib.uwb.edu/wphp.

A First Time at Meeting for Worship story

RantWoman here collects another "First Time at Meeting" item complete with various moments of Quakerese in the article and the comments.

Holly Kozelsky First Time at Meeting

This account is of Meeting for Worship.

At the recent #NPYM2017 Annual Session, rant Woman collected more data about at least one newcomer being wowed to visit for the first time on a day when there was Meeting for Business. The newcomer was very positively impressed with how a challenging topic was handled.

Bless Your Heart Dennis Hastert

Festive Rant in honor of the sentencing of Dennis Hastert. Vivid illustration of reasons RantWoman could use an editor and MAYBE should try a different PR tack about life in her own Meeting.

Obligatory text-in-graphic, via @DaveWeigel

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/prosecutors-add-crushing-details-hastert-allegations


RantWoman, how are your sex offenders?
[RantWoman does in fact sometimes field questions like this. usually there are multiple interesting threads of the conversations.]

 

MY sex offenders? You mean the formerly incarcerated known offenders who are now valued members of our community?  Meeting’s sex offenders? Guess what they get to wait in line for attention while RantWoman’s inner blowtorch shines in other directions.

 Bless your heart Dennis Hastert. Thank you so much for being sexual abuser of the day. How refreshing to have you a male politician interested in boys are available to take our minds off the nauseating trail of disgusting history that now tumbles out every time RantWoman hears the name Bill Cosby.

 Bless your heart because my Twitter feed says it’s National Child Abuse Awareness Month, which of course covers a whole bunch of things besides sex abuse, but it’s perfect alongside news about your court case.

 Bless your heart, sir, for trying to pay hush money, for trying to structure the payments to evade banking reporting requirements and for telling stories that did not add up.

 Bless your heart for the young men who have come forward and who get to relive your behaviors toward them every time the prosecutors have to detail the facts behind what you have been indicted for.

 Bless your heart for walking us all through the painful experience of facing behavior that should not be hidden, abuse of trust and authority, betrayal of responsibility to youth. 

 Bless your heart for making RantWoman wonder whether this history of abuse somehow played out in how you served the country as Speaker of the House, third in line for the Presidency. Hasta en las mejores familias.

 RantWoman is sorry you are now ailing, and Bless your heart is the best RantWoman can do for prayer.

 But bless your heart because your story also reminds RantWoman of sex abuse very close to RantWoman, of enough threads to keep a large number of mental health professionals in yachts, that is assuming anyone receiving services could sustain yacht payments. And that does not count one mental health professional who, RantWoman has learned, ai-yi-yi, was arrested awhile ago in connection with a creep one out internet sting.  

Bless your heart for one person dear to RantWoman who has an official “crazy letter” but who has come far enough in her spiritual work  to recognize both that she is well off and that others need to be held as they continue their recovery.

 

Bless your heart for email and other electronic emanations from someone else: threads in the narrative have shifted in ways RantWoman has to guess indicate encounters with mental heal services that actually help. And please excuse RantWoman for being an arrogant bitch around people who find the Still Didn’t Get the Memo Committee on Email Immoderation daunting: yep. The ONLY reason RanWoman draws the conclusions she draws is because she takes the time actually to READ and consider responses to the communications in question.

 Bless your heart for RantWoman’s longtime school friend who really thinks she ought to be able to read Nabokov’s Lolita, on account of it is supposed to be great literature and all. Never mind that RantWoman’s friend received decidedly inappropriate attention from the Jr. high band director and that somehow is for better or worse saving her from what is in fact a pretty creepy piece of literature.

 And Bless your heart for the choir director from the other high school. RantWoman wonders whether the community might actually have been able to handle him being gay; they definitely should not have had to deal with him molesting students. RantWoman has other friends, male and female who have been abused by teachers. Bless your heart for reminding RantWoman of their stories.

 And bless your heart for showing up in the news around RantWoman when RantWoman isstill trying to dodge a call to truth telling. RantWoman has in fact told many of these truths many times. RantWoman has collected SOME evidence both of being heard and of her Lightalso speaking to things others’ hearts. And yet, RantWoman is called AGAIN to…to SOMETHING, something more than clearness committees with people who have repeatedly silenced her. Please hold RantWoman and everyone in the vicinity of her psychic blowtorch in the Light.

 Bless your heart, Friend around whom RantWoman spent MULTIPLE months trying to get you to hold worship sharing with a certain committee about what it means to be in her Meeting’s sex offenders among us announcement. For RantWoman’s faithfulness to her Light, RantWoman got to listen to said Friend debrief about a small part in another Situation involving end or relationship Drama as well as a teenager caught up in his adults’ challenges. Trust RantWoman, what you needed to debrief about was a SMALL part of the situation. RantWoman is happy to have listend to your distress but still pissed off basically to RantWoman’s ear to have been told to go away afterward. Oh, and said committee was removed from the official announcement. Upon reflection about rantWoman's own experience, Rantwoman would also say that tidings of such matters do not automatically seek out or find the committees officially designated as responsible, a point RantWoman's psychic blowtorch is being more present about that is suitable for this blog entry.

 

There is such a long trail of further silencing connected with all that, RantWoman is pretty cluntly just in “shit happens” mode, with further allusions to Ben Pink Dandelion’s observations: sometimes people who have absolutely NO gifts in topical areas should collide with roles every now and then so people appreciate the value of having the roles filled by people with the right gifts. RantWoman also notes that said Friend is so clearly called to some strands of witness Rantwoman considers really really important, particularly teaching environmental science to students from countries with no tradition of environmentalism that RantWoman feels particular call to forebearance about other shortcomings. RantWoman feels call to forebearance but RantWoman so far is not entirely successful about actually extending it. Shit happens --and people keep coming to worship together!

 

Meanwhile,

--RantWoman is still holding in the Light the story behind RantWoman’s recent post about the Queen of spades and pastoral care.

--RantWoman continues to wonder what is it about her face that causes people to be able to tell her about their restraining order issues.  

--RantWoman guesses she is supposed to be grateful just to have language for the problem of getting quite triggered recently when a former physicist, a deceased member of RantWoman’s Meeting came up in conversation on one of RantWoman’s non Quaker email streams. The former physicist went to work in a social services role. List memories included words that exactly matched RantWoman’s memory and the name came up because of circumstances when the person who first mentioned the Friend was a child, in particular something that probably looked entirely reasonable to all the adults but that made one set of issues worse for the then-child. RantWoman sorted all this out and then filed it in her “gee this is one reason this person is hard to work with and why it is important to keep including what she contributes” file. RantWoman also took note, when checking history for another reason: the then child as a young adult was one of the founders of the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme computing. Talk about more call to truth telling and crip solidarity.

 

But seriously, how are your Meeting’s sex offenders, the ones you know about?

 One has a very sweet love story: he and hs wife recently celebrated their 26^th wedding anniversary. Other than that, this Friend is part of a group of released offenders who regularly speak in the community. They speak with COMPLETE integrity of their past and also of the critical need for prison reform in WA. RantWoman hopes others will feel called to join this work particularly since the work will also involve a call to show up for racial justice, including working with burning concerns for different communities.

 

And the other one you know about? He is now a registered voter and a member of Meeting. For reasons having NOTHING to do with any violations of all his different conditions, discussions of his situation has a couple times gotten entangled in circumstances he has nothing to do with. RantWoman has no sense of whether there is anything to try to smooth over about those circumstances. RantWoman also thinks this thread is not the best place to speak of other gifts, except for one point: RantWoman is glad other people have FINALLY also indicated encounter with the point that it is not reasonable for anyone to expect this Friend to solve everyone’s anger trigger restimulation issues ever. But help with such problems does sometimes happen sometimes well, we are all ministers of God!

EVENT: The Prison Experience in WA

“Ain’t nothin’ easy ‘bout livin’ in a cage”

 

The Prison Experience in Washington

April 28, 7-9 p.m.

University Friends Meeting

4001 9th Avenue NE, Seattle, WA,  98105

 

 We live in an age of mass incarceration unprecedented in human history. If you’ve ever wondered what that looks like in our own blue state of Washington, please join us on April 28.  Dr. Steve Herbert from the UW’s School of Law, Societies, and Justice will sketch the historic and international context for us. Then a panel of four former prisoners will talk frankly with the audience about life in prison—their daily lives, their fears, their successes and failures, prison’s impact on their families, and their recommendations for change.

 

We’ll leave two hours later with a better understanding of the human face of our prison system, and more importantly, ideas about four crucial policies changes that can happen in the next legislative session if we start working now:

 

1) change the mission of the Department of Corrections from punishment to reintegration

2) create an independent ombuds office to oversee the DOC

3) restore higher education funding for prisons

4) create a sentence review (parole) program.

 

For more information about the event or about carpooling options from outside Seattle, please leave a comment with your question.

Jello ... or not?

Dear Bill C, yeah, you with the Jello ads, (Trademark symbol needed throughout)

Hells Bells Dude. RantWoman does not LIKE needing to put a trigger warning for discussion of sexual assault on this blog post, but guess what, here it is. RantWoman does not want to hear any excuses or equivocation or exclamations about things being off the record or your acute embarrassment.

RantWoman does not want to hear you lecturing Young Black Men about much of ANYTHING. RantWoman wants to hear "What happened was WRONG and I am DEEPLY SORRY."Then MAYBE you would have some cred to say"Pull your pants up and get an education and DO NOT do it the way I have!"

Dude, RantWoman does not want to speak on behalf of the women you wronged. Rantwoman is hoping that they have busy full lives and, if you admitted what is wrong, would be willing to embrace the new you, but RantWoman cannot be the one to force that.

Dude, you have a wife who clearly loves you.

You have a public, a lot of whom are just sick about the story, but who in many cases like RantWoman  would be glad to think forgiveness,

RantWoman is not a giant consumer of Jello Pudding. RantWoman these days is not even a giant consumer of commercials, but the old ones on Youtube still make her smile, except when...NEver Mind. Watch the commercial.




Okay, now the commercial is over. A clip from The View in November 2014.
Rosie O'Donell and others talk Cos on the View.

Now, here's a pretty judgmental clip of a couple people willing to call a spade a spade.




and if ya need an example or a pathway, read up on the Friend with the Remarkablestory, oh and put restorative justice into the search engine of your choice. Oh, and maybe find yourself a faith community and Get Right with God!

Thank you for reading.

Peace love and clarity,
RantWoman.

As told

RantWoman’s Meeting is just not serving up enough popcorn (hah!) during Meeting for Worship these days and RantWoman is called to reproduce a couple moments which have made it out of her mouth in other worship settings.

Example of a popcorn kernel:

 Testimony, plus or minus what made it out of RantWoman’s mouth:

I guess what I am to speak of is that an estimated 1 in 4 women and 1 in 10 men have some direct personal experience with sexual assault. That would probably be true of our community whether or not our community also included offenders returning to society, and that truth is important to the life of our worshiping community.

The vast majority of people now incarcerated will return to society. As a worshipping community seeking to support this human restoration, my Meeting speaks openly of two known sex offenders who are part of our Meeting. The two people are individuals with different stories, both valued part of our community.  We continue to learn a great deal from walking both with survivors and with offenders and their safety plans.

 

Testimony 2, again plus or minus what made it out of RantWoman’s mouth:

One of the things I follow in my Twitter feed is voices of the brave young people involved in the #BlackLivesMatter protests. Honestly, some of the time I read these posts and think “Kids, kids, kids.” Then I remember that I probably sounded a little like that way back when…. As I tried to find my own words. Other times I reflect on facts in Twitter for DAYS before many media outlets noticed. And there is so much hope and concern and courage in these messages there is no choice but to forward, retweet. I hope we can think also of these young people as we go forth to lobby….

Example of a popcorn kernel:

 

Testimony 3: long and tangled about transportation and taxes, climate change and “internalizing externalities.” Belongs on RantWoman’s other blog.

 

 

Faith who insisted she had no faith

Faith who said she had no faith:
Memorial for Faith Adams, this afternoon

Faith is the second of the 12 people on RantWoman's mental list of seriously blind people in Meeting to kick the bucket, a MT phrase that Faith would probably enjoy.

Faith, as it happens, lived with her family for many years on a ranch near one of the small towns outside the "large" (70,000) city where RantWoman graduated from high school. RantWoman imagines the ranch as dry and dusty, rough in many ways, VERY down-to-earth.. This also described Faith, and RantWoman does not at all mean this in a negative way. RantWoman is very glad to hear from neighbors that, although Faith lost much vision and hearing, her frank directness and lovable gruffness never faded.

RantWoman is unclear how long Faith suffered from macular degeneration but remembers the last time Faith brought a display of her wonderful fabric art pieces to our Meeting's monthly art show. By that time, Faith still talked some of colors but between her vision and arthritis or other problems with her hands, she was doing less and less to create new works.

RantWoman got to know Faith mainly in connection with the Monroe Worship Group. This blog post is a decent history with notes about Faith citing her work with the Department of Corrections.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/08/old-directory-monroe-worship-group-at.html

RantWoman is unclear how long Faith worked for the WA Department of Corrections but remembers her being blunt both about the inertia of bureaucracy and the realities of different inmates' personalities and situations, including public perception in some cases.

What makes RantWoman smile most, though: Faith as she aged grew more outspoken about lack of faith, atheism, and her certainty that people who felt otherwise were just deluded. It would be very easy to be completely appalled about this certainty except that, in RantWoman's experience it takes considerable faithfulness even to maintain a facade of total unbelief. RantWoman would NEVER want to insult Faith by pointing this out though.

A webpage of Faith's fiber art
http://www.faithadamsart.com/

From Faith's artist statement

I have an esthetic that I believe quite passionately: art is human experience cast into the discipline of for, thus acquiring meaning.

How Quakers Make Decisions: Quaker Speak. God DOES care about the carpet.

A holy sacred.....



...where we get ugly with one another...?

Annotations

RantWoman humbly offers some annotations from her very own blog to the sex offenders paragraph from her Meeting’s official penultimate draft 2014 State of Society report. RantWoman invites readers to compare this paragraph to the final version and to meditate on differences. There are small but VERY important differences. RantWoman is pointedly NOT speaking of the titles on the torturous path to these differences. Please hold the saga in the Light bearing in mind that fog and blur in RantWoman's head also impeded clear paths ....

RantWoman offers these ramblings in full brain dump, fraught with digressions mode and reminds her readers that her model of blogging is more Quaker journal than anything that aspires to be more polished. Please Hold RantWoman in the Light, especially if it seems like RantWoman is telling too much of the truth. (A)

 For more than a decade, UFM has been openly addressing people's needs around the topic of sexual violence. We committed ourselves to a triple ministry: safety for our children, support for adult survivors of sexual abuse(A1), and spiritual support for known sexual offenders in our community. One person completed his sentence this past year, and developed his own Lifetime Safety Plan, which the Meeting then adopted for our use as well. (B) An archive of our Meeting's walk with this offender is available at http://www.scn.org/friends/sexual_abuse_report.pdf (C).  As part of UFM’s overall plan, we charged the Education Committee with the ongoing responsibility for the safety of children (including annual education for adults) (D) and the Care and Counsel Committee with support for adult survivors, recognizing that this is a very challenging area. We are grateful for this ongoing opportunity for enhanced understanding of the histories, sorrows, challenges, and growth of all our members. (E)

 

(A)

For the record, among many threads of RantWoman’s yucky topics festival life story, one of the RantSiblings was victimized by a serial molester who targeted kids whose parents were too religiously uptight to help them learn to negotiate sexual boundaries, kids whose parents figured if they prayed hard enough, nothing bad would happen, and in the RantFamily case, parents who did NOTHING that would have been appropriate afterward like get the kid help!

RantWoman is posting this bluntly all over her blog. And STILL, RantWoman would be grateful if those in this community who know members of the RantFamily would observe the following confidentiality practices: if RantWoman brings something up in front of you and family members, it’s fair game. If a question comes up about life at this Meeting and you feel able to answer in the general case, feel free.

RantWoman has begun saying that trauma recovery in this particular faith community is a little like the cat having kittens in your bed. Must she? Yes, and those around RantWoman are supposed to be gratified  because that makes up for every single clueless obtuse silencing and just plain aggravating thing anyone in this community has done to fry RantWoman’s nerves about everything to do with the topic.

Furthermore, RantWoman has been massaging the value for others of the different schedule regimens used over the history of the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet’s DoC supervision. Some Friends do find it meaningful. Some Friends who do not speak up in public just wonder why the level of fussiness about the whole issue. RantWoman is unclear whether this category includes anyone--besides herself--who identifies as a survivor of abuse / sexual abuse.

RantWoman mentions this problem while holding in the Light Friend Whose Title RantWoman keeps Pointedly Omitting, recalling a conversation that went something like
"I am not hearing from survivors..."
"Well, you are not hearing from survivors about (The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet" but you should not assume you are not hearing from survivors."


RantWoman, speaking only for herself does not consider tormenting the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet necessary to her own sanity. More importantly, RantWoman frankly is really tired of fussing about the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet and not being able to have space:

--For a certain committee to do Worship Sharing about what it means to be in the famous bulletin announcement.

--Has anyone ever been told something they do not know how to deal with and who do they turn to?

(A1)
Only sexual abuse? What about other abuse? What about trauma???? 
 

(B)

The offender applied for and has been welcomed into membership. RantWoman personally is glad he is part of the community for many reasons besides what he is best known for. Some years our Meeting mentions counts of new memberships, transfers in and out, deaths, births; some years not. This year, not.

(C)

RantWoman Cross reference to the historical archive:

RantWoman began this blog in 2009. There is considerable Commentary on themes related to this ministry. For dates of interest from the archive, readers will frequently find blog entries in the same time frame referring to RantWoman opinions, suggestions for the Meeting announcement, suggestions for other resource list.

Steve1 in the archive = The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet

Steve2 in the archive = The Friend with the Remarkable Story

The Child Ministry tag contains all kinds of things including resources, accounts of childrearing….

RantWoman has spent a few minutes desultorily looking for the answers to two questions and has not found anything satisfactory. The questions:

--What was the original charge of the Subcommittee on Interpersonal Violence? (Corrollary question: what was the original thinking behind having one member from Oversight, one from Worship and Ministry, and one at-large.—Rantwoman does not have to think very hard to observe some reasons but no one several years on could tell RantWoman.) RantWoman remembers that the charge involved helping the Meeting develop resources. RantWoman likes the archive here just fine as a historical snapshot but would REALLY like some materials upon which to have shared conversation including brief intro things she might refer others to.

As this archive was being cleaned up for presentation to the wider world, RantWoman asked a personal f/Friend about the longer document vs shorter resources issue. It became clear that personal f/Friend was very, very attached to this historical record and had no thought of anything else. Personal f/Friend is also at a stage in life where she is ready to detach from many things so she has a tendency to pat others on the head and suggest they do not need to worry their pretty little heads either. RantWoman, to say the least, finds this patronizing. Sometimes RantWoman has also felt trapped! RantWoman is kind of peeved that Personal f/Friend has not gotten the point that RantWoman needs both resources in certain formats AND a pool of other people who have maybe encountered the same concepts / language resources. No one else has gotten this point either and RantWoman has only now dragged away enough conceptual clutter to say the point cleanly.

RantWoman holds Personal f.Friend’s stories very tenderly. RantWoman honors Personal f/Friend’s need to tell some pieces over and over. And one day after the n zillionth recitation, RantWoman sent Personal f/Friend an email with the following questions:

               Who do you need to forgive?

               Who do you need to forgive you?

               What do you need to forgive / be forgiven for?

               What do you need to forgive yourself for?

Personal f/Friend called RantWoman a few days after the email and admitted to being pretty affronted at first. At first.

Anyway, RantWoman STILL thinks it would be AWESOME if there were a committee she could draw resources from. Half the reason RantWoman stores random Blog as Filing Cabinet items she comes across is precisely to have some kind of resource bank. RantWoman has offered for multiple years to serve on such a committee. RantWoman stood aside from laying down the committee exactly because she still sees a need. Click on the Charm School tag for numerous indications, at least to RantWoman’s febrile brain about this.

--Did we in fact charge Oversight / Care and Counsel with care of adult survivors? What preparation do they undergo? Said committee, whatever they call themselves, is presently comprised of people with Personnel work experience, a couple people in helping professions,. In the first place, they would be idiots to accept such a charge without any training. In the second place, RantWoman specifically had an argument about a very key point from a threshing session: a speaker, not a member of Care and Counsel, asked “How can we help survivors if we do not know who they are?” This got recorded in the minutes as “how can we help survivors if they do not identify themselves to Oversight / now Care and Counsel?

Can anyone who has read this rant imagine some reasons people might hesitate to identify themselves to Care and Counsel?

More to the point, if Care and Counsel works confidentially, how would anyone else know of someone needing help? OR what would one do if someone's experience found their friend instead of going straight to Care and Counsel?

(D)

“As part of UFM’s overall plan, we charged the Education Committee with the ongoing responsibility for the safety of children (including annual education for adults)”

RantWoman recalls a conversation with Friend Whose Title RantWoman Pointedly Omits:

 RantWoman: “When I was in high school, if anyone had been willing to talk, there would have been things to hear.”

Friend Whose Title ... “Go talk to your counselor.”

RantWoman offers the following items from her blog where “the safety of children” fell partly or completely outside the realm of education committee.

--A teenager who came to worship with his father and whom several adults described as having the “deer in headlights” look one might expect from being around a parent’s mental illness. Son was present in another room when, according both to a firsthand telephone conversation and to secondhand info which for RantWoman aligns fromseveral directions, a clearness committee for membership went rather badly. Where would Education Committee have been when father and son went home after this event? 

--A teenager whose mother gave a message in public Meeting for Worship about an incident in their household that meets, to RantWoman’s non-lawyerly ear, the legal definition of domestic violence.

--A younger child with a severe disability in another Meeting who suffered physical abuse and was criticized by someone in the family’s Meeting for saying that the abuser was “mean.” (RantWoman has permission to speak of the word "mean. RantWoman learned of this situation over time at a series of Quaker gatherings. ONE thread of the larger community conversation involved insistence that RantWoman “did not know when to quit” about service dogs, the most public face of this family's situation. RantWoman notes the identity of the person who made the "not know when to quit" comment with concern because of a sense that Friend communicated of being entitled to know. RantWoman felt NO obligation to labor with said Friend and is now, for a new reason, seasoning what to do with her concern. Hold that issue in the Light, PLEASE)

--A recent email exchange with Worship and Ministry and the clerk of education committee. RantWoman sometimes gets triggered around small children running about uncontrolled. RantWoman will explain the RantParent childrearing practices and RantFamily vision issues behind the problem another time. The point is RantWoman gets triggered and would prefer approaches other than RantParent methods and unrealistic behavior expectations. RantWoman for the record does not identify as a direct survivor of sexual abuse but anyway, RantWoman fears that if she had approached Care and Counsel the problem would have gotten lost in months of fog and would have emerged months later with, say a phone call, “oh we are wondering…”. The issue occurs in Meeting for Worship and involves children, the worship experience, and the physical safety of all kinds of people.

When RantWoman addressed Worship and Ministry, the first suggestion she got back was just that she go worship somewhere else. The author of this suggestion, while often dear and weighty,  is already firmly planted on RantWoman's "I forgive you in advance" list. Fortunately for the future of the RSoF, there are no Meetings without children within RantWoman’s “I will ride one bus” radius. RantWoman wrote back mathematically. About 1/3 of the problem is something no one can fix and will y’all please just hold RantWoman in the Light. 1/3 is practicaly safety concerns for the tottery, the aged, the low vision, as well as our bountiful and energetic children. And 1/3 is well, what do we want our children to be learning about behavior in worship? RantWoman has indications that she has been heard, at least to a degree, about this point .

 

(E)

RantWoman DEEPLY appreciates many people's efforts, highly imperfect as some of them have been. RantWoman hopes others have also found healing, at least a degree of safety or adjustmment or new Light. And RantWoman has  also still found reason, in private email to use the phrase “orgies of self-congratulation.” Hold RantWoman and those around her in the Light about this point, PLEASE.