Thursday, July 14, 2005

FGC Gathering 2005: The Experience of a clerking young Friend - WEDNESDAY, during the day

Wooo.. Wednesday. Time to take a deep breath and dive back in for a bit..

After workshop I headed to the cafeteria to get lunch. Wednesday there was the option of 'simple meal' for lunch. Simple meal each year consists of beans and rice; money saved from having such a simple meal is donated for those with more need. (I actually put down the pamphlet I was handed and lost track of it somewhere, so I can't remember any more details about it than this - if anyone wants to clarify, feel free.) At 12:15, those of us on the small committee formed at the intergenerational dialogue from the day before were supposed to meet in a specific part of the cafeteria. Since there were people other than those of us attending Gathering on campus who used the cafeteria, the cafeteria staff had tried to rope off a section of the cafeteria for those eating simple meal, seperate from those having the regular lunch. (Those eating simple meal didn't swipe their meal cards, whereas everyone else did - it was a logistical thing.) This greatly complicated our meeting location, and it took us until 12:40 to actually sit down together in one place.

I had to leave this meeting early, too, since we had a HS clerk meeting at 1:15 back at the dorms - the second HS Meeting for Worship with Concern for Business at Gathering happens on Wednesday night, and we needed to start getting the agenda and such together. Knowing we would meet together again after support groups and Nurture Committee, we broke at 2:00. This left me with an hour and a half to do whatever I wanted or needed to do.

Instead of taking a break or sleeping (like I really needed to), I went promptly to a performance that Peterson Toscano (http://a_musing.blogspot.com) was performing for us in the high school dorm, Queer 101. I stayed for most of the performance - it was highly entertaining and fun to watch, but then left a little early to get a couple things done.

I then trekked off accross campus to Squires where FGC Bookstore was set up, as well as the Gathering message boards. I returned to the bookstore and made a few more purchases (as if I didn't already have a decent stack of books from my Sunday trip), and then posted a message on the message board. When I initially left for Squires, I had the intention leaving time to see the Eyes Wide Open (http://www.afsc.org/eyes/default.htm) exhibit set up during Gathering. I had heard it was intense, and that I should go with someone and leave plenty of time for the experience. Since I was already squeezing things in to my free hour and a half, I decided against going, and instead took my time at the bookstore.

[I just had a brief interlude in writing this post - a 25 minute (or so) battle with my power cord - talk about jiggling a lot and a little bit of one-handed typing! Very soon, I will get a new laptop. This one has been on its last leg for way longer than any computer in this condition would be expected to last. I'm grateful I managed to position the power cord in a manner that it would work without me using one of my hands to hold it! Ok - back to the post now - sorry!]

At 3:30 support groups met, and then it was time for Nurture Committee. We began around 4:45 (late, as usual), and went through our usual process of hearing concerns and figuring out what to do with them - there weren't any major ones at this point (at least, none major enough that I can remember them after what happened next). When we finished our usual business, Kri, who had been waiting patiently for us to get to this point, had a very heavy issue to bring to us.

I feel the need to end this post here and continue in a seperate post. The next period of time I'm about to describe needs an entry to itself, not distracted by less-intense events that occurred prior, as described above.

Next entry VERY SOON. Bear with me, as this is rather exhausting to write.

Love and Light,
Claire

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Breathlessly waiting,

Robin

14/7/05 11:16 PM  

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