Interest group at Gathering

Life has been crazy-busy for me, in between the trips I am taking. So, in preparation for FGC's Gathering and before my last few minutes of free time are taken up by some other silly thing I remember needs doing, I thought I'd share this with you:

Fellow Quaker bloggers Robin and Martin and I have plans to convene an interest group on Monday night at the Gathering. Thanks to Beppe for his early input and support for this idea.

Here's the interest group's title and description. I believe a list of interest groups will be included in the registration packet that Friends receive on-site.

On Fire! Renewing Quakerism through a Convergence of Friends

Excited by the renewal of classic Quakerism? Want to reclaim traditional disciplines and language that seem on the brink of being lost? Interested in new forms for a living faith? We'll share how we are communicating across Quaker schisms and addressing our spiritual hunger as Friends. Hosted by Friends from QuakerQuaker.org.

Perhaps we'll see some of you there... if not on Monday night, then other times during the week.

Blessings,
Liz

UPDATE, Sixth Month 2006: Martin has asked me to "tag" this post so it will become part of what I think of as an online archive about the 2006 Gathering. So here 'goes: fgcgathering06.

UPDATE, Seventh Month 2006: To read some of what happened during the interest group, take a look at this post-Gathering entry.

Bearing witness in a commercially-run household

This week my partner and I have been in south Florida, visiting our 5-year-old niece and her folks. I am beginning to think of our visits as an opportunity to bear witness to a different way of being in the world, compared to what Madison is exposed to here, and how we live our own lives as Friends.

Madison is a vocal, demonstrative little Disney princess, and when she is not in school and when we aren't visiting, her usual daytime activity is watching television:

network TV
cable TV
TiVo
DVDs.

Not necessarily in that order.

So when we visit, one of the first things we do is entice Madison away from the boob tube.

"Madison, do you want to play a game with us?"

No answer. Eyes staring straight ahead at Scooby Doo.

"Hmm. Guess not. (audible sigh) Well, we'll go over here and you can visit us whenever you want."

Three seconds later, our little princess plops herself at the chair next to me. "What are you doing?" she wants to know.

"Just drawing..." and soon we are sharing a pen or some crayons back and forth.

Yesterday, while my sweetie was taking a nap and Madison's folks were at work, Madison asks me: "Do you want to exercise with me?"

Tired as I was, I pulled myself up and joined her in the living room. "Leg circles!" she announces, and falls to her side, lifting one leg into the air and making small circles with it. I join her, and we move into leg scissors, push-ups, and squats.

When we're done, she asks me if I want to play a game. "I'm good at playing games," she announces. But I say I just want to lay on the floor a bit, and we start making rhymes together:

Is that a rat?
No, a bat.
Oh drat, it's on the mat!

My reward is a little chuckle from this precious little girl.

Then I say, "Once upon a time..." and she rolls her eyes like a teenager might.

"What?! You don't want to help me make up a story?" I ask. Eye-roll...

"Well, how about I tell you a story from my own life?" and she suddenly becomes alert and nods her head vigorously.

I tell her about the time I saw a man pull out a gun and how I called the police; and about the time I was on a sailboat for the first time in my life and a thunderstorm broke open the skies and I thought I was going to die for sure.

After about 20 minutes, we are both still, and I say to her, "Hey, Madison, do you know what this is called, what we've been doing all this time?"

"No, what?"

"It's called being. We don't have to DO anything; we can just BE. Isn't this fun?"

Vigorous head-nod. "Yes!"

And for a few hours yesterday, we had no television, no Pretty Pretty Princess, no Kim Possible computer games.

Will it make a difference after we are gone, when the television turns into the babysitter and her bedtime story is a cartoon figure off of TiVo?

Well, it seems to make a difference for those few days when my partner and I are in town. At least to me.

Blessings,
Liz

Yearly Meeting and other Friendly travels

Well, there's no way to know when I will have time or energy I write another post for awhile. I'm about to begin a series of travels to a number of yearly meetings and other Quaker events in the U.S. and Canada.

26-29 Fifth Month 2006
Northern Yearly Meeting (north-central Wisconsin)

7-11 Sixth Month 2006
Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association (SAYMA; near Asheville, North Carolina)

1-7 Seventh Month 2006
FGC Gathering (Tacoma, Washington)

25-30 Seventh Month 2006
Iowa Yearly Meeting Conservative (on the campus of Scattergood Friends School)

12-19 Eighth Month 2006
Canadian Yearly Meeting (Winnipeg, Manitoba)

Most of these trips are solo and some of them are on behalf of Friends General Conference, but I'll meeting up with Friends I know either through FGC or through the blogosphere.

But believe me, if Way opens and I have a chance to report "from the field" about any of these Quaker events, I will (as I am led, of course)!

Blessings,
Liz

Keeping God at the center

The past week or so has had me filled with a whirlwind of thoughts, concerns, and emotions. My heart has been weighed down with sadness over how some things have progressed in my life of late, including and most especially among Friends.

During Meeting for Worship, though, I was made to understand that I had been placing myself at the center of my concern:

How was I going to get through this?
How was I going to deal with whatever decision I would make in the end?

When I remembered that God is at the center of my faith, when I returned God to that center, I felt a shift inside me. My breathing lightened. My burdens lightened. The fog cleared a bit from my very fuzzy brain.

I can't say that I've reached clearness about how to move forward with certain difficulties, but I can say that I'll be paying attention to where I am and where God is in relation to how I view my experience in the world over the next couple of days.

It's as if this simple affirmation, God is at the center, has helped me detach from the worldly worries I was carrying. Detach, yes, but not be so far removed from things that I will slip into denial or procrastination. But by detaching just a bit emotionally as a result of putting God at the center, I have gained some emotional breathing room and a different spiritual view of what I am facing.

Pretty cool.

Blessings,
Liz

P.S. I am grateful that Martin has written about his understanding of keeping God at the center. It was nice to re-read this piece at a time like this.