Quaker knowing

What an intriguing week. I've been in Columbus for nine days, and am back in eastern Ohio. 

After writing all of those nice things about the extended stay hotel, and about people, before that post was even completed, the screaming began. It was a child across the hall, in another room. It was loud, intermittent, and piercing, like a chipmunk cheer. I have raised four children, and they screamed some, but never like this. There was something unusual about this child. The screaming did not stop. It was not crying, but almost like a playful, or surprised scream, every 5-10 minutes, all day. It was unbearable for someone working nights and trying to sleep. It was maddening. It lasted until I left for work, and met me as I returned in the morning after a 12 hour shift. It went on all day, and continued the following day. I was so miserable, finally, that I called the management, and told them I was checking out. The problem with that, it was Sunday, and no management was in. On Monday, after trying to go to sleep, I packed all of my bags. I didn't care if they kept my money. The man from the front office told me he had put me on the quiet floor, and this was the first he'd heard there was a problem, but he'd check into it. He did. First, he was going to move the family. The child finally got quiet, and I collapsed onto the bed, in my clothes, things packed and ready, and slept, all day. 

That was my day off. I did not have to go to work for night shift that evening, and my husband had planned to come to Columbus with our daughter for an overnight. I called the front desk man back, and he offered to move me instead of the family. I decided to try that. He told me that the child was a 4-year-old autistic boy, and that the parents were also exhausted, and were waiting for an apartment to come available on Thursday. I felt guilty for being so upset, but at the same time, I was paying for this room, in order to simply have a place to sleep. The new room was cleaner, and much quieter. 

My husband, 7-year-old and I went out for dinner at Max and Erma's at Easton, and to a 9pm movie, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs II. We were the only ones in the theater. I felt self-conscious having a 7-year-old child out to a movie that late, but we homeschool. She was sleeping in the next day. She is doing well in school.

Being in a crowded place with so many Somalians present, then being in the same place when it was nearly empty left me feeling strange. This strange feeling extended into the next day, when we went out to lunch for Mexican, then to a park I had frequented years ago. It was also pretty empty. In a city with hundreds of thousands of people, I found this odd. I had brought my older sons to the same place 20-plus years prior, when I was a stay-at-home mom, needing to get out to someplace green. Our 7-year-old played on the playground alone, and watched the ducks in the pond, on a school day. Park rangers drove by us several times. Numerous times, in three different vehicles. We became a little uncomfortable with this, and went back to the hotel. We said goodbye finally, and my husband and daughter drove back home. I went back to work that night. It was wonderful to see them in the midst of this experience. They are a grounding center to everything for me.

The next two days, I took care of people from foreign countries other than Somalia. Two families were from places with rare dialects that our translation language lines did not have a translator for. I wondered what their stories were, to be in Columbus, in the hospital. There are so many people in Columbus. So many foreigners! Who are they all?

My friend, Debora, called the next to last morning of this stretch of work days. I don't even remember what all I said to her. She was trying to make final arrangements for my last clearness committee meeting. I just remember her telling me to get some rest, and that everything would make more sense, and I'd feel better after I got some sleep. I must have sounded delirious. The clearness committee would be Thursday, on my way home. 

Different people keep repeating those words over the past few weeks: "Get some sleep!" It reminded me of the first Easton movie I saw, Captain Phillips, when someone everywhere he went told him, "Everything is going to be okay!" And it never was. People keep telling me, "Get some sleep!" I must seem tired to them all the time. And I can't really ever get enough sleep.

Prior to this trip to Columbus, I had spent a good part of a day looking up the places I'd be going. Larry and Joel, two of the mission workers, just happened to be online that day also, and I asked them questions as I surfed the internet. How long does it take to walk the 8 miles on the All Souls Day walk? How likely is it we will have run-ins with border patrol when we are filling water tanks? Where do we meet, and when? My passport and passport card arrived 10 and 12 days after I applied for them respectively. We made tentative arrangements, and I put together an itinerary. I printed out Google maps for every place I intended to go, and one for how to get from one son's place to another, in Phoenix. I printed out web pages describing the places. I put all the print-outs in a folder, and put it in a file at home. I hoped to go home and pick it up before the clearness committee meeting on Thursday.

I was a little later checking out of the hotel and getting on the road than I had intended, so I called Bruce to ask him to bring these the folder to my clearness committee meeting, in Barnesville, at the meetinghouse. He is wonderful about things like this. 

The clearness committee is a living, breathing thing, all by itself. I have had life-long relationships with some of these people, and hardly know others. They had asked a lot of questions at the first meeting, and I needed to answer them at the second one. The hardest question to answer was proposed by the clerk of the meeting - that before they could write a letter of introduction, or a traveling minute, there needed to be a clear sense of purpose for the trip. What was the purpose? I decided in the end that it was a seeking/finding trip.

I could have brought a lot of baggage from the past into this, but during the time between meetings, I had given it deep thought, and had talked with several friends, both online and in person. The one I needed to speak with the most was a childhood friend who was abused. She did not fully understand the nature of my visit when I went to see her. I had not seen her for years; and in the time between our last time together and this one, much had transpired in both of our lives. But she has been a driving force behind some of what I have done in my nursing career, and is a strong influence on what I want to do. She will probably never understand the extent of this. I talked with her some about this influence on the phone, but when I visited with her, we did not discuss the trip at all. In planning the visit; the phone call; the driving to and from her place in the misty, dark, October night, down back roads far out in the country, where coal miners lived and justified in their minds why immigrants should be shot - during that in-between time, I gave this all the most thought. I did not even bring her up at the clearness committee. But my friendship with her summarizes all that is wrong, and also all that is right, with attitudes; with compassion for fellow humans; for regard for those close to us. It summarizes the dead space between bigotry and love. I don't understand how some people can be so loving, and yet so unloving, and I needed to sit with that, for myself. I needed to sit with her, in her living room, and feel all of it, before doing this; and know that I still loved her as my friend, despite everything. Somehow, this gave me the confidence that I needed to know that this trip was the right thing to do. I took that confidence, and the folder of information, with me to the clearness committee. 

My childhood friend, Debora, was nominated to be on the committee first, at monthly meeting, the First Day (Sunday) that my letter requesting one was read. In a Friends monthly business meeting, the first person nominated is the convener of the committee. She openly protested, but she was expected to answer the responsibility. I can't recall who jumped the gun after my letter was read, but they nominated her too quickly. This scared me, because, well, Debora knows way too much about me. And then someone nominated the clerk, and I'm not even going to go into the fear of God that put into me. Or fear of something else - something like ...scrutiny. These people know my skeletons.

Whatever my fears may have been, a conviction is a conviction. They are excited for me. I presented what I had, and they subtly, and humorously, in their Quaker ways, expressed their reservations, but not nearly as many as I expected. They want me to do this. They are going to write a traveling minute. 

Tonight was the memorial service of a good friend. The service was also at the meetinghouse. David was the ex-husband of Debora's sister. He accepted me into his group of friends after my divorce. He let me carve my name in his end table, something he had most of his visitors do. He designed the cover for the tape I made at a studio. He was my friend.  So I saw them, most of the people on the clearness committee, again, two nights in a row, because they were Davids friends too. My daughter and I made cookies today, and I went to Jebbia's Produce market in Wheeling, and bought vegetables for a relish dish. I also bought a homemade olive mix there. I should have bought more olives, because they went the fastest of anything on the table. I knew there would be too many cookies.

After the memorial service, I sat on the meetinghouse porch, and talked for a long time with a close acquaintance I would never have gotten to know if David had not brought me into the fold. She told me about a humanitarian trip she had taken to Liberia with the military, and how it had changed her. Then I told her about my planned trip to Mexico. She became excited, and happy for me to do this. I keep feeling like with all that has transpired in my career that has gone wrong in the past year, that I'm somehow not qualified to do something like this. Part of me feels like maybe I was supposed to do something like this all along; and maybe that is what has been wrong though. 

These posts are getting longer, but there is one more situation I want to address. That is about consciousness. I have always "known" things that I did not understand why I knew. Some people have called it ESP; others have referred to my experiences as astral projection. Still others have suggested that I can read minds, or have had other lives. Christians call it God speaking to me. I have always felt there was another explanation. In the past few days, at least two people have mentioned the kind of "knowing" that comes with Quaker worship. I don't feel this is entirely from God. I feel it is an entity of consciousness, from being more in touch, and in tune with our subconscious minds, through worship and meditation. We take in too much information to be aware of it all at any given time, but our mind puts together what this information means. We know more than we realize. When we tap into this deeper consciousness regularly, we learn to listen to it. We learn to be more in tune with it. I have noticed that many people who have lived their lifetime within Quakerism will refer to the "Quaker knowing" as if it is a given fact. Outside of Quaker circles, people talk about coincidences, and about God, and about miracles. For me, the knowing is an inherent part of me. I have learned to listen to it; but I don't always. Sometimes it is so profound, that it comes in words; not words I can hear, but in formulated words in my mind. "Take that book off the shelf." "Don't give that medication yet." "Turn around and walk the other way." And for no good reason, and feeling partially crazy, I listen, and do. Something not quite conscious knows something, and I need to listen to it.

One day in the hospital I worked at for 8 years, when I turned and walked the other way, a woman walked up to me and asked where her sister was. I knew her sister had just died. I knew there was no other nurse on the floor at that time who could have handled speaking with this woman because of what had just transpired. I was able to walk this woman to where her sister was. Maybe it WAS God. 

This is one of the times in my life, when I do not entirely understand what is happening, and I am going on faith, when the words, "Turn and walk the other way," have formulated in my brain. Now I will have in writing that my meeting is supporting me in doing so. And it is not crazy. They say they feel the same Quaker knowing about it.