FGC Gathering, Johnstown PA

(So much for sleepy-bye time. I guess I'll sit up for half an hour, see if I'm sleepy again then. Maybe it was the coffee ice-cream for desert? Dunno.)

I've been wondering what I want to say about my week among the 1,200 Quakers. In advance, I told some people it was like a yearly reunion with some 200 family I really did want to see. I told a few friends that this family was mostly Family, if you catch. For Quakers who had never been, I said it was a rich mix of workshops, Meetings for Worship, and social time. And the best Meetings for Worship I ever have, anywhere. For people who had been before, I said I wasn't taking a workshop, because I was serving on Ministry and Counsel for Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Concerns (FLGBTQC), and I was a bit nervous about how difficult that would be.

How was it? It was excellent. I've rarely been so busy, but at the same time, so guided.. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

On Saturday, I set out in Harold (our Corolla) for Hamilton, where I picked up two passengers, one who'd been on the Go train from Peterborough for two hours already. (metalana, you might know her, she's recently retired as a data-modeler for the Ministry of Natural Resources.) We got acquainted and followed a combination of Google Maps directions and my GPS on a gorgeous route through the topography of western New York and Pennsylvania.

Some of our conversation was about the moribund state of Quakerism in Canada. I caught myself being fairly emphatic about the point, and had a moment of considering what should I be doing with this... push... to do something about it. Well, I feel like I've gotten a bit better at listening to these pushes. After this week, I feel much better about it.

We arrived just in time to register and catch the very tail end of dinner time. I met up with dear friends, started planning my week, and generally blissed out a bit.

Sunday saw me trying to plan meetings, catch up with friends, do committee work, go to meetings, contribute... a pile of things. Plus many naps and walks by myself. And really, that was the tone of the week. Not busy for busy sake, but many things that felt like they needed doing, and for many of them, that I was the right person to do them. That felt really wonderful. Some of this was continuing the story I felt started at the Midwinter Gathering- one major thread, I was on an ad-hoc committee asked to consider a request from FGC's publications arm to help write a pamphlet on welcoming LGBTQ people to Quaker Meetings. Now, Quakers work in committee; and I needed to get between 7 and 9 people together from various other committees to start this work. At Gathering, amongst 1,200 other Quakers, with all of everyone's other committments? It felt impossible, especially since 4 or so of them didn't know yet they were being called into this meeting.

We did it. And it's moving forward, for next Midwinter.

So, about feeling guided: Sunday at lunchtime I ran into the first of the people who didn't know I was drafting her for a meeting; she said she would be happy to come, and we set a time. Then she said she had been looking for me. I hadn't spoken with her since last year at Gathering, when she and I had taken a workshop on "Quaker Quest", a very cleverly designed outreach program that took off like gangbusters in the UK and had just begun being tried in North America. Well, I must have made an impression in the workshop, because (as FGC staff responsible for the North American version of the program) she wanted to invite me to become a traveling presenter. On approximately four weekends of my choice over the next year. And FGC has a large grant to pay all expenses.

Egads. I told her it sounded tough, but quite a bit like something I could do. And I would consider it. And at this point I'm mostly sure I want to; it feels like a very clear response to my emphatic frustration with Canadian Quakerism. Or, a step on a path.

On Thursday, the 9 of us in the ad-hoc committee met, and we went away with lots of information and part of a plan that's broader than I expected. Then I had to present these findings to the Queer Quaker's Business Meeting on Friday.

Friday morning, I woke up with a pounding headache, before 6am, after about 6 hours of sleep. I felt totally drained and unprepared; I really wanted to sleep another hour. Unusually for me, I actually thought words at God/Spirit/whatever. I was fairly pissed. I said something like, "This isn't fair. I can't do this, I need some help here." And I got the clear reply to get up. So I did, and showered, and went to breakfast. And outside breakfast, I ran into one of the 9, talking with the co-clerk of our Business Meeting. And I went in to breakfast with our co-clerk, who turned out to be exactly the person I needed to talk to about structuring the presentation.

And I presented it Friday afternoon on behalf of the committee, and it was approved, and that felt awesome.

What else? Hm. I managed to get some singing in; I happened across two concerts led by Annie Patterson, co-creator of the Rise Up Singing songbook.

At the Queer Quaker Cabaret on Friday night, I did manage to see peaceofpie sing the song he wrote that very morning, and I would've been quite annoyed with myself if I'd missed it.

In Meeting for Worship, I had a very strong image of myself at half my current life, age 17, looking at me and being totally blown away that I'd get there. And having a strong sense of gratitude for the weird path life has taken.

The M&Ms. This is utterly trivial, but: have you ever had a mono-colour M&M experience? At an evening social, I was chatting with somebody and grabbed a handful of M&Ms. I looked and said, "Huh, 1/3 of them are yellow." The other person said that never happened to her. And none of the ones in her hand were yellow. So we kept talking and munching, and I looked down, and all but two of the remaining M&Ms were yellow. That used to happen fairly often for me, but then, I ate a lot of M&Ms back in high-school, so lots of chances for it to happen.

I had the chance to make many, many mistakes. Others affected by them were extremely graceful, whether or not they or I pointed the mistakes out. And I think I learned a great amount, and I think some of it will stick until the next time I have the choice to make the same mistake again, or not. And I helped a few people learn things as well, which felt great.

Other elements to the week: way too many people in a dining hall at dinner-time. Thoughtless people who didn't realize or didn't care. Thoughtful people doing kind things just because. Missing my sweetie. Not missing my email. Running through downpours. Wonderful togetherness-time with dear friends, some who are reading this right now.

Well, probably later, since right now it's a great time to be in bed. 'night!