I sort of got what I wished for...
Feb. 5th, 2017 06:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeThe children didn't turn up until very late today for First Day School, so I got to sit in Meeting for almost half an hour instead of trying to wrangle them all. It also turned out to be only one out of the sibling set of three, the cooperative eight-year-old, so it worked out in my favour, since I only had to entertain her for about twenty minutes. We made gluten-free Rice Krispy squares, which turned out reasonably well (somehow mine always turn out super fluffy instead of dense the way I'm accustomed to them being when other people make them).
It worked out well for me, since I slept pretty badly last night and was not really in any kind of shape to chase after the older boy today. I spent all night waking up from nightmares induced by playing way too much 7 Days to Die with my friend V. I'm doing much better in the game now, although I'm still not very good at it. Yesterday we played up until just past the "Blood Moon," when the zombies in the game all swarm and go berserk and try extra hard to kill you, and we made a mistake trying to secure our temporary shelter. We thought we were safe, and suddenly we were being overrun from almost all sides and it was all extremely stressful. So my subconscious took hold of that and ran with it all freaking night long. Thanks, brain. :P
Otherwise, Meeting went well. Today was potluck day, and I met several new people. Two were visiting from a Meeting near Philadelphia (lots and lots of Old Quaker Families™ there), and the others were new attenders, so I tried to be as welcoming and not-overwhelming as possible with them. They seem really nice, and so I hope they decide to come back. My Clearness Committee was there, too (minus one member), to meet up and finalize their report for next Sunday's Meeting for Worship for Business.
For those of you unfamiliar with Quaker process, I applied to officially become a Member of the Meeting last month (I submitted a letter to the Meeting which was read out loud at Meeting for Business by the Clerk), and they decided that I should then take the next step, which was to meet with a Clearness Committee, which in my case consists of three people. There's no set number of people, but it's usually 3-4, I think, unless the Meeting is too small to accommodate that number. A Clearness Committee is there to help an aspiring Member discern whether their Leading is truly to become a Member, or whether they need to wait and learn some more, or maybe even reconsider.
Leadings and discernment are another big part of the Quaker process: everything is done with great deliberation, which I must confess appeals to me a lot. It will not surprise most of you when I say that I myself am not a person who makes decisions easily: I tend to weigh as many sides of a question as possible before coming to a conclusion, and the more important a decision, the longer it will take me. That's not to say that I can make small decisions quickly—just ask anyone who's ever gone out to a restaurant with me. :P
I met with my Clearness Committee last Wednesday, while I was in the midst of Landlady Woes™. We arranged to meet at someone else's house, since one of the members of my committee is allergic to dogs. We spent nearly two hours talking, during which they asked me lots of questions about my spiritual path, and why I was drawn to the Quaker community to begin with. It was very intense, and all three women on my committee are very passionate about this, which made for a great conversation. One of them, amusingly enough, kept coming to my "defence," as the other two kept getting excitable and interrupting me. She kept telling them to let me finish my sentences, which was almost as distracting as the interruptions themselves. Eventually I had to—nicely—tell her that it was okay, that I could advocate for myself if I really needed it, and we ended up having a laugh over it. All in all, I thought it went very well, and I'm curious to see what they've put in their report.
And that concludes this week's adventures.
It worked out well for me, since I slept pretty badly last night and was not really in any kind of shape to chase after the older boy today. I spent all night waking up from nightmares induced by playing way too much 7 Days to Die with my friend V. I'm doing much better in the game now, although I'm still not very good at it. Yesterday we played up until just past the "Blood Moon," when the zombies in the game all swarm and go berserk and try extra hard to kill you, and we made a mistake trying to secure our temporary shelter. We thought we were safe, and suddenly we were being overrun from almost all sides and it was all extremely stressful. So my subconscious took hold of that and ran with it all freaking night long. Thanks, brain. :P
Otherwise, Meeting went well. Today was potluck day, and I met several new people. Two were visiting from a Meeting near Philadelphia (lots and lots of Old Quaker Families™ there), and the others were new attenders, so I tried to be as welcoming and not-overwhelming as possible with them. They seem really nice, and so I hope they decide to come back. My Clearness Committee was there, too (minus one member), to meet up and finalize their report for next Sunday's Meeting for Worship for Business.
For those of you unfamiliar with Quaker process, I applied to officially become a Member of the Meeting last month (I submitted a letter to the Meeting which was read out loud at Meeting for Business by the Clerk), and they decided that I should then take the next step, which was to meet with a Clearness Committee, which in my case consists of three people. There's no set number of people, but it's usually 3-4, I think, unless the Meeting is too small to accommodate that number. A Clearness Committee is there to help an aspiring Member discern whether their Leading is truly to become a Member, or whether they need to wait and learn some more, or maybe even reconsider.
Leadings and discernment are another big part of the Quaker process: everything is done with great deliberation, which I must confess appeals to me a lot. It will not surprise most of you when I say that I myself am not a person who makes decisions easily: I tend to weigh as many sides of a question as possible before coming to a conclusion, and the more important a decision, the longer it will take me. That's not to say that I can make small decisions quickly—just ask anyone who's ever gone out to a restaurant with me. :P
I met with my Clearness Committee last Wednesday, while I was in the midst of Landlady Woes™. We arranged to meet at someone else's house, since one of the members of my committee is allergic to dogs. We spent nearly two hours talking, during which they asked me lots of questions about my spiritual path, and why I was drawn to the Quaker community to begin with. It was very intense, and all three women on my committee are very passionate about this, which made for a great conversation. One of them, amusingly enough, kept coming to my "defence," as the other two kept getting excitable and interrupting me. She kept telling them to let me finish my sentences, which was almost as distracting as the interruptions themselves. Eventually I had to—nicely—tell her that it was okay, that I could advocate for myself if I really needed it, and we ended up having a laugh over it. All in all, I thought it went very well, and I'm curious to see what they've put in their report.
And that concludes this week's adventures.
