No fuss no muss sort of sudden sex offender accompaniment?

Lots and lots of things go right for a series of Meetings and a released sex offender. Released sex offender has a small trust fund and many skills. He quickly seeks out an appropriate therapist.

Also note the name of the committee involved : the Care of Meeting committee
http://www.afsc.org/friends/accompaniment-experiment-healing-justice


Mention in passing of issues to do with children

Mention in passing of people with survivor issues.

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100 Conversations, from KCSARC's POP program

RantWoman commends for children of multiple decades living forward



http://www.kcsarc.org/100conversations

http://www.100conversations.org/

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Why? Perspective

RantWoman, that guy in your Meeting who is about to be done, Done, DONE with 10 years of Department of Corrections supervision, the guy you refer to as The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet, why do you call him that?


--First, it was not always so. RantWoman now shorthands her initial coffee hour conversation over a decade ago with the future Safest Sex Offender on the Planet as "I really need to be in treatment." RantWoman is unsure whether the applicable concept was minimizing or blaming the victim. RantWoman at the time had a lot of both going on around her because of another personal situation. The outline of the proposed participation in a faith community as part of treatment sounded entirely reasonable to RantWoman. But because of RantWoman's personal situation, she was clear simply to make another introduction and to get out of the loop.

--The exact crime the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet pled guilty to is an act of nonpenetrative sex enthusiastically enjoyed by many many pairs of consenting adults everywhere. The problem: things which are wonderful between consenting adults are NEVER okay between an adult and a much younger child.

--Here we trot out LOTS of psychological terminology and measurement tools and invoke Science. The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet's offense was a crime of opportunity, a child he was around because of a dating relationship. The Safest Sex Offender ... never sought out other victims. The Safest Sex Offender underwent lots of psychological and physiological testing as part of his treatment. One of the conditions of our Meeting's willingness to work with the future Safest Sex Offender on the planet was that he signed a release allowing a practicing clinical psychologist in our community access to MANY treatment documents. This was never stated explicitly in Business Meeting as a requirement; the psychologist simply took steps about the release; RantWoman would say that this work was key to community confidence at a number of points.

So for example, many test endured by our offender were outlined in sometimes exquisite detail in Meeting for Business. All of the tests indicated no predatory inclination whatsoever. In other words, the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet fits the profile of others with very low risk of re-offense. On top of that, the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet is in an age group where, if reoffense has not occurred so far, it is very unlikely due to age alone.

--A key moment in our Meeting's walk with the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet was that he wrote a letter that was read in Business Meeting specifically acknowledging responsibility for his actions. RantWoman does not remember whether the alternate weeks schedule of attendance at our two worship hours arose before or after the letter, but RantWoman does remember a sense that the letter was important in the evolution of things.


--At this point, the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet has unquestionably done his work about the matter of acceptable adult behavior. Plus he has spent the last 10 years in therapy groups filling his head with information about the ways guys mess up and dire consequences for messups. The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet has a Lifetime Safety Plan with a certain amount of boilerplate text reminding him and everyone else that he is always at risk of reoffense; he takes VERY seriously the terms of his Lifetime Safety Plan including commitment to stay away from places frequented by children unless he is with someone familiar with his offense, to limit incidental contact in public, not to date women with minor children, and not to be in homes where there are minor children unless the children's parents (RantWoman would edit to say parent, guardian or caregiver) are aware of his offense.

Here we get to a collision between the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet's safety plan and other realities: the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet and several members of the RantFamily all live in the same neighborhood. There is never going to be more than casual incidental contact between the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet and say, Irrepressible Nephew and his parents. The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet is not, for instance, going to be hanging out at Little Sister's household watching soccer in Spanish. But we all might bump into each other and members of Little Sister's household are attuned enough to people's behaviors that some of them might wonder about the Safest Sex Offender's moving away from incidental contact.

The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet is of course going to use his judgment about need to disclose his status, but RantWoman had to put her foot down: there are good reasons, like other people's worse issues why the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet's old offense, adjudicated, treated to the best of his and the DoC's ability is NOT necessarily the worst problem of anyone's day. Nephew and his parents are empowered as best as they and RantWoman can help bring about,in ways that SHOULD detect not only issues caused by the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet, but also issues caused by all the other sex offenders out there. RantWoman thinks too much detail in connection with just living in the same neighborhood will not be helpful to anyone.

--RantWoman weighs all this with another point: there is an advantage to "everyone" knowing of one's situation. No one is going to ask the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet to watch their children. LOTS of eyes can also be a guard against both new offenses and possible false accusations. In other words, the past is never over, but the Safest Sex Offender is highly motivated not to re-offend. People who have been worshipping with him, talking about him in Business Meeting, etc. are highly motivated to watch for anything that even faintly looks like a new offense; fellow worshippers are also highly motivated to keep an eye out for false accusation. How could he not be the Safest Sex Offender on the planet?

--RantWoman has even been known to say that she has slightly fewer worries about the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet than she does about someone else she interacts with. That individual has never been accused of inappropriate BEHAVIOR. He loudly and flamboyantly proclaims interest in specific categories of pornography. His name pops out of search engines in connection with lawsuits about his tastes. RantWoman generally says "Thank you SO much for telling me; I SO wish I did not need to know" RantWoman also advises this guy and does everything she can to ensure that this guy is never, ever, under any circumstances alone with a child. But people like this are one reason RantWoman really, really favors keeping the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet in perspective.



RantWoman has a lot to say about other elements of community safety; that gets to be said in another post. In the meantime, another self-interview question:

RantWoman, what do you think it means that all those people have been willing to watch one sex offender but we cannot find enough adults to staff our childcare programs?

Good question. Not one that RantWoman remembers ever getting articulated in a public forum but here is what rises for RantWoman.

--Actually a large number of people willing to watch--and at first worship elsewhere with--one sex offender might be neither here nor there as far as staffing the children's programs. Some adults are not gifted / led to work with children in the first place. Adults worshipping elsewhere at another time are still available if willing on First Days to help with children. RantWoman sees a good well-staffed children's program as vital for a worshipping community but is unsure that fewer people watching one sex offender would automatically translate into more adults available to work with children.

--RantWoman sees the large number of people willing to watch one sex offender as a large number of people willing to include him somehow in community. RantWoman also sees this large number as people willing to provide eyes both to guard against future offenses and to help create a sense of safety for people restimulated in his presence.

RantWoman hears in the question about all those people willing to watch one offender thoughts about whether RantWoman's Meeting a little bit lost perspective as far as monitoring zeal. The thought as definitely occurred to RantWoman, especially late into the Safest Sex Offender's program. For better or worse the thought has never made it out of RantWoman's mouth and especially not in anything like acceptable Quakerese. The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet, for what it's worth has also been putting up with our Meeting about the whole issue.

RantWoman is enough of a wonk to think of some kind of study noting actual new offenses and any relationship between likelihood of offense and features of different congregations' monitoring might be an interesting exercise. But that is a conversation for another day.

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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.

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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.

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Sexuality Education in Friends Schools

Sexuality education in Friends schools

http://www.friendsjournal.org/friends-schools-and-healthy-sexuality/

Friends Journal article, blog as filing cabinet.

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Go Tell it on the Mountain

RantWoman is feeling an opening in her leading to hold a holiday festival of singing and dancing on her blog. Okay, so RantWoman is opening the floodgates not only to her own prodigious capacity to free-associate, misconstrue, and leap deep chasms of incomprehnsion in a single bound, even worse, God keeps telling her also to open herself to torrents of info through search engines.

Today's theme: Go tell it on the Mountain presented in several versions thinking that different ears need different voices.


A great kids choir; sorry about the annoying ad at teh beginning




Vanessa Williams and God as movements of bodies, not just of the Holy Spirit





Jewel and Toby Keith





A Wikipedia item about a novel by the same name

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Tell_It_on_the_Mountain_(novel) 1953, by James Baldwin



Go Tell it on a Mountain?

Oh, Hell's Bells.

Mr. and Mrs. Friend with a Remarkable Story just want to come to worship like everyone else. RantWoman recognizes that Friend With a Remarkable Story has less control than other people about reasons his life might get publicly commented about. RantWoman is perfectly fine her Meeting sometimes carried along in the wake of that, along with all the other forms of Quaker witness about in her Meeting.

But along comes Friend from a Nearby Meeting going on and on in kind of an inflammatory way about Friend with a Remarkable Story and then censoring the Remarkable Story pieces RantWoman tried to insert into the narrative in the comments, not to mention some other pastoral care of Friends at challenging moments threads RantWoman decided not even to touch yet.

http://quakersusanne.wordpress.com/2012/11/24/another-difficult-topic-sex-offenders-and-quakers/

http://quakersusanne.wordpress.com/2012/12/01/discipline-and-emotions-sex-offenders-and-quakers-part-ii/

http://quakersusanne.wordpress.com/2012/12/10/rules-of-verbal-engagement-sex-offenders-and-quakers-part-iii/

RantWoman has been reading other blog threads and holding Nearby Meeting in the Light for awhile. RantWoman is also more than morbidly curious enough to be interested in details of key moments, but RantWoman feels it's sort of unseemly to pry and is inclined just to have ears open.

And in the meantime, one actual motivator behind this post: in Meeting for Business Friends learned that QUEST, our single-congregation leading to operate an Americorps program will now post the text of our Meeting's bulletin announcement about sex offenders along with the text about our SHARE ministry and something else on its website.

This reflects one Friend's wish that potential program participants who find the topic restimulating might have the option of choosing  other Americorps programs. Computer Hacker Barbie, aka RantWoman, was already tripping over too many words in Business Meeting but when RantWoman first heard of the concern she blurted out something along the lines of "What? like there wouldn't be sex offenders somewhere else. At least here we try to talk appropriately about it!"

Maybe RantWoman will suggest, when a certain yellow sheet gets wordsmithed to everyone's satisfaction that the text on the web also includ a link to the text of the Yellow sheet, but so far all that is available is RantWoman's whacking at a draft.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2012/09/evolution-draftily.html

Go tell it on a Mountain!

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Facebookistan: rapist Friends rape survivor from long ago

Warnng: FRANK discussion of survivor issues and circumstances related to a rape.

Creepy and full of rationalizations but in places surprisingly less creepy than one might think.

Emily McComs, editor of www.xojane.com  talks about her rapist asking to Friend her on Facebook.

http://www.onthemedia.org/2012/oct/26/?utm_source=local&utm_media=treatment&utm_campaign=daMost&utm_content=damostviewed



RantWoman is posting this here because of a story about 2/3 of the way through about a woman whose rapist Friended her on Facebook. Here is the link for the whole show, for background about the Facebok practies that made this encounter possible.

http://www.onthemedia.org/popup_player/#

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Elevator Speeches 1, 2, 3

Elevator speech 1
A. Be true to your Light.
B. Use the correct terminology. Use it all the time as often as possible.

RantWoman takes to heart two pieces of advice from sexuality educator Marja Brandon. First every time RantWoman has heard Marja speak Marja has said something along the lines of "Be true to your Light." For the more secular-minded or those squeamish about Marja's lamguage Gavin DeBecker, author of several books about stalking and per sonal safety says "trust your gut." RantWoman likes "Be true to your Light better, even when the issue is her own inner blowtorch.

Marja's second piece of advice: use correct terminology. Use it correctly. Use it as often as you can. Practice saying it in all kinds of innocuous settings so you have it easily at hand when you most need it. RantWoman means to take this to heart. Really. Yes, but a still small voice keeps tugging at her soul: "Um, earth to RantWoman, you know that much-hyped Russian punk band whose name you are too uptight to say? How is that 'use the correct terminology' thing working out for you?"

Another voice chimes in. "RantWoman, not everyone even wants to speak of all this either." Forget the still small voice thing there are a LOT of people around here with hearing loss. What was that you said? People would rather not talk abut it? It does not matter whether it's important to talk about. The "rather not talk about it crowd thinks you are just stomping on their nerves. Sure . Okay. I CANNOT read their faces so they are going to have to USE THEIR WORDS.



Elevator Speech 2
At the Faith Action Network summit in Seattle.

I am a Quaker...

[appreciative nodding We LIKE it when Quakers come.

Urk! May I adjust your expectations? I am not a Quaker because I am any good at this peace and love stuff; I am a Quaker because I need all the help I can get! Oh Wait, maybe that's TOO MUCH INFORMATION?]

Going around the room, people talked about what speicific concerns rise in their congregations. People mentioned marriaige equality, education. Someone else mentioned offender re-entry.

Here, more or less, was the RantWoman elevator speech for the occasion:
I come wearing two hats, my own congregation (Meeting) and the Friends Committee on WA Public Policy.

At my Meeting,

People engage at the individual level by supporting the League of Women Voters voter registration campaigns, by phone-banking in support of marriage equality before the Ref. 74 vote in November. Several of us feel quite strongly about bicycle, pendestrian, and other transportation issues as part of concern for sustainability.

As a Meeting:, we host a SHARE (self-managed homeless) shelter. Another important ministry is being a spiritual home for survivors of abuse, attending to the safety needs of our members and including two known sex offenders in our community. We did not go looking for the sex offenders ministry. It kind of came and found us; it is not always easy. It is also a rich experience .

[NO reaction RantWoman could detect. Not even any conversational lingering.]

And in terms of dealing on the front end with racial disparity in the criminal justice system (also  already mentioned more than once), an important achievement for the Friends Committee for WA Public Policy has been enactment of a law listng restorative justice as an option for dealing with juvenile offenders.

[also NO reaction RantWoman could detect. Nor conversational lingering. But much else to get on to.]




Elevator speech 3:
It's 3 or 4 country western songs. Please just hold my family in the Light. Lots of things are happening to churn up topics that need elevator speeches. No, frankly I do not need anyone's opinion that my family is crazy. NO ONE except someone inside it gets to say that. Plus, frankly, I am bored of the details. Maybe one of these days continuing revelation and New Light will team up in new directions. In the meantime, all prayers gratefully received.

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Evolution, Draftily

1. RantWoman presents the current version of our bulletin announcement about...sex offenders:




Friendly REMINDERS:



• For many years we have been openly holding, at once, the community and worship needs of survivors of sexual abuse and past sexual offenders. While we are a safer place for both children and adults because of the awareness and education that this ministry has produced we recognize that this ministry requires an ongoing dialog and engagement. If you have questions or concerns we encourage you to talk to a member of the Oversight Committee. For more information see yellow informational flyer on the information table outside of the office.





2. The yellow information flyer mentioned above is currently being revised.



Here is what came to RantWoman when she was invited to opine on a proposed draft: RantWoman quite liked some elements of the proposed draft but nevertheless the RantWoman inner blowtorch offered substantial suggested revision [and notes some passages she still wonders about]. Note: this is Light as it has arrived so far to RantWoman and RantWoman makes NO representation about what may emerge from further shared discernment.



INFORMATIONAL FLYER ON

UNIVERSITY FRIENDS MEETING’S

MINISTRY ON SEXUAL ABUSE

For many years we have been openly holding, at once safety within our community and the community and worship needs of both survivors of sexual abuse and past sexual offenders.



The suffering caused by sexual abuse affects us all; we are all called to respond. We are committed to the protection of children and other vulnerable people, the spiritual nurture of survivors and their loved ones, and worship and other parts of community life including two known offenders.



Our community is working to provide a welcoming spiritual home for survivors of abuse as well as these offenders. We are a safer community for all because of the awareness and education which are part of this ministry, This ministry also calls us to ongoing dialog and engagement.



THE SAFETY OF CHILDREN



Protocols (i.e. guidelines to prevent harm and procedures for responding to harm) are in place. All adult volunteers and employees are screened before being permitted to participate in children’s programs and two adults are with the children at all times. We have had a number of presentations for both children and adults on safety issues, about talking openly about sexuality, and other topics. The Meeting aims to institutionalize on-going educational programs about prevention of sexual abuse. We also recognize that safety, a community of trust depends on all of us.



MINISTRY TO SURVIVORS OF SEXUAL ABUSE:



Many survivors of sexual abuse and people whose loved ones are survivors of sexual abuse find spiritual community worshipping among us. One important part of our ministry is shared language and ongoing practice talking in a spirit of love and truth about difficult topics. We listen as people express a variety of needs and perspectives. Listening to understand can be healing in itself for both the speaker and the hearer. We have also learned that only after listening is it respectful to explore ways we can walk alongside and minister with those who are suffering.



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.

Examples of practices, in addition to worship and other parts of Meeting life, which we have found useful include worship sharing on specific themes, individual listening sessions, resource lists, and small behind the scenes changes in different Meeting practices; we invite people to ask if something would be particularly meaningful.



MINISTRY TO KNOWN OFFENDERS:



Our community is a spiritual home to two known offenders. Both have completed extensive psychological evaluations and treatment programs under the supervision of the Washington Department of Corrections. Both are highly motivated not to re-offend. Both have accountability and support committees which maintain a connection to the Oversight committee. They both came to us with long connections to Friends and they participate actively in our community.



If you have any questions or concerns about these ministries, we encourage you to contact any member of Oversight committee.





========

[suggested on reverse]

University Friends Meeting is committed to all the ministries outlined on the other side of this page. Part of that commitment is to recognize times when help from outside our community may be essential. If you or someone you know are in crisis and need immediate independent, trained, confidential, timely assistance you may also want to consider the following resources



The Crisis Clinic, www.crisisclinic.org  , 206-461-3222



The King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, www.kcsarc.org , 1-888-99-VOICE



Washington Coalition Against Domestic Violence, www.wscadv.org  , 1-800-562-6025



UFM OVERSIGHT 2012

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Comrade Kevin and a sex offender, grace and experience

RantWoman commends to her readers a blog called Comrade Kevin's Chrestomathy, http://cabaretic.blogspot.com/

RantWoman esteems:

--occasionally trenchant essays about populatr culture

--Video clips even though RantWoman has not partaken

--items about trauma recovery, relationships, and interactions with disability and medical matters.
RantWoman got drawn in via quakerquaker.org  because of an entry about a sex offender seeking to worship with his Meeting. Alert readers will note lengthy items in the comments contributed by RantWoman.
http://cabaretic.blogspot.com/2012/05/radical-acceptance-when-attender-is-sex.html

Tonight RantWoman was led to probe further for entries related to Comrade Kevin's comments about his survivor experiences. A fast way to find some but apparently not all of the topical posts:
http://cabaretic.blogspot.com/search?q=molested

RantWoman especially credits this post for:

--a comment about how much the second wave of the women's movement contributed to there being space for people to talk about their survivor experiences. RantWoman read this and whispered in her head "YES!" RantWoman thinks the history behind this comment would be a terribly interesting thing to write. RantWoman thinks she herself is unlikely ever to assemble the leadins and patience to do so, but RantWoman would definitly put such a volume on her mean to read list if it existed.

--Some comments at probably the level of popular psychology but still about how men experience and handle trauma

--Gently honest comments about reluctance to speak to the other person victimized in his situation. Sincerity only goes so far; RantWoman understands the point of confidentiality and licensed professionals. On the other hand, RantWoman has been very grateful more than once when some kind of worship sharing has seemed both deep and very clearly held. Both parties have to be willing to embrace possibility and participate. That willingness is never to be presumed.

--Comrade Kevin writes of people in his Meeting, especially parents, losing all sense of perspective when a sex offender asked to participate and worship among them. . RantWoman has written previously of Business Meeting spending large chunks of time in TWO Business Meetings fussing over a decision about where The Safest Sex Offender on the Planet uses the restroom. RantWoman thinks some people in her Meeting found this to be confirmation that our process in all its discerning earnestness works, hallelujah. Can you maybe tell, RantWoman does not detect a large gain in safety as a result of this discussion. Everyone in the whole Meeting, or everyone with functioning eyeballs has their eyes on the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet. RantWoman wants people to be on the ball for circumstances, whether attached to someone already caught or someone not yet caught. RantWoman thinks as much may have been done as the community will bear on that front for now.  RantWoman will weigh a leading to check back about Meeting's capacity to interact with the this topic at some point in the future.
--Further meditation on Comrade Kevin's observations about people in his Meeting losing all sense of perspective. RantWoman finds herself, cough, amused by Comrade Kevin's Meeeting sending out a "here's some news; please keep it under wraps" letter to the whole Meeting. What exactly does that sound like will NOT happen, even in ideal circumstances? RantWoman remember that the future Safest Sex Offender on the Planet worshipped among us for a few months before asking for help with his alternative sentencing requirements. No one as far as RantWoman knows got restimulated in his presence. But after his presence was announced, clearly, forthrightly, in Business Meeting, for a time some people found it extremely difficult to be in his presence. The clerk of Oversight specifically set up opportunities for people with survivor issues to find counsel. The Safest Sex Offender on the planet acquired chaperones; Business Meeting seasoned at length an alternating weeks alternating Meetings for Worship regimen, and everyone settled in for some increments of decisions just taking Quaker TIME.
As a postscript RantWoman includes this item about Grace and forgiveness in ordinary moments and reflections about greater demands.
http://teachingontheinside.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/forgiveness-a-concept-in-reality/

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Who gets to Stand Their Ground?

RantWoman feels no leading to editorialize; RantWoman has a clear leading to post this as is. It contains many requested actions RantWoman has no problem uniting with including:

--Support for the Violence Against Women Act

--Support for people of all orientations having access to appropriate domestic violence services regardless of immigration status.

--Support for the defense committee in this case.


Radical Women denounces race and sex bias in Marissa Alexander case

June 5, 2012

As battered women often discover, the system that should protect them is frequently their worst enemy.

Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old African American mother of three living in Tampa, Florida, tried to follow the rules. She had a restraining order against her estranged husband, who had a record of abuse toward Alexander and other women. She had a legally licensed gun and had never been arrested. In August 2010, only nine days after having given birth, Alexander fired a warning shot into the wall of her house when her husband threatened her life. For this, a Florida jury convicted her of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after only 12 minutes of deliberation. On May 11, 2012, a judge rejected Alexander's "stand-your-ground defense" and sentenced her to 20 years under Florida's mandatory minimum sentencing rules. Stand-your-ground laws permit a person to use force in self-defense if they believe they are in serious threat of harm.

According to a number of studies, African American women suffer higher levels of domestic abuse than any other ethnic group, most likely as a result of the stresses of poverty and discrimination. Black women are murdered by their partners at a rate three times that of white women. Jobless or low-paid, with a well-earned distrust of the criminal justice system, and a history of discrimination from health and social service institutions, abused women of color often have few resources to draw upon.
Women of all races who fight back against abuse find little sympathy from police, courts, or media. In states where police are mandated to make an arrest in domestic violence situations, arrests of women have risen dramatically. Women are now nearly 20% of domestic violence arrests although men are acknowledged to commit 95% of the abuse. Black feminist Sharon Angella Allard has observed that the Battered Woman Syndrome defense, which has been successfully used in court to justify why a woman killed or took action against an abuser, is often denied to Black women. Why? Because the stereotype of Black women as "domineering, assertive, hostile and immoral" hinders a judge's or juror's ability to believe that a Black woman acted in self-defense. According to Allard, Black women are twice as likely as white women to be convicted for murdering abusive husbands.

The racist and sexist double standard exists at every level of U.S. society. It took a national outcry for the killer of African American teenager Trayvon Martin to be arrested after he invoked Florida's "stand-your-ground" law. Meanwhile, Congress is balking at reauthorizing the federal Violence Against Women Act, in part because the act contains new provisions that would help protect queers, Native Americans and immigrants.

Radical Women demands the immediate release and pardon of Marissa Alexander, passage of the strengthened Violence Against Women Act, and an end to race and sex discrimination in the criminal justice system. In addition, Radical Women calls for massive increases in funding for jobs, aid to families, and shelters and services for everyone fleeing domestic violence regardless of their sexual orientation or immigration status.

Radical Women encourages supporters of women's rights to sign the online petition to pardon Alexander at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/503/600/056/dont-imprison-marissa-alexander-for-standing-her-ground/ . Information on how to donate to Marissa Alexander's legal defense and write to her in prison is available at http://www.justice4marissa.com/ .


National Radical Women Office
747 Polk Street, San Francisco, CA 94109
Phone: 415-864-1278 * Fax: 415-864-0778
RadicalWomenUS@gmail.com
http://www.radicalwomen.org/


Donations are needed and appreciated. Please contribute online or mail a check, payable to "Radical Women" to 5018 Rainier Ave. S., Seattle, WA 98118.

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Grace Coming out one's ears

RantWoman has already submitted a paper to the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference. Further, RantWoman has judiciously asked to be held in the Light, a practice she needs to be reminded of. Holding in the Light seems to be working as far as greater clarity not ripe for the blogosphere and words to hold where RantWoman's Inner Blowtorch is trending.

And still RantWoman is again overachieving in the Reflections department. More Grace!

This post is dedicated to Amazing Artist Friend.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!! (RantWoman is posting belatedly.)

RantWoman thinks Amazing Artist Friend is likely to find without RantWoman even having to wish it, nature in which to be enthralled--for hours, long past when RantWoman's eyes can focus and her sinuses overflow with pollen. Amazing Artist can also talk for hours about ideas for her next creations, sculptures, pottery, drawing. Amazing Artist Friend at this point has accumulated a collection of her works. The collection is not easy to transport and photos are but a glimpse. Amazing Artist Friend also got it instantly one time when RantWoman said if she were to paint (Ha!) and wanted to paint a love scene, RantWoman would just paint two pairs of steamy glasses on a table and leave the rest to imagination.

RantWoman would REALLY like to have found some of Amazing Artist Friend's art on the internet somewhere to link to. RantWoman did not. RantWoman did find some visually uninspiring stuff about the land trust where Amazing Artist Friend lives. Oddly, inability to link anything visually interesting which might also be attached to Amazing Artist Friend's name causes RantWoman to feel freer about reflections in other dimensions.

RantWoman and Amazing Artist Friend met during abortive careers selling the nuclear freeze door to door. Amazing Artist Friend's career lasted a few days longer than RantWoman's; RantWoman is unclear to what was owed this success.

The first Grace in the story is Grace the office manager. Grace the Office manager worked at the office of the national organization in Washington DC where RantWoman and Amazing Artist Friend met.  Grace's husband worked at the State Department. Grace was sensible and middle-aged. She worked in an office full of young and idealistic people. It was the 1980's and the Cold War was not quite over. On one hand, Ronald Reagan proclaimed anyone concerned about the nuclear arms race a KGB dupe. On the other hand, rebellious youth with unstable addresses, RantWoman included, sometimes shamelessly received mail at the office address to "Comrade So-and-so." This greatly distressed Grace the Office Manager.

Grace the Office manager's other claim to fame is that RantWoman and Amazing Artist Friend walked into the door one day one after another. Grace the Office Manager looked at the two of us and said "You two would like each other." We still giggle about that!
RantWoman was moved to write public birthday greetings by reflections over at http://tapeflags.blogspot.com/ about youth painted vividly in some of the same intense themes swirling around RantWoman and Amazing Artist Friend. RantWoman is not distressed in the least that Amazing Artist Friend awhile ago declared emphatically that RantWoman has mellowed l lot. Yes indeed world. This is a kinder, gentler, considerably mellowed out version of the RantWoman of yore. Can you imagine?

By way of blog as filing cabinet and adding to RantWoman's mean to read list, an item about radical feminism:
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2012/05/very-brief-introduction-to-radical.html
Amazing Grace in a new way, in honor of RantWoman and Amazing Artist Friend and our spell hanging out being more or less church lady peaceniks with a bunch of women for whom this language rings truer to their spiritual life.
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2012/05/margot-adlers-amazing-grace-without.html

Remembrances from the specific historical experience RantWoman has in mind:

http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/

RantWoman confession: RantWoman has done wonderful powerful political and spiritual work with women who proudly use the word "witch." In many cases, RantWoman has boundless regard for the Light and movements of spirit among those she has struggled alongside. Still, RantWoman remains resolutely twitchy and uncomfortable and sometimes has no idea how to deal with that word! RantWoman herself, talking about herself, can never imagine using the word witch. And yet RantWoman continues to peer into that world.

The other point that caught RantWoman's ear from the Amazing Grace post is the thought of being without fear at least for a moment. RantWoman wonders, does being without fear, even for a moment, happen to anyone else? RantWoman's experience is not ever really of being completely without fear. But when most centered, most paying attention, a sense of being held in spite of fear is definitely there. RantWoman is even going to go so far as to say, if one is undertaking prophetic witness for instance in the form of nonviolent direct action, being without fear just might be unhelpful whereas a sense of being held can carry one through all sorts of what comes with Amazing Grace.
RantWoman is fond of Amazing Artist Friend because, even though we both like and deeply admire many women who call themselves witches and dream of women's land and..., Amazing Artist Friend interrogates some layers of cultural supposition almost as fiercely as RantWoman does.

Is this mellowing or just expanded perspective? For instance, nothing like being around a Quaker pastor back from doing trauma recovery in Africa. Quaker pastor reported that she taught classes based on the UN declaration about the universal rights of women; her students absorbed the material and still offered comments such as "Teacher Peggy, we would be glad to have (our deceased) husbands even if they beat and raped us (presumably partly because that would be protection for others and not even wandering into complexities of affection)."


Speaking of affection complexities, RantWoman lives in Seattle where winters are too long and wet and grey for Amazing Artist Friend. Amazing Artist Friend lives in Tucson. RantWoman thinks she would love the desert but is afraid of 100-degree heat in the summertime. That would be only the tip of the complexity. But RantWoman's head filled with all these stories recently when RantWoman sat down to assemble materials for the electronic age about her Meeting's longstanding support of marriage equality. At one point, RantWoman considered throwing a fit and making some of the happy couples she knows assemble the marriage equality materials. Then steadying clarity came, along with irreverent RantWoman one-liners:

If one loves someone who has multiple personality does one get to put "It's complicated" in one's facebook Relationship status by definition?

If , like RantWoman, you enjoy a personal life that is basically one big it's complicated emotional bramble bush but still want to help uphold marriage equality for all your happily coupled friends, leave a comment and RantWoman and groupies will hold you in the Light.

But nevertheless get over to http://washingtonunitedformarriage.org/  . Sign a pledge card promising to uphold marriage equality at the ballot box!

Oh and by the way, RantWoman is still editing http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2012/05/marriage-equality-testimony.html looking for links that say "respectful ongoing faith-based discernment" which MIGHT speak to all the religiously oriented people opposed to marriage equality.

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State of the Meeting

Below is the State of RantWoman's Meeting as reported by the report's drafters. RantWoman sent off to the report's drafters some factual corrections to the draft offered at Business Meeting. Then RantWoman sent them off AGAIN with a request to the drafters and the Clerk to double-check. Turns out, urk!, RantWoman needed correcting about one point and one hovers in some filing murkiness.

Lately, RantWoman has been discovering how much capacity she has to, as one Friend put it, "hold Friends' stuggles tenderly." RantWoman is highly certain that she but not the current Clerk was present at one Business Meeting related to one fact.

RantWoman has concerns about a couple other points but fixing them has to be someone else's Light. The offering below reflects the Light of the authors. It is our Meeting's custom not to quibble at the second reading. RantWoman would be grateful if Light about the points vexing RantWoman were given to others; RantWoman feels overendowed in that area and would SO like to share the burdens.


STATE OF THE MEETING
University Friends Meeting
April 2012

The Spirit that moved among us in UFM in 2011 was not the mighty wind of Pentecost, but a strong, gentle flowing of love and compassion that centered us in community. More than 50 members are serving on more than 12 Care Committees to provide aid and support to their brothers and sisters in need. The Adult Religious Education meetings have attracted more participants to programs exploring Quaker history and the endeavors of Friends in many different educational, religious and social
service projects.

The QuEST program continues to attract impressive young adult interns to serve in various non-profit agencies in Seattle. For their 20th program year, QuEST initiated new placements at Sacred Heart Shelter, AFSC and Lifelong AIDS Alliance. Over the years QuEST has offered a model that has resulted in similar programs in other cities and has given advice and support as these programs developed.

We continued having Monthly Meeting for Business emerge from Meeting for Worship every second First Day; this scheduling has improved attendance and participation. We have had the addition of several young families to our Meeting, and the First Day program has prospered, thanks to the devotion of volunteer teachers and a paid Preschool teacher. The Junior Friends program has been reactivated.

We continued our remodeling work on the Meetinghouse, and, as a result, now have two new bathrooms on the main floor (one handicapped accessible) and greatly improved space for the First Day programs. A refurbished Social Hall made our gatherings for refreshments, lunch, music and fundraisers warmer and more attractive to newcomers and renters and gave us a lovely space for our Art shows.

Over five years ago, the Spirit led us to open our Worship Room as an overnight shelter for about 20 homeless people every night, in cooperation with SHARE (Seattle Housing and Resource Effort). The subcommittee on homelessness encouraged greater contact between Friends and these guests by sponsoring potluck dinners, sharing Thanksgiving dinner and putting together Christmas gift bags. The subcommittee also introduced longer shelter hours during cold weather and holidays and sponsored fundraisers. Volunteers from the subcommittee used some of the fundraising money to rebuild the shed used by our guests, and with SHARE’s assistance and financial support, we struggled with the problem of bedbugs.

Highlights of our participation in the greater Quaker community were one members transitioning from a two year stint as Presiding Clerk of FCNL to Assistant Clerk; another continues on the Executive Committee of FWCC section of the Americas and yet another is Treasurer for FWCC SoA. Still another is working as a translator for materials for the 6th World Conference to be held in Kenya in April.

There have been a number of community building projects during the past year; reading groups, spiritual sharing groups and a Meeting-wide retreat.

We are in our second decade of openly holding, at once, the community and worship needs of survivors of sexual abuse, of our Meeting children and past sexual offenders. We use a number of standard safety practices related to our children. We also held an Adult Education session by a trained sexuality educator about talking with our children (and each other) about several difficult topics. We continue specifically to make space in community conversations to listen to abuse survivors who individually
express very different needs.

Another set of conversations is about an offender, a long time attender of our Meeting, who is nearing the end of his Department of Corrections supervision. Also, a member of our Meeting and her husband held a striking Q & A session. The husband was a longtime inmate facilitator in Alternatives to Violence programs and member of a prison worship group under care of our Meeting’s Quarterly Meeting. He was released after a long prison term and has also become part of our community. Each new step walking with these Friends offers our Meeting opportunities to grow and to deepen our spiritual community.

And so University Friends Meeting continues to minister to members and attenders and to reach out to the greater Quaker community and a troubled world in need of care and tending, relying as always on the Spirit that dwells within us all to lead and sustain us and keep us in the Light.

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They have threatened us with the Resurrection

Festive ways to observe Easter:

1. In honor of the women at the tomb and of Christ's practice, unusual for his time, of actually talking to women, permit oneself a good feminist snit-fit and spell of shaking drooling print withdrawal on the way to Meeting. There is a wonderful used bookstore right on RantWoman's path from her bus stop to Meeting. RantWoman feels like an addict staring longingly at the titles even when she does not dare buy all that tiny print. This week's window display: April is National Poetry Month. One window had a display of titles including about 10 things by MEN and about 3 by WOmen. One of the women was Marge Piercy. Neither of the other two was either Adrienne Rich, recently passed away or Julia Esquivel, see below.

Adrienne Rich has long been on RantWoman's "would read more of if I read more poetry" list. Last week RanWoman decided to use some of her precious Amazon gift card balance for a memorial purchase. Adriennne Rich apparently does not enable the Text-to-Speech on her books. RantWoman's budget also was not large so RantWoman scraped her eyeballs across an essay including reference to several poets Rich esteemed. RantWoman's feminist snit fit is tempered by the observation that Rich also cites only men.


2. Meeting for Worship for Business (?!?!?!?). The sense of the Meeting last month was that we should go forth thus on our regular schedule. In contrast to frequent Easter experience of spring gushiness and occasionally something about the resurrection, this year there was exactly ONE message about "ching ming," bright clarity for spring in China in Meeting for Worship before Business Meeting and one from RantWoman in closing.

2.a Meeting for Worship for Business with an item of business about the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet, also known as a topic where people might be expected to have much to say.

2.b Meeting for Worship for Business as above with an inspiring (cough) reading from Lloyd Lee Wilson about silent waiting on God.

2.c Meeting for Worship for Business with an item about the Safest Sex Offender on the planet, the aforementioned reading from Lloyd Lee Wilson, and a WHOLE BUNCH of Friends with hearing loss spread about the room instead of gathered up close to enhance hearing, other softspoken Friends including some with hearing loss not being heard by others and NOBODY articulating the words "movable mic system."

2.d A Friend whose title has pointed been omitted opining that it never seems to someone like enough is being done for abuse survivors, some testy words and an ad-hoc committee which is tasked to report by June on spiritual community and abuse / sexual abuse survivors.

RantWoman was seized by a sudden spell of reticence about the subject of ad-hoc committees. RantWoman is aware there is some kind of adhoc subcommittee related to disability issues. RantWoman notes the point that committees take the time they take to work, but RantWoman is AGAIN finding herself resenting that the committee is comprised of people who have the option of dealing at their leisure.

RantWoman has the impression the committee has been working on things to do with hearing loss. For a few different reasons RantWoman has been proceding on her own behalf, not really waiting around. However since the subcommittee arose because of a LONG exercise of RantWoman's in Business Meeting, RantWoman would NOT mind in the least hearing from the committee, hearing some sense of initiative!

2.e Meeting for worship as above, items a-d and, HALLELUJAH, the Safest Sex Offender on the planet is now permitted to go to anything he wants as long as he arranges a chaperone in advance!!!! There was noodling around about spiritual sharing group signups where the norm seems to be that, rather than encouraging people to seek that of God in others, people are allowed to turn up their noses at each other for all kinds of reasons. RantWoman is holding in the Light the person behind the conversation she had: the conversation is one reasons RantWoman's "hold the struggles of Friends tenderly" box is FULL just from matters close to home.

3. A poem served up just in time for RantWoman's feminist snit fit. RantWoman thanks Wes Daniels over at Gathering in Light for posting this wonderful challenging poem by Julia Esquivel

http://gatheringinlight.com/2012/04/06/they-have-threatened-us-with-resurrection-1980-by-julia-esquivel/

RantWoman was so deeply struck that she went and found a Spanish language version to link to on one of her Salt and Light fora.

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2010/04/for-national-poetry-month-julia.html

RantWoman SO likes the faith and hope an internal fire unquenched in the poem.

RantWoman has been noodling about mentally about what presently seem to her, after a zillion years talking about the topic, poorly defined sense of whatever are the key elements of her Meeting's ministry to abuse survivors, how spiritual life and spiritual community play into this. Mixed up in this is John Calvi's formulation of when is Jesus crucified and when resurrected in one's daily life. RantWoman is pointedly not commenting further for now.

RantWoman now digresses to a more customarily Quaker formulation of Easter.
http://quakersusanne.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/experience-the-resurrection/

RantWoman further digresses to the RantFamily and Neighbor Friend of Irrepressible Nephew. Neighbor Friend's name comes up in Irrepressible Nephew's household in one of those "Oh HOLY JESUS. Could intercultural parenting be any more vexed?" contexts which RantWoman HOPES is under control. Neighbor Friend's family are Jehovah's Witnesses who of course do not observe Easter any more than traditional Quakers. Neighbor Friend has, in the past, apparently declined offers of holiday sweets, which probably makes her more virtuous than the Rant Children. The Rant Children used to invite ourselves over to the homes of friends of ours whose parents' understanding of holiday celebrations included more chocolate than was permitted in the Rant household.

This year family feast at RantMom's got postponed. Instead RantWoman and RantMom both stopped at Little Sister's, held a guessing game for irrepressible Nephew and then got a bus to our respective domiciles. Christ is risen.

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Manzanar Anniversary: Remembering Again

RantWoman's morning blog roll served up this wonderful compendium of information about Manzanar, one of the internment camps where Americans of Japanese heritage were interned during World War II including Gordon Hirabyashi formerly of RantWoman's Meeting:

http://bloggerbyconvincement.blogspot.com/2012/03/remembering-manzanar.html


Those of you who just need a shot of history are urged to stop here and concentrate on the link above.

Those of you game for another ride at the RantWoman spiritual amusement park and willing to hang with RantWoman on her bumpy walk to try to stay even half as centered as Quaker greats are invited to hold in the Light the following two redacted exchanges between RantWoman and others in her Meeting:


Call me up and I'll Figure it Out For You Friend: "RantWoman, you talk too much! You talked 5 times on one Sunday between worship and Meeting for Business."

RantWoman: "To be honest, I would be so grateful if words for some of what is on my mind were given to others. I remember 3 of the times. One was a memorial message because it was shortly after Gordon Hirabyashi died. That message was way more centered and centering than the one I was seasoning on the bus. (The one on the bus is getting to be an eruption on the line between a psychological issue and "quaking" but RantWoman was clear it's a message for another day.)

Another was timely because it was the start of what was and continues to be a difficult legislative session, RantWoman is an officer of FCWPP and it's reasonable to hold things in the Light. The third was topical to an item of business which RanWoman will elaborate about elsewhere. So talk to me about the other two times."

Call Me up and I'll Figure it Out for You Friend: "Fine. Good-bye."


RantWoman later, Urk, was one of the other times a RantWoman outburst about Quakers who nod but don't even grunt? RantWoman had such an outburst at one Business Meeting. Friends had all nodded with no verbal indication about approving some comparatively minor decision. RantWoman just had one of her spells and did not even wait for the clerk to recognize ministry about bus drivers who nod and grunt and Quakers who do not even grunt.

RantWoman was rewarded with an observation from Put it Off Until It's More Convenient Friend number N or N+1 who previously displayed no capacity to interact with the impact of RantWoman's vision loss at a critical moment, RantWoman has no idea which pronouncing the comment "appropriate." Call Me up and I'll Figure it Out For You Friend should probably be grateful that Worse Auntie did not show up with a tirade about "Appropriate? Who the heck are you to tell the Holy Spirit what is 'appropriate?' I cannot DO your definition of appropriate and you aren't even willing to talk about what would work so APPROPRIATE THIS?" Sometimes the Lord is merciful to everyone.


Blessedly, several weeks later, New Friend who thinks Unitarians are not Very Good at Silence: "RantWoman, Thank you so much for mentioning Gordon Hirabyashi. I saw the obituary but I only went home and read it after your message."

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DRAFT, not the bedbugs this time

RantWoman thanks those drafting this year's State of the meeting report for NOT sending out a draft ahead of Business Meeting and for NOT making xeroxed copies to distribute during Business Meeting. For one thingcutting back on the photocopying is very ecological. RantWoman also thanks everyone for sharing her frequent experience of not having access to documents and feeling somewhat at sea during oral presentation. RantWoman would so not mind having something more cheerful to share. No, scratch that: RantWoman is perhaps inappropriately delighted that someone else so generously provided the community this form of blindness tourism.

RantWoman realizes that time was when EVERYONE coped with such. RantWoman is not nostalgic. RantWoman quite used to LIKE being able to read the text along with someone reading it aloud. RantWoman sometimes becomes QUITE cranky when everyone else in a meeting is rifling through paper, scanning and skimming for forgotten nuggets. RantWoman would mind less if other people also found the nuggets she considers important, but the Holy Spirit has not been serving up such insights nearly as much as RantWoman is certain should occur.

RantWoman notes, the bedbugs only promise to publish on Leap Days. RantWoman does not expect further transmissions until next leap day. This does NOT mean RantWoman can restrain herself from a generous contribution of suggested edits for the draft read in Business Meeting. Except for contributions about one topic, RantWoman REALLY wants to leave wordsmithing in the able hands of this years drafting team. RantWoman SAYS this! Will she manage it?

RantWoman seeded the process with the items below. A new draft has been emitted by email and RantWoman REALLY likes that a concern about good Quaker laundry lists devoid of spiritual content has been well heard. RantWoman likes many other aspects of the proposed draft. It deviates from RantWoman's thoughts below. RantWoman promises to publish the version which comes to Business Meeting in April. A few topics RantWoman is trying to convince herself she is FINE, just FINE about others editing:

Remodeling was a very big theme in RantWoman's meeting. First was financing, and fundraising. Then there were bids and construction plans. Then there was lots of moving things to and fro, stashing things in corners of the meetinghouse, other upheavals during the actual construction. There were delays. People got cranky. It was kind of a summer of discontent followed by much delight. We are especially pleased by two new public
bathrooms including one that is wheelchair accessible on the main
level with our worship room and social hall. Alas, after all this work we are still vexed about temperature control with our thermostats and about the
sound system.


Friends from our Meeting also bring our Light to other Quaker
organizations including the Friends Committee for WA Public Policy,
the regional executive committee of the AFSC, FCNL, the FWCC Section of the Americas, as well as our Quarterly and Yearly Meetings and a large number of other service and public witness activities.


RantWoman remembers her remonstrances about statements made on her behalf about email last year and offers this item this year:

We find ourselves challenged about discernment, information flow, and movements of Spirit through email, an up-to-date website, blog posts, and social networking. Some among us find these new means of communication
greatly simplify communications even at great distance; others find
these tools tiresome and overwhelming. Sometimes the groups of fans
and grumblers overlap.


The part that RantWoman is really picky about, even though the phrasing reflects places RantWoman WISHES were the sense of the Meeting, moments where RantWoman's instinct is to tell more of the Truth than others necessarily care to, and moments well endorsed in a round of email about the "How's your sex offender?" questions that come up when Friends from RantWoman's Meeting go abroad into the world of Friends:

We are in our second decade as a worship community that openly includes our Meeting children and families, survivors of sexual abuse, and past sexual offenders.

We use a number of standard safety practices related to our children. A trained sexuality educator offered a session in our adult education
hour on talking with our children and each other about difficult
topics, including abuse. Meeting for Worship immediately following this session was especially rich in honest and therefore complicated vocal ministry on themes arising from Friends' earlier discussions. We strive to make space to hear the widely varying needs expressed by individual abuse survivors. Sometimes we find even the process of speaking about and listening, of learning how to hear very difficult.

Another conversation thread is about a formal Support and Accountability Committee and other changes for an offender who is nearing the end of his Department of Corrections supervision.

A member of our Meeting and her husband held a striking Q & A session. The husband was a longtime inmate facilitator in Alternatives to Violence programs and member of a former prison worship
group under care of our Quarterly Meeting. He was released after a long prison term and has also become part of our community. Each new step walking with all these Friends offers our Meeting opportunities to grow and to deepen our spiritual community.


RantWoman has extensive tirades about the whys of her preferred phrasing; RantWoman is PROBABLY just going to have to let go of her proclivity toward tirades. Probably! Please hold all efforts about the State of RantWoman's Meeting in the Light.

Last year's version for reference:
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/04/state-of-meeting-2011.html

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How fares the Truth among us--as told by our bedbugs

Time is upon us for generating our Meeting's annual State of Society report. Unfortunately, dyspeptic dissension has broken out among our ranks of Quaker epistle writers and a horde of bedbugs has managed a divide and conquer takeover of the process. This is a first draft of their effort. PLEASE note: this is a DRAFT. RantWoman is pretty certain that her Meeting's official bonafide State of the Meeting report will have almost nothing in common with this offering. RantWoman is also unsure to what she should attribute her unusual capacity to commune with the co-authors. As with any translation, RantWoman supposes it is only sporting to acknowledge possible responsibility for all errors in transmission and transcription.

(RantWoman aside: The entire Puget Sound region has been overtaken by a veritable Biblical plague of bedbugs or at least the need to talk about bedbugs. RantWoman spends a lot of time outside her Meeting talking about Bedbugs. RantWoman finds a certain testimony on equality / single standard of Truth integrity about this reality. RantWoman's Meeting, like many places in our fair city has been spending A LOT of time talking about and dealing with bedbugs.

RantWoman notes two points: First, the difference between faith communities who house SHARE shelters AND have bedbugs as compared to houses of worship with SHARE shelters who do not have bedbugs seems to boil down to whether or not the church has bathing and washing facilities. Our Meeting is among the churches who DO have bedbugs and do NOT have bathing / washing facilities. The professional bedbug wranglers also regularly remind us, our Meeting also has, basically, bedbug high-rises in the form of carpeted acoustic tile on our walls to enhance our silence. Second, the year-long battle of the bedbug has included regular detection and elimination efforts. RantWoman is unsure whether anyone in Meeting has actually been munched on by bedbugs. But if they had...)

To all Friends Everywhere.

Warm greetings from soggy Seattle. We hope this epistle finds Friends and Bedbugs alike firm in the Light, aglow in the searching Light of God.

We the bedbugs at University Friends Meeting have endured a year of being snurfled at by That Dog, alternately blasted out of bedding with high heat and gassed with vile poison, but we have stood firm in the Lord / Holy Spirit / Eternal Light. Out of gratitude, we have taken it upon ourselves to inform the world as to the State of Society, at least in our vicinity.

This year featured much spirit-centered discussion of stewardship. The Remodel Committee has finished the remodel of the Meetinghouse. Members of Meeting think it looks wonderful. We miss having all the extra contractors around to chew on.

We especially wish to thank Oversight committee and the sex offenders of our community for ensuring that the Meetinghouse is filled with warm bodies attending a threshing session, a Q&A, a presentation by someone from the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, and lots of business meetings. Sex offender discussions fill everyone with stress hormones even when there are powerful stories and important awareness. This is not necessarily our favorite flavor of the month but we guess it's better for the community as a whole to try to share the burdens. We appreciate how the general conversation MOST of the time moderates truly stratospheric levels of stress hormones that we find sometimes when we much into isolated individuals.

We also find the stress hormones preferable to the hunger enzymes people were emitting in the months of May, June, August, October, January, February, and April. Those months featured the zillionth, zillion-first and so on discussions of RantWoman and Worship and Ministry Committee. RantWoman and her Meeting most assuredly are NOT getting each other's memos right now. We wish we could tell the difference between worship and ministry with RantWoman and Worship and Ministry without RantWoman but sooner or later we get lunch either way.

We have been in extensive negotiations with Finance Committee. Finance Committee peculiarly thinks we should pay rent. We are budget-conscious bedbugs of modest means, with nowhere near the cash swirling around us that some of those tony bedbugs at the big hotels downtown have.

Peace and Social Concerns held a retreat and work party devoted to Equality in November. To be honest, we find it easier to find lunch when everyone is all crammed into close quarters. If the dining is good with the 99% who cares about the 1% who get away? We also increased our numbers because of Friends' visits to the Occupy Seattle camp, but we thank Peace and Social Concerns for blessing us all with a Minute for the occasion.

Personnel Committee is really not our favorites just now. For some reason they think we should just leave the staff ALONE. We believe in that of Lunch in everyone.

Education Committee is proud to have a decent number of children afoot. People tend to get kind of upset when we nibble on children: we even had to kick a few bugs out over the problem! But more children guarantees more adults, just having a good number of kids around keeps the adults tastier.

Adult Religious Education committee held its annual Dark Time of the Year interaction with Death and Dying. Frankly we are bedbugs, not maggots. We need to drink from living waters and we are very glad to let the maggots handle Death.

We thank Friends very much for the boxing day meet and greet during all the severe weather over the Christmas holidays. We really appreciate more time with all our tasty hosts.

We were also honored to be able to donate fiber materials to the annual vision collage-making on New Years Day.

The bunch that were reading Barclay's Apology finally reached their goalposts in August. Barclay flavored hosts just were not doing it for us; we are reserving judgment about how John Woolman's journal is going to affect the tastes of the new bunch.

In February many of us gratefully attended the New Bedbugs Potluck. Some of us also piled into the cars headed down to Olympia for Quaker Lobby Day. We thank the Friends Committee for WA Public Policy for opportunities to develop personal relationships with the people who represent districts Friends live in.

In March we helped Arts Committee stage a Bedbug Revue. We did a lot of song and dance and were joined by other performers for a hoedown to benefit homeless bedbugs.

In April we held a rousing send-off for Friends travelling to the World Gathering of Friends in Kenya. We particularly gave the travellers a travelling minute we hope they will present to any sister and brother bedbugs they meet in the course of their travels.

Again warm good wishes to all. May God bless and keep you throughout the coming year--even if you insist on speaking of Him / Her / ... in some other terms.

In the Light,

The Bedbugs of UFM.

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Becoming an ally with the Beatitudes

RantWoman lately has been called to articulate the concept of ally in terms of both people with disabilities and survivors of abuse / assault / trauma. RantWoman has actually been making this point in sort of scathing terms in email. RantWoman is seasoning whether the blogosphere needs exactly those terms and might respond to a groundswell of clamor from her readers to spell out... . RantWoman is all too conscious that Friends around her:

1. Have not even registered a need to talk of what is on RantWoman's mind. Remember Put it Off Until It's More Convenient Friends number n, n+1...?

2. Are likely, if they register the point, to ask RantWoman what the heck she is talking about.

3. MAY find RantWoman less than completely prepared. Or even whiny, ill-tempered, ungracious. MAYBE if RantWoman reads enough of laboring with.. in John Woolman...

Yeah, and in the meantime RantWoman recommends starting here
http://young.anabaptistradicals.org/2012/01/31/pass-the-toothpicks-becoming-an-ally-with-the-beatitudes/
and with related links on the YAR blog.



One test, for RantWoman, of whether she has made good choices about blog roll relates to finding links that also speak to her.
http://bloggerbyconvincement.blogspot.com/2012/01/afterthought-1.html
If one depends on 2000 people every day, RantWoman thinks that can be a lot of laboring with ignorance if too many of those one depends on are getting something WRONG.


RantWoman will now return to worship and seek further Light.
http://www.quakerinfo.org/quakerism/worship

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Faith Trust Healing

Items for the blog as file cabinet. RantWoman is not clear whether she looked these items up before or after the most recent Business Meeting but:

The Faith Trust Institute helps different faith communities think about issues of abuse. RantWoman thinks it is never terrible for Friends to realize something important is widely enough understood that Friends do not have to reinvent the wheel. On the other hand, being a non-pastoral tradition we are full of people, even people on pastoral care committees, who cannot be assumed to have encountered any kind of basic counseling training. "We are all ministers of God/ We have not abolished the clergy; we have abolished the laity." This just means needs for some materials are different.

http://www.cpsdv.org/

http://www.faithtrustinstitute.org/contact-us


An item about testimonies and healing among Friends from one's experiences of other religions. RantWoman includes thishere partly because many, many people come to Friends fleeing religiously-themed traumatizing and abusive environments in other faith communities.

http://johanpdx.blogspot.com/2012/01/trust-first-testimony.html

(RantWoman is pointedly NOT commenting on ... in her own..._

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