Skip to main content

Incapacity

Image
By
I appear to be completely incapable of writing my impressions of NEYM Sessions this year.

*sigh*

Comments

Kel said…
perhaps you could try drawing, painting or collaging them instead
it always helps me when words fail
11:27 PM
Hystery said…
What happened at NEYM? I'm seeing it pop up in blogs and people are disturbed and distressed. What gives?
1:43 PM
Pax said…
Perhaps allow it time. This will allow you more time to digest, ponder and work through what is needed.
3:54 PM
Cat C-B (and/or Peter B) said…
@ Kel,

You've got a point. I'm not terribly visual--with me, it's all about the words.

But maybe if I can loosen up my attachment to logical sequences, and put out a series of impressions, without worrying too much about ordering them or building to one particular point or conclusion. I think that might work.

@ Hystery: that's a large question! In brief, we set aside our usual agenda to make room for more open-ended worship. What emerged was both good (lots of deep movement of Spirit among us) and less-good (compromises to Quaker process, and some of the strains and fault lines among us that are normally camouflaged by business being made evident).

It was complex enough that I fear that doing justice to one part of it might distort other parts. So I'm struggling.

A sort of word-collage may be the best way to describe it. It will not serve well as journalism, but then, can traditional journalism capture what it feels like to be in a body of people experiencing Spirit moving among us?

@ Fr. Jay: yeah. It kind of feels like I'm still to close to it to bring it all properly into focus.

I'll try my hand at a small snapshot or two over the next few days, and see how that goes.

Thanks.
10:49 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peter on Grief and Communities

By
Well, that was unexpected. For the last year, ever since my mom's health took a sharp downturn, I've been my dad's ride to Florence Congregational Church on Sundays. That community has been important for my dad and the weekly outing with me was something he always looked forward to and enjoyed, so I didn't mind taking him there. It meant giving up attending my own Quaker meeting for the duration, but I had already been questioning whether silent waiting worship was working for me. I was ready for a sabbatical. A month ago, my dad was Section-Twelved into a geriatric psych hospital when his dementia started to make him emotionally volatile. I had been visiting him every day at his assisted living facility which was right on my way home from work, but the hospital was almost an hour away. I didn't see him at all for three weeks, and when I did visit him there, it actually took me a couple of seconds to recognize him. He was slumped forward in a wheel chair, lo
4 comments
Read more

There is a Spirit Which I Feel

By
I was always a "rational use of force" gal. For most of my life I believed that the use of force--by which I meant human beings taking up arms and going off to war to try to kill one another--was a regrettable necessity. Sometimes I liked to imagine that Paganism held an alternative to that, particularly back in the day when I believed in that mythical past era of the peaceful, goddess-worshipping matriarchal societies . (I really liked that version of history, and was sorry when I stopped believing in it as factual.) But that way of seeing reality changed for me, in the time between one footfall and the next, on a sunny fall morning: September 11, 2001. I was already running late for work that day when the phone rang; my friend Abby was calling, to give me the news that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center in New York. So? I thought to myself, picturing a small private aircraft. Abby tried to convey some of what she was hearing--terrorists, fire--but the mag
22 comments
Read more

What Do You Mean, Quaker Pagan?

By
"What do you mean, Quaker Pagan? You can't possibly be both!" Every now and then, we do get a comment on the blog that, if politely worded, does drive at basically that point. Usually the critic is a Quaker and a Christian, though I have certainly heard similar points raised by Pagans. Let me state a few things up front. Peter and I both do consider ourselves Pagan. Neither of us considers ourselves to be Christian--I never was one, and Peter hasn't been for decades. And we do consider ourselves to be Quakers... as does our monthly meeting, which extended us membership after the normal clearness process. We consider ourselves Quaker Pagans. (Why not Pagan Quakers? Pure aesthetics; we think the word order sounds better with Q before P.) Here's the argument for why Peter and I can't possibly be both: 1. Paganism is a non-Christian religion. 2. Quakers are a Christian denomination. 3. ERGO... Yes. We've considered that argument, oddly eno
22 comments
Read more