On my way home from NPYM Annual Sessions last summer

I recently found an old draft of this post and decided to share it.  - sm

Where do I even start this story?

It was last July (2010).  I was standing in the entryway to the airplane, watching my soon-to-be seatmate in the first class cabin put lotion on her hands, and I had a bad feeling about this.

I was on my way back to NJ from Spokane, WA and North Pacific Yearly Meeting in Missoula, MT.  I’d accepted a voluntary bump that re-routed me through Portland on a twin-prop plane, instead of going through Salt Lake City on a commuter jet.

Happily, coming into Portland, it was a calm evening, and the view of mountains and rivers was gorgeous.  (Gorges, for the Columbia River Gorge?)

Powell’s Books in PDX was an unexpected respite and delight.  I’d been upgraded to first class for the second, red-eye part of my journey, an ambiguous delight.  (Paying for real, unsweetened oatmeal for breakfast at JFK the next morning with an airline voucher was deeply satisfying.)

I was feeling ambiguous about being in first class.  I’d been thinking about class a lot lately, talking about it a fair bit, and been writing about it some.  And hoo boy, had I been feeling in touch with my working class roots and self.

So that night, on one hand, I welcomed the extra space on a flight where I would really, really need to get some sleep; Beloved Wife was overseas on a research trip, and I was going to need to get myself to central NJ on public transit from JFK when my body thought it was 3 am and I was under the weather.  But I felt somehow like I was reinforcing the class system.  And I also felt somehow like I wasn’t presenting as “good enough” for first class.  Conversely, with our family's scruffy travel backpack, no makeup, my faded Guatemalan print pants and my hiking shirt, traveling first class on a mitzvah, I also felt like I was subverting the class system.  (And representing well, too...) 

So I sat down next to my seatmate.  And oh, my, was that lotion strong.  I can’t even tell you what it smelled like, except it was very spicy somehow. 

Because first class boards early, I had a lot of time to contemplate what to do.  Or not to do.  I had a lot of time to argue with myself that that lotion wasn’t actually making me sick.  It wasn’t giving me a migraine, so it was easy to argue that it wasn’t really making me nauseated – that was just how warm the airplane was.

I’d already had a bad asthma attack this trip because of totally unexpected mold exposure; both the asthma attack and the meds to treat it had left me feeling pretty vulnerable.  The next day I’d had an ADA accessibility problem and a chemical exposure problem within the same ten-minute time frame, both of which also left me feeling tender and vulnerable.  I’d been wrestling with these kinds of issues for a good chunk of my trip, with Friends who love and respect me, and even with that love and support it was hard – so let me tell you exactly how much Ms. Scruffy Itinerant Minister Bumped Up to First Class felt like telling a total stranger her hand lotion was a problem.

I got up to pull my cell phone out of my bag in the overhead and turn it off.  Standing in the aisle, I instantly felt much better.

Shit, I thought.  I have to say something.  What do I say?  How do I ask this total stranger in first class to go wash her hands? 

I sat back down.  Lotion.  My head pounded and my stomach rebelled.

“Excuse me,” I finally said.  “I need your help with something…”

And it worked.

My seatmate was quite startled, but very responsive.  I kept it short and sweet and talked about it in terms of allergies.  She was sympathetic.  She’s from Europe and her husband’s from the US, and they have very different allergy problems when they visit family in different countries.  She obviously felt a little silly washing her hands, but then worried the fragrance in the soap would be a problem.  It was fine, and I was deeply grateful.

She drank her wine and went to sleep.

Eventually, I went to sleep, too.

All God's Quakers Got a Place on a Committee

We have an event at North Pacific Yearly Meeting Annual Session called Community Night.  It's like an open-mic night, or a a talent show, or a cabaret, but where each performer is a group within the Yearly Meeting: Monthly Meetings, Worship Groups, Preparative Meetings, Quarterly Meetings, the occasional Yearly Meeting committee or two.   

With profound apologies to Bill Staines, here are the results of the efforts of the Songwriting Committee of University Friends Meeting. 



A Place on a Committee

All God's Quakers got a place on a committee
We don't care if you're plain or pretty
You have to be a member for Worship and Ministry
But everybody's welcome on Hospitality

Religious Education is a good one, too
'Cause all our children really need you
Oversight's got a lot of clearness to do
And Building and Grounds has plenty, too

Our homeless neighbors share our worship space
And provide our Meeting with a measure of grace
Social concerns proceed apace
And the dish-washing tends to itself -- NOT!

Please take pity on the Finance Committee
They beg for money and they hardly get any
We value all our other seventeen committees
But nobody talks to Nominating

So we all got together for a Year of Discernment
It lasted eighteen months and it left us in ferment
We talked about our talent and commitments and souls
And how to share our gifts and time and anything we got now

All our Friends got a place in our Meeting
From setting out chairs to standing and greeting
Christian and Jew and Buddhist and Pagan
And all of our potlucks have options that are vegan!


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Permissions update


The Songwriting Committee had no idea this would be of such interest to other Friends, and is humbled and honored by all the interest that's been expressed.  

After consultation with the Clerk and some of the Elders of the Meeting, I (Stasa) have been asked to say:  

• Performance: Permission granted by University Friends Meeting for use for religious / spiritual performance only, with attribution to UFM for the words.  (We cannot, of course, grant permission from Bill Staines for use of the tune.  His contact information is here.)  

• Links: Feel free to link to this page or to RantWoman's page if you would like to link to the lyrics.  (This page: http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2010/07/all-gods-quakers-got-place-on-committee.html.  RantWoman's page: http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/07/all-gods-quakers-got-place-on-committee.html.)  

Thank you, Friends!

2009 NPYM Annual Sessions: Thursday (con't)

Here are more of my notes from NPYM's Annual Sessions in July. Items in italics are generally my thoughts, rather than notes per se.

Worship-sharing

In the warmth of your presence, I am safe at home
I will stand, I will stand...

[I had written out the words to Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow's "I Will Stand," which was written for a graduating class (my Ffriend Rebecca's) at the Woolman Semester.]


Interest Group: The Radical Inclusiveness of NPYM

• Quakerism is larger than Christianity; to limit Quakerism to Christianity is to limit the power of Quakerism.

• Quakerism is more powerful than Christianity alone.

• if theology is not the ultimate "test," and if the peace testimony is not the ultimate "test," then what is?
• -- is it our commitment to Quaker process?
  

• to use the blind men with the elephant as a metaphor
• -- is Quakerism about the whole elephant, or about one part?
• -- (is Christianity, and does Christianity see itself as, the whole elephant, or part?)
  

John's workshop

• if John's a tube, and for him the energy comes from above, whereas for me it comes from below... does that make me a straw?? :)

• "what's going to put me in my reverence?" "what's going to help me in my tenderness and care?"

• "settle your body first, and then place your hands" --> when did i start doing that in the opposite order?

• keeps coming back to the heart

• Meeting for Worship for Healing
• -- gathering ppl's reverence and tenderness
• -- like doing energy work in a large group
  

• "you know, healing was one of the first things Quakers got thrown in jail for" (Fox's Book of Miracles) (like Richard [Lee] said)

• haven't had someone around me "who understands the gift to help with discernment" and support, as john says

• this is beginning work, not what he does with a client or a victim of torture

2009 NPYM Annual Sessions: John Calvi

Notes from John Calvi's plenary talk

Our theme for Annual Sessions was, "Experiencing Light in Hard Times: How Do We Stay Faithful in Times of Trouble?"

italics = my thoughts as I was taking notes

• "maybe faith is an aspect of our response to trouble" (when experiencing injustice, danger)

• "[trust Allah] but tie your camel" --> practical work, practical support

• how maintain cxn to Divine?
• "when trouble comes, can we still be working in the love?"
• "can we be creative when trouble comes?"

• my responses to crisis/trouble:
• when trouble comes from w/out my community, can stand w/community support
• from w/in my community: that isolation replicates the isolation of early trauma
• --> trauma separates and isolates us from community

• MFW as soaking in the silence and stillness ("like a bathtub"), "asking to be washed in Light," "ground opening beneath us"

• "Quakerism, as one of the mystic religions, is a somatic experience, is something we feel in our bodies"

• "is is a burden to dislike someone"
  
• sometimes we enjoy it, and "that's pathology"

• "sometimes we can hug someone and say, 'when i am angry at you, i miss you' "

• "now there are some people who have been very wounded by christianity... b/c there are some aspects of christianity which are very mean"

• "we cannot blame christianity on jesus"

• encourages folks who have been wounded by christianity to become familiar with the teachings of jesus
• and folks who experience jesus need to share that in ways that "don't bump up against those wounds"

• "now these look like opposites, but these are Friends dancing together"

• difference between knowing and believing
• is "your respect for other people spiralling upward or spiralling downward?"
• if you know how things are constructed and someone shares other experience, increased disrespect for them
• if you believe: open to continuing revelation; can listen w/respect
• i know my experience, but not others' --> different kind of knowing

• what is your response to pain? how is that different from that of people around you?
• "i find that if i cry about 2 hours a week, i can keep even"
• "what are the circumstances under which you allow yourself to cry?"
• how has that changed, is changing, changes with different kinds of pain?
  
• it's okay to cry for the pain of others which you experience (remember this)

• "what brings you back" to your deepest wisdom, experiencing guidance, etc?
  
• --> ask for that

• trouble and pain have a function, "and that function is learning"
  
• understanding it moves it to wisdom
• --> lessens the intensity
• --> break the pieces down so there can be some learning
• no learning, it remains pain, trouble, conflict

• as Friends, we have a duty to come to that pinnacle where we are in awe of creation
• where we can look at the most wonderful and horrible

Q&A:

• "we can't always see where our love goes and what it accomplishes"
• --> "no love is ever wasted"

• "feeling that anger is very important"
  
• "anger needs to be given its place and respected"
  

• "i have to balance the anger so it doesn't obstruct my love or the Light that's been given me"
  

Writing from travels

Wow, yes, late June and all of July were really busy.

I traveled for most of that time: apartment-hunting, then FGC Gathering; home briefly, and hosted Full Moon Meeting for Worship and presented at ARE; then to North Pacific Yearly Meeting Annual Sessions; home briefly; then to the Unitarian Universalist Musicians Network Conference; then home and hosted Full Moon Meeting for Worship. Whew!

I have lots of notes from those experiences, and lots of thoughts, and, of course, a bunch of follow-up I need to do. So, I'm going to try to get some notes posted here.

I'm also preparing for a big move, and dealing with a couple of family near-crises, so I'm likely to be interrupted at any moment, and definitely appreciate being held in the Light.

Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference.... and some other thoughts on Quaker community

Walk with Me: Elders, Mentors, and Friends

Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference
June 16 - 20, 2010
Seabeck Conference Center

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I have heard bits of pieces about this group, this gathering, on and off for years. Since I didn't have much interaction with programmed Friends before, and since I didn't live out here, I thought it was neat, but I didn't feel much connection with it.

Assorted things have changed, and now I feel a live, electric connection.

One is my own ministry, particularly around Explicit Friends. (Click here for the background, and here for additional blog posts on this theme.)

Courageously Explicit
Three Friends walk into Meeting for Worship: a Christian, a Pagan, a Jew, and a Non-Theist. Each gives ministry from their own experience; they all experience gathered Worship. Come create the rest of the story: coming together, supporting each other, building community, helping each other be faithful, speaking explicitly.

I am certainly called to ministry among Pagan Quakers (and also Quaker Pagans). But I'm also called to ministry among Friends of different thea/ologies, to help us be in community together, to help us be faithful Friends together, to help us speak in the languages of our own experiences and listen to each other in our different languages -- coming together in our shared experience of and commitment to Quakerism.

Over the last two years, I'm coming to see that this includes Friends from different branches of Quakerism, not just within the unprogrammed tradition.

Another thing that changed was my feeling like I just couldn't understand programmed Friends, thanks to the 2007 Mid-Winter Gathering of Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC).

In 2007, our Mid-Winter Gathering was held in Greensboro, NC. There are seven different kinds of active Quakerism in that area. Wow. (I can remember, and talk at least a little about, five of them.) During our weekend together, I learned quite a bit about other kinds of Friends, and also about their points of view. There were programmed Friends with us that weekend, for whom I came to feel respect, affection, and kinship.

I even attended programmed Meeting for Worship.

Now, you've very likely heard or read me say that I'm allergic to programmed Quaker worship. To me, as soon as you introduce programming, you almost always introduce dogma and/or conflicting theaologies, and this prevents me from being in spiritual communion/spiritual community with the other folks present.

One of the things I love about unprogrammed worship in expectant waiting is that we so often come into spiritual communion with each other across that combination of differing and shared experiences of the Divine. That's part of the deep magic of Quakerism for me -- that place beyond words, beyond theaologies, in shared experience and communion.

So, I hate anything that spoils that. But I was willing to experiment, and I also felt like it was a way to show respect for Agnes and Willie Frye.

So I went to programmed worship.

It's still not my cup of tea... But it didn't feel like it wasn't Quaker.

That had been my fear: that it wouldn't "feel" Quaker to me, that it would feel like any other Christian, Protestant service, where there would be no space for me as a Friend who experiences the Divine through the Goddess, who is neither Christian nor Protestant.

So that opened up a small space inside of me: I had this experience of programmed worship, and while it's still not my cup of tea or my preferred form of worship, it still felt Quaker. It still felt like family.

Another thing that's changed is living in the Pacific Northwest, and in North Pacific Yearly Meeting, this last year. You know what? There are a lot more programmed Friends out here than in the Delaware Valley or southeastern Michigan. So, it's much harder to imagine them as incomprehensible.

Another thing is the Association of Bad Friends, a notion of Brent Bill's. (Click here for information about the ABF; click here for the Facebook group. Heh heh heh.) There are programmed Friends in the ABF, too. And you know what?, many of them are Bad Friends in the same ways that I am a Bad Friend. We laugh quite a lot at ourselves in our Association, and the ABF has gotten me into more dialogue with programmed Friends than almost, but not quite, anything else.

Back to living in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to there just being more programmed Friends around, the fact that there are more programmed Friends around leads to more experiences with individual people. There's a Friend from Freedom Friends Church in Salem, OR, sojourning in my Meeting in Seattle. I can sit next to her in worship in deep delight. What's more, I have found that Ashley's not incomprehensible to me, spiritually or personally. We don't know each other very well yet, but I can definitely say that we have become friends as well as Friends. I know I look forward to her company and grow spiritually through our friendship. I've met several other Friends from programmed churches, like Sarah. They're not incomprehensible to me, either, and I really look forward to getting to know them better.

North Pacific Yearly Meeting (NPYM)is an unaffiliated Yearly Meeting. It's an amazingly diverse Yearly Meeting, and there's a deep commitment to that diversity -- including theaological diversity. Wow. There are many reasons, current and historical, for our being unaffiliated, but part of it is out of respect for and commitment to that diversity.

(A year ago, that would have seemed pretty odd to me; I couldn't have imagined a YM with a preponderance of unprogrammed Meetings not wanting to affiliate with Friends General Conference (FGC). But I get it now. (We may yet affiliate with FGC; things are in discernment.))

When I went to NPYM Annual Sessions this year, I also got to see firsthand the deep respect between folks in our Yearly Meeting and Friends who were sojourning or visiting from Northwest Yearly Meeting -- a programmed Yearly Meeting which overlaps with us geographically. They are not strangers; they are beloved family.

Ashley and Sarah are co-clerks of next year's Pacific Northwest Women's Theology Conference. I know almost all the women on the planning committee; several of them are from my own Meeting.

And almost everyone I know who's involved has asked me if there's any way I can come back out to WA next year for it. I aim to find a way.

These folks are not strangers. These women are my beloved sisters.

I don't understand it completely yet, but I have a leading here.

And I invite other women from the unprogrammed Quaker tradition along for the ride.

Just back from Yearly Meeting

I just returned tonight from a trip to Missoula, MT for North Pacific Yearly Meeting's Annual Sessions. It was a really good experience; I'm so glad I went.

No liveblogging for me while there, although I know someone else who managed to... :)