Like an Arc Light (A Connected Chain) in Everyday Ramblings

Wow. I feel better. I think maybe I had a bug. I was trying to figure out why my head and lower back and hips ached because it didn’t seem like I had done any overly ambitious exercise. My mouth feels better too.

I met Henry the kitten via video chat on Saturday and I was going, bleh, I look awful, pale and tired and…

Henry is an absolutely adorable rowdy guy. Yesterday evening I received pictures of what we all hoped for, old man Jack, (who is like five or six), sleeping curled up with wild man Henry. Rumor has it that he even licked Henry’s head.

But as young ones are apt to do once he woke up he got very energetic again and Jack reached the end of his patience so Henry had to take a time out in his room.

Kes is in need of respite care after a week with the constant nine week old kitten land.

I watched the live feed from home of the morning church service and then a couple of hours later went to church in person to this meeting that apparently has been planned for some time but was only announced recently.

The Board had four goals for the next five years and they were looking for input from the congregants. Kind of brainstorming. They were expecting at the absolute max about 40 people. There were way more than that. It was a big unwieldy fired up group. Wow.

Democracy in action is exhausting. Real democracy.

There was much accommodation and rearranging and everybody got a place to sit and the goals did get addressed but there was also time or people to stand and speak to the group and there were impassioned pleas for transparency and the surfacing of differing points of view. There is a split on the board I didn’t know about.

Nothing was decided but it was very clear to everybody in the room that the board and executive committee needs to think twice before making major decisions without asking for input from the congregation or they will be a major loss of said congregation.

It was interesting to hear what folks were upset about. Things that I wouldn’t have thought were a problem. They added these two big video screens in the sanctuary to project the words of the reading and hymns on so you don’t need to hold a hymnal or a program during worship and there were people that were thinking about leaving over those. They call them reader boards. The hymnals are expensive! And we have two so it means switching and gets complicated.

Anyway, one of the ministers talked to my student that wrote the letter about keeping my class in the building and he told me that there appears to have been a misunderstanding.

So I think the class might be good to stay for now. There is another meeting on Thursday about building community so if I have the energy I will go to that one as well.

Someone stood up and said that the only reason so many people were at the meeting was because they were all fired up in reaction to the election and whoa that got a negative response. These changes happened and people had feelings about them without a communication channel to express said feeling and then the election happened and they felt, well, even more so.

One of my beloved studio students who I never get to see enough of who is very liberal and outspoken but also very well heeled said that two of her sons voted for President-elect Trump. She was so upset at the beginning of the meeting she left.

We need to find a way to harness this energy in a way that benefits all of us.

Last updated November 15, 2016