Week 4 Pre-Annual Session Worship Sharing

 Queries as received for Week 4

At the beginning of each session read: Rumi poem and Isaac Pennington quote 

Fourth meeting: 

• Do I give over my own willing, running, and desiring in order to sink down to the seed within me? How can I use my time at annual session to practice this?

See comments for weeks 1,2,3 as led.

RantWoman and the RSOF: Clerk's letter from Sierra Cascade YM annual session

I offer these simple queries as you prepare for our gathering. 

● How has Love shown up for you lately? 

● What helps you center Love in your interactions with others? 

RantWoman and the RSOF: My Friend. Poem by Nikai Sherlock

This all of course is probably way too much and RantWoman has not even gotten to all the themes making her head explode, but this has to be enough for today.

Clerk's letter from Sierra Cascade YM annual session

RantWoman was just going to slurp the queries to nourish this year's pre-annual-Session Zoom worship group. But RantWoman decided the whole text is needed to help clear out some fog for RantWoman. 

RantWoman intended to Zoom to some of the SCYM Annual Session. That has not happened, except hopefully for closing worship in a few hours.

 Clerk’s Message 

How many times have you attended a SCYMF gathering? Maybe this will be your very first one. Or maybe. Like me, you’ve attended every annual sessions since our formative gathering in July of 2017 and every gathering since then. We’ve seen, heard, experienced, learned, and grown together over these years. We’ve worshipped, sung songs, grieved, discerned, tried new ways of being a community, made mistakes, grown—and still we gather. I always look forward to our time together, which is never long enough. 

For me this year’s theme, Centered in Love, builds on all our other sessions. It builds on what we strive for in our local meetings. It builds on what our world needs from us. We face what seems like uncharted territory, but Friends have faced similar crises over the centuries with faithfulness and love. Matt Boswell will lead us in worship and reflection as we trust Spirit to open to us our next steps. 

This is my final meeting for business to co-clerk for SCYMF. I have cherished co-clerking with Mike Huber and Erin Craig. My relationships with many people in the yearly meeting have deepened as we have worked together at better becoming the beloved community we are to be. I have such appreciation for the faithfulness of so many who volunteer to serve on committees, host gatherings, represent SCYMF to other organizations, and who take care of each other. I will continue to walk alongside you as we continue to grow into a stronger, more loving, community that values curiosity, recognizes harm and is willing to respect the perspectives and experiences of others with love. 

I offer these simple queries as you prepare for our gathering. 

● How has Love shown up for you lately? 

● What helps you center Love in your interactions with others? 

Norma Silliman, she/her, Presiding Co-clerk

Sierra-Cascades Yearly Meeting of Friends

Week 3

 RantWoman, are you the slightest bit worried that your interactions with the passages and queries offered up for the pre-annual Session worship group will somehow either ruin the experience for others if the materials are used for worship sharing at Annual Session or betray confidences???

Yes, a little bit.

HOWEVER, in terms of showing up with one's full self, RantWoman is also certain that the world is entitled to her opinion. With that in mind, RantWoman will pen but not post some of her reactions until AFTER Annual Session.

Readers will note: RantWoman is NOT SHY about supplementing the offered texts and queries with content that somehow both speaks to her condition and seems like it might speak to undercurrents in the space.

Here is a reprise of setting the tone for week 3

The instructions as offered. No, RantWoman is NOT going to repost the readings. See Week 1 or week 2

At the beginning of each session read: Rumi poem and Isaac Pennington quote 

Third meeting: 

• How do I open myself up for my heart to be changed? Am I ready to give over the messages that come through me and receive messages coming through others with grace? 

RantWoman and the RSOF: Maya Angelou Still I rise with an FCNL prompt

What am I doing to rise in this moment?
How am I embracing the “path rooted in pain” while overcoming it?

RantWoman and the RSOF: My Friend. Poem by Nikai Sherlock

My Friend. Poem by Nikai Sherlock

From Sierra Cascade Yearly Meeting of Friends 

MY FRIEND By Nikai Sherlock My Friend resides within In Love, I begin again No need to look without Surely, I would flout I’d scream and shout Let Love speak Let Love speak In Love, we find peace Joy, Peace, Strength, Truth These are Love’s virtues Love bestows love on all creation Love is in all Love is here As each one of us Learns perfection to their own capacity Love will set us free In each one, Love is there For each one, Love cares Focus on the Friend within Let Them speak Let Them speak Waiting in the stillness of the hour Know Love’s power Let Love speak All those who seek Come lay by Love’s feet And Let Them Speak Let Them speak

Nikai Sherlock, a member of Camas Friends, lives in Battle Ground, WA. She has been writing poetry since age 13 after being bullied. Nikai enjoys crafts, reading mysteries, and square dancing.

Registration Open for Pacific NW Quarterly Meeting September 27-29

(For readers who need a cool but unlabeled graphic of a boat, please head straight to pnqm.org)

PNQM Fall Quarterly Meeting, September 27-29

Boats that Float: Creating Meetings that Nurture Us

Join us at Lazy F Camp for the fall session of PNQM Quarterly Meeting.

As we gather for Fall Quarterly, Friends are invited to explore what is most critical to maintain, grow, and protect within our Meetings as many of us rebuild after the challenges of COVID-19. 

What nurtures our youngest Friends will be different to what nurtures visitors; how a long-time Member and a new regular Attender nurture the Meeting in return will be different, too. 

What we each find is essential in a Meeting community may change for us throughout our lives. As some Friends depart, others may join the Meeting and bring new gifts to make the community whole in a new way. The future we want for Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting is one we must discern – and create – together.

Taking inspiration from a beloved tradition of our youth program, groups of Friends of all ages will work on building boats out of recycled and natural materials as an embodied way of exploring what is important in a community.

Details about what happens at Quarterly, schedule, safety guidelines for Covid concerns, registration, and much more are available on the website https://pnqm.org.

If you have not attended PNQM in person for a long time, recall the joy of being able to connect with Friends. If you have never been to PNQM, ask those in your meeting who have fond memories of Lazy F and their experiences at Quarterly to tell you about the opportunities for worship and fellowship they enjoyed.

If you have children of any age, we encourage you to come as a family and help them meet new friends and reconnect with those they only see at Quarterly.

Camping is an option, and many families find Lazy F a great opportunity to introduce young children to sleeping in a tent.

Host meetings Salmon Bay and Pullman-Moscow

 

T Vail Palmer Remembered

 Settle DOWN RantWoman. You absolutely are entitled to full-blown rant about things to do with memorials. Just for     now, try to let Vail's presence rub off on you. 'kay? And MAYBE let loose a leading it is perfectly reasonable to wish would land on the right person.

RantWoman has never met T. Vail Palmer. RantWoman only knows him through people he mentored. Usually one only goes to memorials if one knows the deceased or wants to offer specific support to someone close; a time or two RantWoman has gone to a memorial out of a sense of protocol. This time RantWoman had a clear leading to go.

RantWoman jotted down a few impressions.

RantWoman appreciated the music chosen, everything from "There's a wideness in God's Mercy" to something of Bach.

There were a number of remembrances from family. These made it clear both that Vail has a wonderful family and that they havea rich history. RantWoman did not note details beyond that.

RantWoman is touched by one remembrance, something like "he was very gentle, but he knew you would want it to be correct." RantWoman is going to TRY to live up to both sides of that standard whenever her badly calibrated Idiot detector goes off. 

RantWoman always enjoys knowing memorial nods from family members. There were several even RantWoman could see in Zoom

One Friend recalled a belief in "the ministry of all whether recorded or not."

One Friend invoked the Martin Buber quote "not I it but I thou."

One person spoke of how Vail's grandfather loved Ministry and Counsel meetings because he had a bent toward philosophizing

Vail pointed out that Marx 12 times in Das Kapital referenced John Ellers late 17th century Congress of Industry. Vail recognized Christian roots in socialist ideas.

Vail every year read an MLK speech in Albany; he believed in putting out true things. Friends noted that he was an awesome reader and the Lutheran Church recognized this.

Vail had a profound need for meeting for worship. Before the pandemic Friends who helped him get to worship began to have concerns because of his frailty and need for a walker.  The last time one Friend saw him they had a conversation because maybe Friends should not be bringing him out in the pandemic.

Vail's comment, as reported at the memorial: "I can accept the wisdom of that and you'll come for me when it's over."

The Friend continued. "Vail did not believe in hell and was agnostic about heaven, I hope he was pleasantly surprised and is in Meeting for Worship."

Memorial photo album

T Vail Palmer memorial March 13, 11am Pacific Time

News of Quaker theologian T Vail Palmer's passing came to rantWoman via Twitter while RantWoman was attending a Ben Lomond center virtual workshop about Quakers and the Internet. News of a memorial has also come to RantWoman via Twitter.

RantWoman is sharing this post both as invitation to remember this weighty Quaker and with an excursion about what is or is not available via the internet and in formats accessible to RantWoman. RantWoman does not at all mean the latter realities to detract from celebration of a life well-lived. RantWoman will post separately to expand on many threads touched on here.

 T Vail Palmer Virtual Memorial Signup Details

T Vail Palmer page at Barclay Press

Amazon link for Face to Face Early Quaker Encounters with the Bible

Not available through Amazon in E-Reader format

So far no one has created a Wikipedia page and doing so is far beyond RantWoman's Light

RantWoman can check:

--Barclay Press directly for an eBook

--NLS BARD for audio recording

--Reading Ally for audio recording

--Bookshare RantWoman unclear about pathway to alternate format.

Or RantWoman may do none of these, read some reviews, see what conversations happen and then figure out something about having someone read aloud.

In Light, faithfulness, memoriam