Email: The Gospel According to, oops well, Care and Counsel.

RantWoman, God, and the Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee on Email Immoderation are feeling called to hold worship sharing with the, oops well, Care and Counsel Committee at RantWoman's Meeting about the subject of email. RantWoman proposes to serve as Recording clerk and to record minutes of much exercise in a separate entry. RantWoman is still seasoning the matter of what queries to begin with.

 

RantWoman hopes that God shows up in words, but notes a peculiar God historical tendency to show up in burning bushes, pillars of cloud, commandments etched in stone tablets, plagues, pestilence, planetary inundations, and sundry other difficult to parse manifestations.

 

RantWoman is not sure which members of the Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee... are going to show up, but the committee includes a particularly large membership with a number of different qualifications:

--Generic Customer Service Friend

--Veteran Tech Support "Users always Lie; They don't know they lie; they don't mean to lie but they Lie. Now what was that symptom again?" Friend.

--Mental Health Triage Friend

--Out of Control Spiritual Accompaniment Friend

--Data Nerd / What is trending over time Friend

--Lots of ways to agree about measures to make email manageable but not sending is not an option Friend.

--Language Nerd and Literature Scholar Friend

--Magical Realism So what if the timelines are non-linear Friend

--You're always asleep when I'm awake Friend

--You barely know me and I barely know you but I am supposed to know you are a resource Friend

--It takes days and days of phone tag to reach you Friend

--I actually think sort of slowly and LIKE being able to use my search engine to think over bits of the conversation again Friend

--If you don't understand something, have you considered asking for clarification? Friend

--If you don't understand something, who might you refer the problem to Friend?

--Look, really sorry the message is not coming in palatable form but have you considered that it might be your job either to figure it out or to connect the sender withsomeone who can Friend

--I talk about Service Dogs all the time. You think I don't know when to quit aboutservice DOGS. How about we talk about service CHICKENS? Friend

--Really sorry God is not showing up on your schedule Friend.

--You say you dislike email but you actually do much better by email sometimesFriend.

--Sometimes I get so upset I cannot talk Friend.

--You like to talk; I need to send email Friend

--Have you considered the possibility that what I am talking about applies to your day job too Friend.

 

RantWoman acknowledges that The Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee... could perhaps get things off on better footing by losing references to the "Oops Well" part of the Care and Counsel Committee moniker. RantWoman acknowledges this, but she showed up warts and all and the worship sharing needs to happen regardless.

Plus, RantWoman recently stumbled across the most interesting reference to the word "oversight" not in sense overburdened with the historical weight of enslavement but in a more egalitarian, shared oversight "we all take care of each other" sense. RantWoman WISHES she could remember which blog roll item she saw this in. RantWoman also would not mind some umbra of a penumbra of a sense that anyone else on Care and Counsel committee cares about RantWoman's inquiry. RantWoman is aware of needing to hold someone in theLight about medical matters as well. Finally, if someone calling Dial a Tirade gets a busy signal about this topic, oh well, there are plenty more tirades available. Please hold that point in the Light along with the entire gigantic Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee on Email Immoderation.

The following item appeared recently in the monthly newsletter at RantWoman's Meeting.

 

CARE AND COUNSELCOMMITTEE

Thoughts on UFM Email

While email is a tremendous benefit to us, at times it can be a burden. Care and Counsel Committee put together the following document to help fellow members. It is common when in the midst of an email problem that we feel the need to help the other person understand our position or make our points more firmly. In these guidelines below, we suggest another tack: Whenever you feel the need to set things right, instead wait calmly. If after due consideration it is still necessary, briefly state your position once and move on.

Too Long: One strategy for long emails is to skim them looking for questions or requests. Limit your response to answering the questions or requests directly and briefly. This will greatly reduce how much must be read and understood, but still gives the other person a specific response. It represents a midpoint between ignoring an email and taking on the burden of reading and responding to an overly long missive.

Too Numerous: If you are receiving too may emails from another member, consider taking a break and filing for future perusal. Once your good feelings return you can limit the amount of mail you read from the other person by setting aside a period of time, say 10 minutes every Monday, to read and respond to their emails. Take the rest and file them for later.

Confusing: If the email is confusing and there are no requests or questions in it, then take whatever understanding you may

have from it and move on. If there are requests or questions in it that you cannot understand, simply respond by letting the

writer know that.

Unkind: A good rule of thumb is to read the first few sentences and ask yourself if you feel good about reading further. If continuing to read is digging a hole of bad feelings, then stop digging and move on. If you want, let the writer know that for you to read the email, he or she will need to rewrite it with kindness.

Writing Email: The other side of reading email is writing email. Kind, compassionate, and thoughtful emails that come quickly to the point and put any requests in the first sentence are the mostly (sic—RantWoman) likely to receive an audience. Put aside longer or heated emails until you have the chance to revise them to a paragraph or two of kind, compassionate, and thoughtful words.

Care and Counsel Committee,

 

RantWoman, this is God. If the entire Still Didn't Get the Memo committee shows up  and everyone talks one blop at a time, this one worship sharing is going to take millenia.

RantWoman , musing: ...could just forward to Care and Counsel one of Rant Brother's "I'ms still mentally ill and I still want firearms" emails, perhaps seasoned with more "I didn't tell you about my day" details than anyone wants to interact with about why it's IMPORTANT that people like RantBrother have places like the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing  they can come to read and send email.

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Submission--on deadline

RantWoman is submitting the following item for her monthly newsletter. RantWoman notes that the deadline for her Meeting's monthly newsletter is the 20th of the month for the next month. RantWoman notes this with an eye toward Friends wanting to publicize events and activities on schedules that work both for the electronically au courant and for Freinds whose Weighy one frequently wants in the conversaion even when those Friends never go near that electronic stuff.


*******
First, the VERY boiled down version of what RantWoman will submit along with a couple comments about what might be cut if, as RantWoman suspects, this is still too long for our monthly newsletter:


Thank you to UFM’s Spiritual Enrichment fund for money to attend NPYM’s Annual Session.


I love Annual Sesssion. I get credit just for showing up. Friends from small Meetings and Worship Groups in MT, ID, OR, WA feel a spiritual liftjust to be among large numbers of Friends and all I have to do is show up!

At Annual Session Interest Groups provide time for education and discussion about specific topics. I went to a fun one about “The Quaker Language Barrier.” Friends shared all kinds of words used among Friends and talked some about the questions they raise. Among the words Friends mentioned: clerk, seasoning, programmed and unprogrammed. Friends comments wandered quickly to broader communications themes: how does Spirit move across different approaches to electronic communication? How do Friends of different generations feel Divine presence in the midst of challenges of travel and distance? The best part of that discussion for me was hearing that other Meetings are having some of the same conversations I am a part of.

Another rich experience: I served as a worship group leader for the daily small group meetings where Friends meet to reflect on the Annual Session theme, a common set of readings and queries, and events as they unfold at Annual Session. Being a group leader is fairly new for me. I was especially grateful for the email reflections other worship group leaders offered over a couple weeks. I was grateful for the content of the reflections. I was grateful the worship group leaders were willing to have the discussion by email and I was glad other leaders took time as it fit into their schedules to share their thoughts.

I got to meet Mary Klein, the new editor of Western Friend. I also got to thank her very much for help editing my recent article about the White Privilege Conference which may be found in the UFM library or online here as a link on http://westernfriend.org  

Finally, a note about my dorm: My very favorite thing about the suite I shared was that the shower had ferocious, wonderful, wake me up and remind me how glad I am to be alive and living in a first world country water pressure.

To read more about my evolving reflections Friends are invited to visit my blog at http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/search/label/NPYM%202013

  ******* The WAY too long version, minus some tweaks as RantWoman was boiling down     Thank you to UFM’s Spiritual Enrichment fund for money to attend NPYM’s Annual Session. When I request money from UFM’s spiritual enrichment fund to attend an event I always hold two queries no matter what else might come too:

What do I take with me? What of my own spiritual compost heap, what concerns for the community are on my heart, what needs weeding, what needs tending?

What do I bring back? What experiences do I need to share? What new Light has come to me? What do I carry from renewing new ties or from stretching to make new ones? What am I especially grateful for?

Friends interested in what Friends in Residence Becca and Paul Molally Renk brought on the theme “Not by my Strength Alone” can hear for ourselves at an upcoming Adult Education session.

Here are a few personal reflections.

At Annual Session Interest Groups provide time for education and discussion about specific topics. I went to a fun one about “The Quaker Language Barrier.” Friends shared all kinds of words used among Friends and talked some about the questions they raise. Among the words Friends mentioned: clerk, seasoning, programmed and unprogrammed. Friends comments wandered quickly to broader communications themes: how do different Friends view electronic communication? How do Friends of different generations view challenges of travel and distance. The best part of that discussion for me was hearing that other Meetings are having some of the same conversations I am a part of.

Another part of the experience I really valued: I served as a worship group leader for the daily small group meetings where Friends meet to reflect on the Annual Session theme, a common set of readings and queries, and events as they unfold at Annual Session. Being a group leader is fairly new for me. I was especially grateful for the email reflections other worship group leaders offered over a couple weeks. I was grateful for the content of the reflections. I was grateful the worship group leaders were willing to have the discussion by email and I was glad other leaders took time as it fit into their schedules to share their thoughts.

I got to meet Mary Klein, the new editor of Western Friend. I also got to thank her very much for help editing my recent article about the White Privilege Conference which may be found in the UFM library or online here as a link on http://westernfriend.org

Finally, a note about my dorm: I shared a suite with 3 other women. My very favorite thing about our suite was that the shower had ferocious, wonderful, wake me up and remind me how glad I am to be alive and living in a first world country water pressure. Others found the water pressure a bit much and I am sorry for that but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

I am still digesting this year’s experiences. To read more about my thoughts Friends are invited to visit my blog at http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/search/label/NPYM%202013

Warning: it’s a blog. My personal model of blogging falls somewhere between historical Quaker journal and permanent clearness committee. Historical Quaker journals in their raw state make a good case for the existence of editors. Enough said?

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Exercise, Families, Saturday Plenary, MONEY

RantWoman DOES have an I voice. If readers are lucky, RantWoman will preserve her I voice out of an edited email. This item summarizes some circumstances feeding into the famous Saturday plenary at NPYM Annual Session where God needed to rearrange the agenda as well as some points RantWoman heard or did not hear spoken out of worship.


RantWoman notes that God still seems to be organizing several points related to how NPYM conducts Annual Session in addition to the content questions connected with the items being discussed. In other words, RantWoman means to post a couple other pieces of the picture separately and pointedly encourages readers to hold all the pieces when trying to understand why Friends needed just to work with God.

At an earlier plenary the Annual Session had approved creating a 1/4 time paid position to coordinate the entire Annual Session children's program, carry out the requirements of the Youth safety policy, and find people to staff programs for all age groups at Annual Session. This proposal emerged from an ad hoc committee in late spring and was circulated among Monthly Meetings and Worship groups before Annual Session. The proposal included straightforward job descriptions and suggestions about how to fund the work but did not address some points which RantWoman speaks to below..
RantWoman's Meeting heard an announcement about it almost in passing at the very end of June Meeting for Business and the actual proposal was distributed electronically the next week with the weekly bulletin. RantWoman read the proposal including a proposal to fund the first year of the position out of reserves and a request later for about a 17% increase per capita in Yearly Meeting dues assessments and a proposal in subsequent years to add an outreach component.
RantWoman sent the clerk of the ad hoc committee some questions:

--Should the outreach component begin immediately if only so that the person doing the work can identify counts of children and of adults who might be recruited to support the work to be done?

--Should there be targeted fundraising so that assessments do not have to be increased so much, particularly for Friends who never attend Annual Session?

--Does the proposal need to take into account other issues such as the Great Recession, our Yearly Meeting's practice of changing venues every two years to reflect our geographic size, addition a few years ago of an additional day?

--How does this proposal relate to several questions about attenders, identity as members of a Friends' community, membership coincidentally being thought about as the Committee on the Discipline works to describe current practice and to revise our Faith and Practice.

RantWoman did not expect a reply to her questions any sooner than Annual Session; RantWoman did not hear her question about numbers addressed at all one way or another in the plenary discussions of the paid children's program arranger position.

RantWoman remembers speaking to support the general thought of investng in youth programs. RantWoman also remembers urging Friends to go forward in faith about money even though for her some money parts of the proposal did not compute; at the time RantWoman was assured that discussion of the Ad Hoc Committee on affordability for families committee work would address RantWoman's concerns. This turned out not really to be feasible.

The Ad-hoc committee on Family Affordability was the focus of the agenda for the Saturday plenary when God and several young Friends rose to speak. There had been various questions about how the committee proposed to work to better understand the issue, what it was trying to accomplish and other ways to understand priorities. Process, content, how to listen to movements of the Divine were all muddled in Friends' questions about the proposal and ministry on the topic.

This was the point where a Weighty Friend spoke to a sense of unease in the room and a whole sequence of Friends spoke before a suggestion was made simply to go into worship and allow Friends to speak out of worship for the remainder of the time for that plenary. RantWoman spoke of her sense that the question before the group was how best to use our resources to draw our community closer to God and to each other.

(RantWoman also led a worship group. Email among Worship Group leaders after Annual Session indicates that several of the Saturday Worship Groups, though not RantWoman's were led to speak of the plenary within their worship groups.)

Here is RantWoman's email after Annual Session, in the spirit of Minutes of Exercise edited only minimally, and offered with RantWoman's name attached even though she is NOT the Recording Clerk: This is such Light as has come to RantWoman and RantWoman is specifically NOT speaking on behalf of the whole group.


This message is topical to the paid children's program discussion and to the Family Affordability committee. Friends are welcome to ask for clarifications or to forward. I do not want to make a blanket offer, but would also be willing to discern whether I have additional increments of time to devote to this work.Other than that, I am happy just to feed my thoughts into others' work and not necessarily expect responses right away.

As a process point, I am aware that I may be suggesting things other than decisions made in plenaries and I would remind Friends that Coordinating Committee (the representative body which meets a couple times / year between Annual Sessions) might be a place to consider adjustments to charge, scope of work, objectives for the newly approved position of children's program arranger.

Here I want to outline some stuff I heard, some stuff I did not hear, questions on my mind, and see how my thinking feeds into next increments of work.


To Friend Clerk of the Ad hoc committee on children's program coordination:

I did not hear ANYTHING in my report about your committee's request for numbers. I was hoping someone else would have the same thought in plenary; they did not so I am raising it here. I asked for data about numbers of people of different ages at Annual Session different years, different locations with a couple other before and after points in my ask.

To me a bunch of people looking at numbers CAN be really valuable and that is the kind of thing I wish Friends could wade into when an issue is framed. My request may or may not have been easily doable in the time between when I made it and annual session, but it's something to think about. In fact, in the car on the way home, I jotted down some other thoughts about making an analysis dataset from historical registration data. MAYBE I will elaborate especially if anyone else is interested in this idea.

I DID NOT hear ANY mention in either the Annual Session affordability or the Paid childcare arranger discussion of the survey done at the beginning of 2012 about families and Annual Session. The survey was HOPEFULLY going to collect input from people who do not attend annual session. Since the survey was done, even the fact of there being only a few respondents might be important in thinking about next steps. I heard LOTS of people talk in plenaries and otherwise about the value of Annual Session.

I heard some amorphous thoughts about care of Quarterly meetings as an idea not attached to particular actions. On the way home a Young Adult Friend mentioned Young Adults' interest in travelling among different Quarterly Gatherings. I wonder what opportunities there are for synergy with Outreach and Visitation, information sharing....

I heard and share a concern about sucking out Spirit either with too much business or in how we do business. I will send some thoughtsabout my Quakers go to Camp / Business Meeting EVERY DAY theme and will write separate emails about these thoughts.
I heard complete lack of clarity about a whole bunch of questions to do with assessments, various charges for Annual session. I think complete lack of clarity is actually a helpful place to start. I would find it valuable for the family affordability committee at next year's Annual Session to present a few different scenarios addressing both the length of Annual Session and apportionment of costs between assessments and things charged to those who attend Annual Session and even some different per person breakouts. For instance, I think it might be fine to ask all annual session adults to help subsidize children / families.

I heard voices of Monthly Meetings saying "ask us what we need, don't just ask us to keep seasoning stuff." (This is a reference to our evolving standing committees, all of whom seem to be sending out queries asking Monthly Meetings and Worship groups to season various questions.) I do not know whether there is a disconnect about the ask here but the "ask us what we need" is important.

I heard mention of lots of interest from Monthly Meetings in educational curricula and help with children's programs. I am not sure where that comes from but I have heard it before and for instance the paid children's program coordinator job description as written does not address that concern right away. Would anyone besides me find value in reconsidering elements of the job description?


Friend, Clerk of the Ad Hoc Committee, you talk about wishing more of your Meeting would come to Annual Session.

--Why do you think they don't? Are they not interested? Does no one do anything to promote? Is it only cost or are there other barriers?

--What if anything would a paid children's program arranger position contribute to getting more people specifically from your Meeting to attend Annual Session? Do Friends feel any call to think about this question with respect to other Meetings?

--Here is a blog post with my take on some possible barriers:
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2013/07/annual-session-ad-copy-too-late-and-too.html

--I always have a reflex to try to spell out some "how do we know it works" criteria. I know God showing up is--and SHOULD BE--hard to measure, but things like numbers, repeat attenders, finances that balance might suggest some basics.

I hope these comments are helpful. I would be interested to hear Friends responses if led but I am also happy just feeding thoughts into the work.

Thank you all for your work.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

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Random Reflection Rising from NPYM Annual Session: Let's have a Party?

RantWoman thanks a Junior Friend in her worship-sharing group for the message from which the leading to pose this question arises:

If becoming a Quaker automatically came with your choice of tatoo and location for the tatoo, what would you tatoo and where on your body would you tatoo it?

RantWoman is VERY high. RantWoman's nerves are zinging with ideas.


God(dess) showed up at NPYM Annual Session in the middle of Quakers go to Camp Business Meeting EVERY DAY. God(dess) showed up in the voices of young adult Friends who have grown up in our Yearly Meeting, in the form of seasoned Friends who spoke Truth, who held silence, and who worshipped together. God(dess) showed up in business between plenaries, in learnings, and in muddle.

God(dess) showed up in an Interest Group about the Quaker Language Barrier, that sociological / anthropological line between jargon fetishism and group coherence. The group did only some on Quakerese and did even more about some of the same big Meeting challenges in RantWoman's Meeting: transportation, scheduling meetings, varying comfort zones about electronic communication. Knowing one is not alone is a mixed blessing.

God(dess) showed up Sunday when Breakfast Bible Study could not stay on topic. Topic was I Kings and all sorts of dramatic doings with Ahab, Elijah, Elisha. RantWoman can ALWAY stand to shore up her Biblical knowledge but God(dess) saw fit to require Annual Session to share our dining space with Really Different people headed to a classic car show. Blame the car show people? Slaughter a yoke of oxen? Oh, there are still 11 more yoke so we're still rich and let's have a party. Jesus comes back after, as one group participant put it, "getting tortured to death:"  don't messa around about revenge; let's just have a party (?!?!?!)

RantWoman hopes other bloggers who were there will provide a more detailed account of the exact turn; RantWoman wants to concentrate on sharing the Light which has come from the plenary, subsequent events at Annual Session, and the ministry of car ride conversations.

Regarding the car ride conversations, God(dess) has a twisted sense of humor:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2013/07/five-volcanoes-65-hours-and-finally-home.html

The ONLY excuse for it to take 6.5 hours to go from Forest Grove to Seattle is that God MUST have needed more work out of Annual Session! Stay tuned.

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Annual Session Ad Copy, too late and too early

Ad copy: Why should YOU consider attending Annual Session:

How will Annual Session make you / your Meeting more open to movements of Spirit, better steeped in God's currents, more full of daily centering and prophetic witness?

What will you bring with? What might you take away?
Look world, RantWoman actually does NOT prefer to offer ad copy after Meeting for Worship about “why should YOU consider attending Annual Session” on the last day of registration. RantWoman prefers to weigh in a lot sooner, like maybe January so families who need to request vacation time and fit things into a tight budget have a prayer of doing so. RantWoman further points out that these days RantWoman goes to Annual Session already wearing too many hats, determined not to take on more hats, and aware that there are hats attached to fun, rewarding doable work which RantWoman wishes would find other heads. This year, RantWoman went so far as to tell Worship and Ministry that if heads who might be inspired to take on some of this work apply for money, they should get money ahead of RantWoman! Guess who got her full grant request approved!


Ad copy, such as it is:

LOTS of ways to renew connections and nurture spiritual growth including Friend in Residence, Interest Groups, Worship Sharing, singing, singing, singing.

It’s Quakers go to camp! Business Meeting EVERY DAY! ?!?!?

It’s our youth needing to get together.

1. RantWoman remembers the Central Friends calling adults out last year. The latest CO mass shooting occurred during last year’s Annual Session. The Central Friends were the ones whose epistle called Friends’ attention to this outrage. RantWoman has been holding that concern all year as Friends Committee on WA Public Policy talks about different aspects of gun violence, suicide, shootings in the headlines and which states have most well-developed restorative justice and violence prevention programs; RantWoman admits this energy from our youth also causes her to invite youth to talk to Friends Committee for WA Public Policy about leadings which might develop further.

2. RantWoman remembers Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting last year, the one where urban families all got smoked out by wildfires in the area. Two business meetings did need to happen, but the youth who had come from many less urban places also implored the adults who came to please stay so the youth could also have time together as Quakers.

RantWoman has been holding these thoughts while considering a large proposed dues increase to fund planning of the youth and children’s program at Annual Session. See “it’s Business Meeting EVERY DAY.” RantWoman has some probing questions about Annual Session and planning youth programs and has duly made, basically, a data request; RantWoman also finds herself wondering whether a good youth program at Annual Session might depend on outreach and nurturing local Meetings and Worship Groups all year. RantWoman has two further possibly controversial thoughts:

1. RantWoman suggests that NPYM do targeted fundraising to support both immediate outreach and work focused on youth programs at Annual Session. RantWoman’s Meeting has been able to invest from a large donation to pay First Day School teachers. A more stable program with more consistent participation has bloomed because of this. In other words, there are youth whose families theoretically might come to Annual Session precisely because we are investing all year. RantWoman thinks targeted fundraising could share the costs of this outreach. The proposed dues increase also just looks really dramatic.

2. RantWoman is all for good Annual Sessions, BUT RantWoman notes that some Yearly Meetings only have large gatherings every other year. RantWoman remembers a couple years ago when a proposed minute arrived about overpopulation and was left hanging without final action after being transformed into concerns about overconsumption. RantWoman thinks Friends should test the thought of having large gatherings only every other year and investing our travel time and other resources in activities closer to home on the off years.


It’s two contradictory extreme writing exercises:

1. Daily Bulletin editor. 1 page, 2 sides, a deadline, God and LOTS of people with opinions about what should go on that page every day. Someone with even the slightest inclination to be a petty tyrant might be a good match for what is needed.

2. Epistle Committee. The fun parts: Epistle Committee gets to read all the epistles from all over the world. This is a great opportunity for naturally introverted Quakers who do not just burst into spontaneous conversation every time they find themselves in a flock of people. One contributes by reading quietly on one’s own and by seasoning with a committee how to send a sample of the year’s gathering out into the wider world. The downside: reading the epistle in plenary where God and 300 people all want to help edit one’s STUFF.




Ad copy HIGHLY specific to RantWoman’s situation that probably ALSO speaks to at least a few other Friends.

RantWoman’s annual session lately has come with bonus interactions with campus tech support staff when RantWoman has encountered difficulty interfacing with campus computer networks. RantWoman considers it a great good thing that over time she has acquired more of her own technological prerequisites AND also received appropriate technologically competent and otherwise astute help, particularly dealing appropriately with the presence of RantWoman’s assistive technology from the tech support staff of every university where Annual Session has taken place.

It’s a really awesome place to hang out while living with a long succession of medical issues. RantWoman is not sure the Quaker spa angle is the BEST marketing she can come up with, but….

If you are not interested in RantWoman’s experience on this score, please stop here, check out npym.org and get about discerning what Annual Session might have to offer you. If you want testimony to community in spite of multiple forms of difficulty read on.

2012: PLU Reports back from World Gathering; Benigno Sanchez Eppler. Many messages of renewal in closing worship and work to get there. RantWoman broke her arm a week before Annual Session. RantWoman spent all of Annual Session seesawing between pain and the downsides of different painkiller regimens. More than enough said. RantWoman held daily one-person worship lethargy events during Worship Sharing time. RantWoman is deeply grateful that every day someone sat down for a visit and that someone was willing either just to help RantWoman tie up her hair OR let RantWoman teach them how to French braid. RantWoman in passing also particularly upheld epistle committee and participation by one youth attending with his grandparents and masterful attention from his age group leader.

2011: PLU RantWoman’s attention and Light were needed by situations not suitable for specifying in further detail except to say this was a blessing as far as channeling scorching opinions of other matters.

2009, 2010: U of MT. RantWoman was Daily Bulletin editor. RantWoman has written previously of her long life history with the University of MT campus. RantWoman loves having Annual Session in Missoula, and RantWoman also always has to tend to layers of memory.

2008: Oregon State. Great swimming pool. Same great dorm windows that always irresistibly draw people to sit and dangle their legs several stories above the ground. RantWoman has decidedly mixed feelings about the allure of these dorm windows and visitations to Annual Session by state police who prefer to err on the side of caution as far as gravity and potential lawsuits.

2007: Reed College. RantWoman thinks, looking back that by this year she at least had taken up with Ambassador Thwack the Badly-behaved White Cane. RantWoman THINKS she was in pretty good shape, but her roommates, Grandma and granddaughter had some rough moments RantWoman found herself unsure how to uphold. RantWoman learned after the fact that those organizing Annual Session need upholding as far as relationships with our venues. RantWoman thinks that is enough said about the change in venue for the next year.

2006: PLU abbreviated session before Friends General Conference. RantWoman was very glad to get to go to the FGC gathering. RantWoman also was glad to help about accessibility. And RantWoman was not yet speaking up for herself as far as desire to consume Quaker print in forms accessible for her. Sigh. But half the allure of Gathering was just a big break from other family members’ medical issues.

2005: PLU. RantWoman had some role related to Interest Groups for Annual Session planning. RantWoman does not think she fulfilled it brilliantly. On the contrary, RantWoman thinks it MAY have been at least a mixed blessing that RantWoman left Annual Session 2 days early to fly to MT and tend to RantMom after cancer surgery. RantWoman also thinks she had some undiagnosed eye yuck because the eye yuck was finally diagnosed after RantWoman returned from MT in September.

2004: U of MT. Two months out from surgery for detached retina. Face still swollen with a serious “my doctor got paid to do that to me bruise.” RantWoman spent lots of time falling asleep in plenaries or on whatever furniture was handy in air conditioned spaces. RantWoman was blessed by a travelling companion who asked her thoughtfully whether she ever considered having an anger management moment. No, not in the last 11 seconds or so. And what about a service python? RantWoman considers the idea of a service python so deliciously inappropriate that she grins every time it comes up. Thank heaven RantWoman does not try to get into a cab with an actual python though.

2003: U of MT: RantWoman’s other arm was still in some kind of cast or exercise regimen. RantWoman apologizes for not remembering who were Friends in Residence….

RantWoman is grateful to feel well-held in many ways; RantWoman does NOT think she could have handled all her own circumstances if, for instance, she also needed to tend to a child. RantWoman thus finds yet another reason to be humble and seek Light about what exactly Annual Session offers others and how to make those blessings more apparent when people are choosing whether to attend. RantWoman also darn well wants to interact with the questions more timely with respect to future years!

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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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Esther Mombo, Kenyan Theologian Reedwood Friends Church April 4-5 Let the Living Water Flow

RantWoman is ECSTATIC to have the following invitation at last  in electronic format:


http://fwccamericas.org/LivingWater.shtml

April 5-7:
Portland, Oregon.
Reedwood Friends Church.

With Esther Mombo (Nairobi YM Kenya)
Friday 6-9 pm & Saturday 10 am-5:30 pm

plenary sessions, small group discussions, singing & workshops

Includes snacks & lunch on Saturday.

Child care and some home hospitality available for Friday and/or Saturday nights

Esther Mombo is a lecturer and deputy Vice Chancellor Academics at St Paul's university Limuru, Kenya. It is here that she teaches African church history and theologies from women's perspectives. She was born and brought up in a Quaker home with her grandmother the late Enis Mugesia who was among the first Quaker converts in her village. Enis served in the women's meetings and was one of three or four women who carried out prison ministry among female prisoners. Esther was influenced by Enis Mugesia in her early days and in her choice of ministry that she undertook in theological education for herself and for the work she does today.
Her highly-regarded writings have been on such diverse topics as women's issues, HIV/AIDS, Christian-Muslim relations, and poverty in Africa. She has contributed in the development of different programmes including a first Masters Program in Christian Response to HIV/AIDS and others. She has made significant contributions to developing women's ecclesial leadership through theological training and contributed to different books including A Historical Analysis of the roles and status of Abaluyia women in Kenyan Quaker Christianity 1902-1979 and Harahamisi and Juma: The Development of the Women's Meetings in East Africa Yearly Meeting of Friends (Quakers).
She has spoken in different conferences in different Christian denominations, including the World conference of friends Kenya 2012. She is a graduate of Friends Theological college, St. Paul's, Limuru; Trinity College, Dublin; and Edinburgh University. She says, "Society is changing and has crucial issues that affect humanity. As a theological educator I hope to inform the work that women do."

Each adult is asked to contribute $40 to cover the costs for the program. Friends with financial limitations are encouraged to come and contribute as you are able.

The written text of Esther Mom's address at the 6th World Conference of Friends in Kenya
http://saltandlight2012.org/esther-mombos-reflections-conference-theme


A wonderful interview in Reform magazine from the UK
http://www.reform-magazine.co.uk/2009/09/esther-mombo-interview-the-importance-of-talking/

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Forgiving...or NOT Yet

RantWoman is having another spell of not knowing what to do with the blessings bestowed by those around her.

Recently, defined as time to season for a few weeks, the theme of Adult Education was "Forgiveness." Adult Education hour in RantWoman's Meeting sometimes offers the great gift of Friends speaking of things on their hearts without weight or opprobrium or agenda. RantWoman deeply appreciates that general ambiance.

RantWoman is not so sure about certain moments punctuating the ambiance. For instance, RantWoman has been reflecting on http://quakersusanne.wordpress.com/2011/09/25/the-hard-topic-of-forgiveness/

The flow of forgiveness moments that particular weekend in Adult Ed was such that RantWoman just blurted out "I would not mind not needing all 70 x 7 times of forgiving sometimes just for my own family."

Pedantic Friend: "Oh, in old Jewish tradition, 70x7 is just any arbitrary large number" RantWoman: "Look, I really do not care whether it's a precise number or an arbitrary one. The point is I am spending every forgiveness hit I have forgiving those close to me"

RantWoman heard some reference to infinity which may or may not be derivable from the "any arbitrary number." Miraculously RantWoman managed NOT to walk into a pedantry pissing contest, something like "well, if you had ever taken a Number Theory class you would know that there are several levels of infinity and if RantWoman says she is spending every bit of forgiveness she has, you don't even want to know what all that means. " NO RantWoman, if you want to talk about Number Theory, Adult Ed PROBABLY is not the most fertile ground...."

Back to forgiving

... and forgiving

and forgiving

and forgiving AGAIN!

. . . or . . . NOT yet?

Wait! Pedantic Friend is on RantWoman's list of people with whom RantWoman still needs to name problems before forgiveness is even going to make sense. Urk!

A nice blog post that says some of what is one RantWoman's mind only more nicely than RantWoman can:
http://peteraltschul.authorsxpress.com/2012/12/07/channeling/

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Grace: Diversity in Prayer

RantWoman's body is back from the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology conference, fished out of the unheated but nearly swimmable pool with a view. RantWoman's soul still seems to be alternately staring off to the east towards the folds and shadows up the Columbia Gorge or soaring off to the west over the expanses at the mouth of the Columbia. RantWoman's life still evokes the Elizabeth Fry quote about "too much tossed... do all thing heartily unto the Lord." RantWoman means here to reflect on her experiences, what another attender called "spiritual hospitality," what RantWoman has also heard described as "diversity in prayer."  Okay, not THAT diverse:  RantWoman never once was led to drag out her sudoku book. Maybe it was the tendering hues of all the quilts hung around the meeting room, but RantWoman was struck by a generous ease in being together.

At the Women's Theology Conference, the daily small-group meetings for spiritual intimacy are called home groups. In past years, home groups have been offered fairly rigid descriptions of  worship sharing and worship discussion formats. Worship Sharing means Friends in start with queries and wait in silence with the expectation that a message on the queries will be given to each woman in turn without any need to clarify or riff on what resonates from what others share. When this is done well it is powerful; RantWoman herself has uneven experience about this. RantWoman was touched by a NWYM Friend's story of having to sit with the idea again after speaking to a member of the planning committee and finally feeling centered in the practice. Worship discussion permits much more crosstalk, chatter, and reactivity.

In past years, women were urged to choose one format or the other in advance, on the theory that women have definite preferences. This year the women creating home groups left both agreement bout form for worshipping together and discernment about queries for each session to....God and each group individually. RantWoman's group spent a few moments on the first day coming to unity that each woman should feel invited to say whether or not she welcomes additional discussions about her messages. In several cases women welcomed more discussion but little was forthcoming. RantWoman and one group member identified common interest in talking outside the group about blindness issues; then we passed up the first opportunity, a chance encounter on our morning walks and caught up again later. RantWoman LOVES Quaker gatherings for exactly this sense of space.

RantWoman for numerous reasons she has not fully analyzed seldom gets to know people very quickly. RantWoman found it a blessing to be in a group with several Friends she knows but not well, and better in important ways because of being in home group together. RantWoman's life is rich in difficult topics, the sort of experiences which make people gasp when she reports the good news. RantWoman felt blessed to be delivered of short pithy comments on only one of these themes AND felt well--held by Friends' responses.


RantWoman's group leaders seeded each day's sharing with some kind of query and the format of subsequent sharing wandered a couple different directions. One day other members of the group besides RantWoman simply settled into silent worship and only articulated the realization that it was on point when someone said "let's get started;" the whole group laughed when someone said she thought we already were.

Another point where RantWoman heard specific and intentional openness to leadings of Spirit rather than rigidity about specific practices was threads of discussion about whether women are comfortable or not with spoken verbal prayer. Friends from RantWoman's Yearly Meeting tend not to be terribly comfortable with verbal prayer, out loud in front of God and everybody. Friends from Northwest Yearly Meeting tend to pray loudly and enthusiastically for all kinds of situations. RantWoman has a lot of Presbyterians in her orbit who like to pray out loud so RantWoman is pretty heterodox on the question. RantWoman was tender, though, to hear women from both programmed and unprogrammed traditions talking about experiences with prayer aloud: women seemed to manage it better than one would predict from their initial reaction. Or maybe this was just the "spiritual stretching" mentioned in the epistle.

Some years, references to Goddess or the feminine divine became points of difficulty.  RantWoman has a sense from reading women's papers that definitely not everyone starts out automatically speaking of Jesus or even in terms of God at all. And RantWoman overheard snippets of conversation indicating deep listening and rich sharing regardless of words used for movements of spirit.
One final note about RantWoman personal points of heterodoxxy: RantWoman is a choir director's kid. This means RantWoman besides enthusiasm for music in general is utterly unQuakerly in her enthusiasm for ...practicing / rehearsing. Even worse for a women's conference: RantWoman did not rabidly dislike the conference music but did sometimes think male voices would help the chords. This does NOT mean RantWoman has any leading to invite men to this event but it definitely is one reason Ran tWoman is clear to appreciate both single-gender and mixed gender events.
music chant meditation

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How they do it in Canada

RantWoman notes with interest several things about this post from the Canadian YM Annual Session and other things CYM:

http://www.quaker.ca/Committees/hmac/blog/cym-2012-camrose-ab-bible-study-monday-morning

--What CYM calls its two variants of what RantWoman takes to be Worship Sharing

--Worship Sharing departing from Bible study and it appears from a challenging passage at that.

--Blogging the course of Annual Session. RantWoman in many contexts finds this kind of dispatch helpful in her h olding in her care even ts sh e is un able for one reason  or another she is unable to attend in person.

--The YM website includes links to several CYM blogosphere publishers of Truth.

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Thoroughness applied to everyday life: Query

RantWoman feels blessed to have this to share and VERY clear not to share from whence it came, except to say a weighty Friend

Readings:
from Friends World Conference, 1951
"The outstanding religious feature of Quakerism has been its recovery of ... primitive Christian insight, and the thoroughness it has applied it to every part of life." p.21

"In our search for the greatest of all treasures (spiritual experience) we need knowledge from whatever source spiritual experience may come ; we need to try to understand the experience of others ; we need an appreciation of the worthwhileness of what we seek ; and we need to go to that place whereat all the evidence suggests that the treasure (spiritual experience) is to be found. "

Query:
from today Are members of our meeting alive to the necessity of continuing study and sharing in order to reach a deepening understanding of 'the things of the Spirit' and of their relevance to life?

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October 27 Disabilities Awareness Item

Hi All

Today I have been thinking about the inquiry from the Discipline Committee about what our Meeting’s experience / practice has been about mental illness.

On my usual route to Meeting I walk by Magus books on 42nd between the Ave and 15th NE. I frequently feel the way I imagine a recovering addict feels in the presence of his or her previous temptation: I can nearly always read the titles in the window but I really do not dare think of buying either to scrape my eyes painfully over myself or to collect dust while I find time and a human to help me read. On Sunday, the book that caught my eye is called the Essential Nash, a collection of writings by Nobel Prize winning economist John Nash. John Nash was the subject of a book called A Beautiful Mind by Silvia Nasr and also of a movie by the same name. He was a diagnosed schizophrenic. He was not the only or particularly the oddest character hanging around the math library when I was in college. He is interesting in a way I do not have time right now to look up further: at some point he stopped taking medication and as he has aged, either his symptoms have subsided or his ability mostly to control them has increased. The idea of schizophrenia subsiding with age at least some of the time seems like a very interesting idea and it would occur to me to see whether that also happens to others. Sure, in what additional free time, with what flock of graduate students trailing along behind?

Then two Meeting-related people wandered across my mind. One appeared in the form of a letter addressed to the Clerk of Peace and Social Concerns committee. Someone familiar with that Friend’s history was in the office at the same time I was picking up mail. I was VERY grateful just to hand the problem off. The second situation actually has blog entries but the blog entries are not all the story. Both situations wandered across my mind in the same context where people regularly exposed to others’ traumas need to take particular spiritual and emotional care of themselves to stay centered and healthy. Perhaps that is more than enough said. If not, you are invited to ask me in person what is on my mind.

But another Friend comes to mind in a bit fuller palette as introduced on my blog:
Friend Poet. Friend Poet is actually a published poet. Friend Poet's spoken ministry is prone to even more poetic excursions than RantWoman's blog. When RantWoman was recording clerk, she used to despair of capturing, when necessary, the essence, of Friend Poet's words until one day the Light dawned. Friend Poet has a couple favorite themes and there is nearly always a nugget in his words. Further, it's poetry and if one misses part of the point, it's poetry anyway. Even nicer: Friend Poet seldom reads and even less often objects to anything in minutes. Friend Poet's words, while an essential ingredient in the whole stew, tend not to be key to capturing big decisions or sense of the meeting and therefore RantWoman can feel more liberated in her attentions than with some other Friends.
From http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2009/11/cast.html#comments


Here are excerpts from some more blog entries with substantial content about this Friend.
First, from an entry that wanders among a long list of themes, http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/11/baptism.html

:
…The Holy Spirit showed up in worship--TWICE. The first time was a newcomer offering a memorial for someone for the sort of odor enhanced challenging presence whom many Friends undoubtedly wish God would lead to bathe. The memorial called him a teacher and did not offer further commentary on matters of God and bathing. A good while later came a message about God loving everyone in their own way and undoubtedly loving the Unwashed Teacher just as the visiting speaker unquestionably did.

A message began teasing around the edge of RantWoman's mind about recent ministry offered by Friend Poet during Adult Education: there had been discussion in small clumps of queries something to do with feeling the presence of God among other people. Two Friends in RantWoman's small group offered thoughts related to their station and education and presence in specific communities. RantWoman does not remember what Friend Poet said in the small group but was entranced with what he said when Friends were asked to reflect thoughts back to the larger group.

Friend Poet is among the vast fellowship, people of every station who make all their fashion choices at Value Village and Friend Poet spoke of feeling the presence of God in whatever other people had worn and handled his clothes before they came to him at Value Village. RantWoman suspects that several of those assembled just brushed this off as more randomness from Friend Poet, but this specifically spoke to RantWoman's flair for the physical. …

Two more items where Friend Poet figures.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/09/slug-rut-vulnderable-to-god-and-others.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/01/cliffhanger-catchup.html

Both of these entries have multiple threads. Please bear with and focus only on the Friend Poet parts.

There is much more I think I couldsay about Meeting and this Friend walking together. I do not feel called to say any of it tonight.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

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October 19 Disabilities Awareness Item

Dear Friends,

Today’s message is several items about deaf people, language issues, and other life changes. I am seasoning whether to make this more than one entry. Frankly, I am not quite sure why the topic is so firmly evoking Inner Blowtorch but I am offering a variety of choices about how to interact with the topic. The material probably most topical to do with anything at Meeting is at the bottom; I expect Friends will find the excursion to get there variably interesting.

First, a blog link to a video about sign language interpreters, presuming on people’s time and capacities, and privilege.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/07/really-great-client-education-sign.html

The video link on this blog page is about 6 minutes long. Warning: the F word appears once along with pointed discussion of ethics. Youtube serves up a bunch of other videos about sign language interpreting. I followed one link and got some great ones about teachers too.

The interpreter in the above video is a hearing person. Here is an item where people might actually work with a deaf interpreter. This Item is from the Seattle Times via an interpreters’ discussion list.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016474808_bhutanrefugee12.html

The rudimentary sign language used by deaf people who have never had a chance to attend school, for instance with their also unschooled hearing family members, is called home sign. Often an educated deaf person or a very experienced hearing interpreter will have the best success working out how to communicate with people in this situation. The article is interesting to me because it talks a little about this in the context of a community college class helping acclimate the refugees to life in he US and the elaboration of their language as they work together.

When I think about sign language and the power of people coming together, I think about the school for the deaf in Nicaragua. Apparently some member of the Somoza family was deaf and one of the dictator’s female relatives helped organize a school in the 1970’s before the Nicaraguan revolution. The first generation of students came from all over Nicaragua and all used individual versions of home sign. Over a couple generations and across several political regimes, the language has become much more complex with dramatically increased use of abstract concepts and metaphor. There are lots of articles about this; the one here seems like a decent basic introduction.
http://www.news-medical.net/news/2004/09/18/4883.aspx

Now the lawsuit of the week. Medical facilities in Seattle are probably better about interpreter issues than in other parts of the country and I still spend a fair amount of time hearing about deaf people experiencing communications barriers. I expect that more cases like the one in this news item get reported on sign language interpreter lists than on spoken language lists but I see more than one a month on the email lists I read. In other words, 20 years after the ADA, with a number of processes in place to encourage people to get services to deaf people right, LOTS of people still miss the boat.
In the case here issues include:
Relying on fallible and non-functioning technology for one encounter.
Repeatedly failing to book an interpreter even when there is sufficient advance notice.
Repeatedly relying on untrained family members.
Unnecessarily traumatizing a child with exposure to complex and sensitive medical topics.

http://sentinelsource.com/news/local/hospital-settles-lawsuit/article_5673faa3-8b20-5c8d-a0e4-d65e8d021d48.html


Hospital settles lawsuit
A Keene hospital has agreed to pay a $25,000 federal fine and put in place a program to provide interpreters to patients who are deaf or hard of hearing in a settlement of a lawsuit alleging discrimination.

In documents filed last week in U.S. District Court in Concord, Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene disputed the discrimination claim and denied liability in the case, which is the second lawsuit against the hospital alleging discrimination against a deaf patient in seven years.

“We agreed to this consent decree because we are committed to providing effective communications with our deaf and hard-of-hearing patients and we continue to focus on patient-centered excellence at the hospital,” said Sandra M. Phipps, senior director of development and communications. “It’s our commitment to provide compassionate, quality health care for every patient every time and in our looking at the consent decree and examining programs in place, we do recognize that the level and consistency of services to our deaf and hard-of-hearing patients in the past is not what we expected and not what they deserved.”

The recently resolved case involved three visits to the hospital in October 2009 by a patient, Laura Waldren, who is deaf. According to court documents, Waldren made an appointment at the hospital to see a doctor and requested a sign-language interpreter be present at the visit, which was scheduled for two days later. When she arrived at the appointment, an interpreter was not available and doctors and nurses relied on written notes to communicate with Waldren, documents showed.

A few days later, Waldren contacted the hospital to inform officials that she needed to be seen in the emergency room and would need an interpreter. Waldren’s mother, Jeanne Waldren of Vermont, drove her to the hospital, along with Waldren’s 9-year-old daughter. When they arrived, hospital staff said a sign-language interpreter was not available and relied first on a faulty video interpretation system before requesting that Waldren’s mother interpret for them.

Waldren’s mother, who is not a trained sign-language interpreter, had difficulty explaining technical medical terms to her daughter, but felt she had to act as an interpreter for her daughter to receive medical care, according to the complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. And because Waldren’s mother had to be with her daughter in the examination room to serve as an interpreter, Waldren’s young daughter also had to be in the room while the doctors discussed sensitive medical issues with Waldren, the complaint said.

Following the emergency room visit, Waldren made a follow-up appointment a few days later and, again, an interpreter was not available so doctors relied on written notes and Waldren’s mother to explain that she would need an outpatient surgical procedure, according to the court documents. Waldren’s mother was not in the room when doctors asked Waldren to sign a consent form for the surgery, which Waldren didn’t understand, according to the complaint. Throughout her visits, Waldren was never asked to sign a waiver form agreeing to see a doctor without an interpreter, which is part of the hospital’s written policies, according to the complaint. The hospital’s policy on providing services for patients who are deaf or hard of hearing was stipulated in a 2005 settlement between the hospital and an unidentified patient and the Disability Rights Center, according to court documents.

According to the 51-page consent decree in the latest case, the hospital has 90 days to design a program to provide appropriate aids and services to patients. Among the requirements of the settlement: the hospital must designate at least two staff members who are available round-the-clock to arrange for auxiliary aids, such as interpreters, when needed by patients; it has to compile a list of freelance interpreters within 30 days and sign a contract within 60 days with an interpreter to be available when needed; and it must create and maintain a log of requests for auxiliary services.

A team of hospital officials has been working for about three months on reshaping the hospital’s program to improve services for people who need interpreters and building its network of sign-language interpreters who can work on-site when requested, said Phipps, the hospital’s spokeswoman The hospital has added a new full-time staff position as coordinator for the hospital’s interpretation services and is in the hiring process, Phipps said. The agreement also requires training for staff members and postings in the hospital directing patients on how they can request interpretation services if they need them.

The N.H. Business Review reported that the hospital also reached a settlement with Laura and Jeanne Waldren that was not disclosed in court documents.

Casey Farrar can be reached at 352-1234, extension 1435, or cfarrar@keenesentinel.com.

Miscellaneous informational bits
A deaf person whose first language is ASL will sometimes write English with ASL syntax. This can be important to know when looking at written documents and can be a big difference between someone who learns ASL as a child and older people who lose hearing after a lifetime of work and reading and writing in English. For extra entertainment value, one can mix in with ASL syntax literal translations done by someone working from a dictionary for another language into English.

American Sign Language and English are two different languages. Assuming someone will use ASL just because he or she has lost hearing is just like assuming someone with vision loss will automatically and instantly be adept at Braille. Ha!

There is a Law and Order episode where the twist revolves around whether a deaf or hearing person wrote a message through the relay system to assist deaf people with making phone calls. Two deaf people who both have TTY’s or an internet connection will contact each other directly and type back and forth. If a conversation involves a deaf and a hearing person, calls will go through a relay system: the deaf person types and an operator reads it to a hearing person; the hearing person speaks and the relay operator types for the deaf person.
For anyone just assembling current info, here is a link to the WA Relay Service; at this point there are also internet-based relay services:
http://www.washingtonrelay.com/



===============
Thinking about different experiences:
My family had a long-time friend who lost hearing due to a stroke at some point in mid-life. I never knew him before he lost his hearing. He could lip-read really well and he and my mother could talk for hours. For me, it was easy to get him started talking just by writing a question or two on paper. I am not sure why no one ever thought to ask him about a Voice carryover telephone, one that would have allowed him to talk but required callers to have a relay service type the other side of the call.
To me sometime it would be interesting to do worship sharing, say at a retreat, about Friends experiences of disability over time, both lifespan and in terms of different realities in different eras.

For the woman in the article above, insisting on communicating by writing notes was completely inappropriate because she used and preferred another communication method. However for many people who lose hearing late in life, writing notes can be really, really important.

Our Meeting has had two different Deaf members at different times. One I think married someone who had done a lot of interpreting for him; they frequently worshipped together and Meeting budgeted for an ASL interpreter as part of including the whole family in our community. In the other case, the Friend relied on his wife and never used any other option; all of their children also used Sign language .

Once in awhile I am called to meditate about whether some message has not gotten through just because of literally not being heard.

In the Light.

(RantWoman)

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Disinterest

RantWoman's spiritual compost heap feels VERY well aerated after this weekends gathering for Pacific Northwest Quarterly Meeting. This is not because RantWoman's proposed interest group was received to grand acclaim.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/09/interest.html

It was not even because RantWoman's interest group took place.

That's right. NO ONE signed up.

Okay, okay. RantWoman is not automatically distressed. For one thing, RantWoman would NOT necessarily mind in the least not needing to talk about much on her mind.


RantWoman was having Star Treklike distortions in the space time continuum as reflected in the clock on RantWoman's cellphone so RantWoman did not linger very long to wait for anyone to show up without signing up. One Friend made excuses about childcare but RantWoman would not have been ready to interact with children anyway. RantWoman was very glad to get to go to an interest group with John Helding about more of the weekend's theme.

But back to disinterest. RantWoman had no way of knowing about disinterest in advance so RantWoman prepared by UNapologetically inflicting more email on a large number of people who already find RantWoman the embodiment of email immoderation. Who says RantWoman knows when to quit? Here are RantWoman's inquiry and the results:



Subject: What do you want to know / would you come to an interest group about....
Hi Friends

This email is a request for input The bottom of this message is a description of an interest group I will lead at Quarterly Meeting, that is unless I find a way to get from Lazy F where I need to be on Friday night to Yakima for an interpreter training (on handling trauma issues, oddly enough) on Saturday 9/24. Chances are I will make the interest group and this is a request for input.

Awhile ago my clearness committee suggested I talk to children in our Meeting about life with vision loss. For a few different reasons I am clear that it would be better to start by talking to adults.

What would you most like to know about my experience?

What do you find bewildering about interacting with me?

What worries or observations do you have?

Is there someone else you wish I would ask

I DO NOT apologize for email. For one thing, you writing me back helps me keep track of things in a format I can search MUCH better than my notes in my ever scarier handwriting. I am happy to receive phone calls as well but another reason I like to start with email is that I am frequently awake later than many Friends and need to make effective use of my own time.

Also I am having to tell different people the same things over and over, including arguing various variations of "that could not possibly be a problem because we are so sincere, already spent so much time doing it wrong, think we understand based on..."

Some of the time this repetition is just exhausting. Some of the time I come away feeling drained the same way I feel drained when I have had to interpret for, say, a series of appointments with a trauma survivor and an attorney, the trauma survivor getting restimulate having to relive the story once to tell it, once when the attorney has mashed my interpretation into the kinds of sentences that legal entities understand or need to hear and I have to sight translate to check for corrections, and then the survivor has to repeat the story AGAIN in front of third parties of varying levels of awareness, hostility, eptitude / ineptness, responsiveness... Only now it's my story....

So I would like to get to clear messages much more widely understood and to get there as directly as possible.

Anyway, I mean it about wanting to hear Friends questions. I do not particularly promise to get to all of them in one interest group but I am happy to hold and work with them. Depending on interest, I am happy to consider doing a session at UFM either before or after the Interest Group at Quarterly Meeting.

Thank you for whatever observations you are led to offer.
RantWoman


Subject: Re: What do you want to know / would you come to an interest group about....
Dear RantWoman

If I were coming to your interest group, the thing that first occurs to me is talking about body language - in committee meetings, business meeting, even worship. I think this is a really hard thing for folks to get (and remember!). Your comment in Business Meeting yesterday about nodding as a way of showing approval was very helpful and appropriate. (Business Meeting had just approved something with everyone nodding but a question arose about whether the decision got recorded. RantWoman was uncertain and stood up without waiting to be recognized and had a short rant about bus drivers nodding and grunting and Quakers not even grunting. Giving examples would be great. Would you even consider a little role playing with most folks blindfolded?

I have found your comments about kids running around to be another very important and useful comment, since we don't think about it.

I hope you do get to give this interest group and look forward to hearing about it.
Sincerely,
Weighty Friend who has also previously earned a less respectful Nom de Blog.

Dear Weighty Friend…,

Thank you for your suggestions and observations. First a process point: THIS EMAIL DOES NOT REQUIRE IMMEDIATE RESPONSE. This came in as a reply/all to everyone on my original To: list. I am aware of others' grumbles about email AND I mean to take this partly as an invitation to tell a number of people the same things at the same time and to give you the option of clicking or not clicking on the individual blog posts. That way, if I grumble about how exhausting it is to have endless one on one conversations and if you want to talk amongst yourselves, you are at least all starting from common information.

Second, I do not particularly apologize for the length. In fact considering the freight train of matters frying my nerves this week, I hope you will appreciate my comparative restraint. On the other hand, if you want to unload some more cars....

--Body language? It's not exactly body language but everything to do with non-verbal communication. On one hand, I ask people to tell me when I offend them because I am pretty sure I achieve that more often than would be preferable and REALLY cannot read faces and am lost without verbal feedback.
The other aspect of not reading faces though is in a number of situations I have possibly misinterpreted another speaker (I need to talk to one person in particular) or I have felt like lots of people are inappropriately unresponsive to or show serious lack of awareness about something emotional where some kind of acknowledgment of difficulty or complexity would be entirely appropriate. The illustration I have used a couple times is a bit from I think Monty Python and the Holy Grail where everyone is seated at some kind of wedding and some knight shows up and starts hacking off hunks of people while the guests just keep doing whatever and do not even react. Ask me about exact situations in person or consider whether this perspective might shed light something you have experienced.

--At my proposed interest group I will do some of the things I do when I run other meetings as well as a couple additional things.

--Here are a couple blog posts about my experiences in meetings. Meeting for worship has a whole bunch of links below separately.with some links to follow
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/06/interrupt.html


meeting for memorial, but still
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/07/agnes-schmoe.html


--A miscellaneous item about running into people, my white cane and a certain much-discussed Friend's ministry of audible eye-rolling.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/06/not-blind-that-we-know-of.html


--I do not think I want to consider role-playing at this event but given enthusiasm I hear, I will hold in future consideration for a number of reasons:
--blindfolds are only one form of representing different non-standard visual experiences. Here are a couple blog entries about my experience specifically:

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/08/do-it-yourself-eye-surgery-and-plague.html


http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/12/worse-auntie-grow-your-own-lava-lamp.html


--I am nowhere near centered enough right now about a number of topics to lead a roleplay exercise. I will do well to stay centered enough to talk and do not want to think about ways of handing out alternate vision experiences.
A couple years ago, I was part of a presentation about disaster preparedness for people with disabilities.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/04/super-duper-powerpoint-festival.html


http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2009/04/taxed.html


http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/search?q=pantyhose


Before my presentation I got to go to a really great disability simulation exercise put on by someone at the Hearing Speech and Deafness Center. I am more inclined to find a forum where someone from outside can be invited to, say, UFM than to try it on my own.

I think I should stop here for now. If you have made it this far, thank you for reading. I am happy to talk in person or by phone—or not.

In the Light
RantWoman

(Dear RantWoman….two more votes for roleplays. RantWoman is not even sorry but she is for the moment unequivocally ON STRIKE about blindfold-themed tour guide service.)


Dear RantWoman,
I would love to know the spiritual path of how you are coping with your vision loss. What are the ways that you 'work around' your vision stuff.
Sometimes I get off on tangents when listening to you because sometimes you seem to be (my perception-not necessarily reality) off on tangents when talking.

Good way to go about the discussion!
Friend Peacemaker
"The only enemy is someone whose story you haven't heard."


Dear Friend Peacemaker

That's a nice question. Thank you for asking.

The rest of this is LONG so read it in chunks if that is easier. It does NOT require immediate response.

I have a whole blog, two really about things to do with the intersection between spritual and practical. I still have some really big THIS IS HOW I FEEL things in my drafts folder and right now I am really insistent about "please do not try to tell me how I do or do not feel." Feelings are feelings. What I do or do not do about them is another thing. But right now I am just trying to stay centered most of the time and ride through gaps between what I have figured out and what others around me have any clue about.

Here are some blog links
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/09/racism-and-privilege-workshop.html



http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/08/believe-and-be-healed.html


http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/07/healed-blessed-jesus.html


http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/05/path-to-spiritual-perfection.html


http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/06/allergic-to-joy-and-peace.html


Lots of people talk about tangents. Sometimes I am bored or trying to hold onto the right sized pieces and not overwhelm others with what is on my mind. That is not nice to the other half of a conversation, but I have to start where I am. The Overwhelmed point is NOT trivial: I can tell people get overwhelmed lots of different ways and I would not mind in the least not having all these overwhelming circumstances about my life. But sometimes I really mean it about this is my reality. I get to live it all the time. You all just get to visit. Here are some suggestions to help us cope!

Surveys say vision loss is the disability a lot of people fear the most. I have had bad eyes my whole life so I have a whole bunch of different issues but sometimes I have all I can do managing my own stuff and I just have to let other people deal with their overwhelmed feelings other ways. Sometimes I think people underestimate how much simple things matter.

Sometimes I think I try to wander away from topics that are hard or painful or where the first thing that comes to mind is formulated in ways that would not necessarily be the most helpful in a given conversation. Or when there are multiple ways to say something and I do not have energy for the most confrontational even if it is entirely true. But if I wander away in public, especially if something REALLY hurts I might actually NOT want to talk about it right then and there.

To be honest, sometimes I resent the hell out of the off-topic issue. During last year's nominations process EVERY TIME I tried to bring up something to do with dsability it got declared off topic. That is only one of several really clear reasons I would not just resign! Basically, EVERYONE almost has made some of the same mistakes over and over. I do not really expect perfection but there is ALL kinds of room for improvement.

Plus I get to get in people's faces about the same topics in multiple parts of my life so at least I get to be consistent. So we need to hold this subject in the Light for awhile and work on other stuff.

But THANK YOU again for asking.

In the Light.
RantWoman

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