Months to Live - Hard Choice for a Comfortable Death - Sedation - Series - NYTimes.com

Very good article on some of the hard issues in end-of-life care.

Months to Live - Hard Choice for a Comfortable Death - Sedation - Series - NYTimes.com:

While there are universally accepted protocols for treating conditions like flu and diabetes, this is not as true for the management of people’s last weeks, days and hours. Indeed, a review of a decade of medical literature on terminal sedation and interviews with palliative care doctors suggest that there is less than unanimity on which drugs are appropriate to use or even on the precise definition of terminal sedation.

Blessed Winter Solstice!

I hope everyone had a good Winter Solstice, filled with the blessings of the Dark Time of the Year.

Last year brought a very snowy Solstice to Seattle: Winter Solstice itself was the second of three snowstorms in a week. Record snowfall brought the city to a grinding halt for days. Winter Solstice was on a Saturday last year; it started snowing again that afternoon, and finally stopped snowing that Sunday night. (When we flew out to visit relatives on Thursday, the buses still weren't running in our neighborhood, and we hiked, using backpacks for luggage, half a mile to the freeway to catch a bus downtown to transfer to the bus to the airport.)

On Winter Solstice last year, a small group of folks still made it to our apartment for a Roses, Too! potluck and a Winter Solstice Celebration based on A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual. This was the second or third time I'd done it with a small group, using the cd for the music. We had five adults -- just enough for readers and the narrator -- and a four-year-old, and had a warm, cozy time in the candlelight with the woodstove. Everyone made it home safely, eventually, though the two miles uphill to the U District was a haul for some.

It was a beautiful Solstice.

(c) 2008

So, now here we are in central NJ, and there's record snow here already now, too! (I think it's just following me around the country right now...)

Friday evening, dear F/friends who are part of the extended Roses, Too! community graciously hosted the Roses, Too! Tradition Winter Solstice/Yule potluck at their home in Philadelphia. They've hosted a number of potlucks in the past, and it was a treat, for me, for us to have a potluck there again.

We had delightful company and conversation, and we shared all sorts of yummy, festive, and comforting food and drink -- hot mulled cider, homemade fettuccine alfredo, cider donuts, chocolate (of course), apple cobbler with local Philly Vanilly ice cream, cranberry-jalapeno salsa (which I bought from a local farm store, but which is not as good as my friend Jennifer F's from CA), a cheese-pepper-onion torte with a sweet potato crust, all sorts of good things.

And then we shared a hilarious, intergenerational game of Apples to Apples. At one point, I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt and I couldn't quite catch my breath.

We knew a big winter storm was brewing, and sure enough, record snow came to much of the East Coast with a blizzard over this weekend.

Our community-wide Winter Solstice Celebration / performance of A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual (with SpiralSong, PAI/DVPN, and Pebble Hill Interfaith Church) was snowed out Saturday night, as was Sunday night's dress rehearsal for the second WSC.

Last night, however, lots of people made it to our Winter Solstice Celebration (with SpiralSong, PAI/DVPN, and the Inner Path), and it was just delightful.

I loved singing with SpiralSong again; our readers, narrator, and stage manager were wonderful; the "audience" (in quotes, because it's actually very participatory) were wonderfully present with us, and enthusiastic during the high-energy parts; our musicians were excellent (and I had lots of fun drumming with our drummer); and the management and collection of lit candles went more smoothly than I think I've ever seen it.

Our hosts, the Inner Path, are members of the Delaware County Peace Center, so our Celebration was at the Springfield Friends Meetinghouse. This is a great space for this Celebration -- conducive to the ritual, warm and intimate without feeling cramped, and quite nice acoustically (something that is definitely not true of all old East Coast Meetinghouses!).

Plus, there was this moment at the beginning, when the singers first saw the "audience" after we'd processed in, and were facing them, singing with them... I saw so many familiar faces, and so many I didn't know. Among the familiar ones were friends who were there for the first time; folks who were there for the first time in a long time; folks who have been to these Winter Solstice Celebrations every year since the first one in 1997; folks who drove long ways; women I've sung with in the past and haven't seen in too long; folks from different parts of my life who had no reason yet to know each other... It was a magical moment in the web of connection and community.

How has your Winter Solstice been? What gifts of the Spirit has it brought?

(c) 2006

Why two black D.C. pastors support gay marriage - washingtonpost.com

This is an amazing article by two African-American pastors in Washington, DC, who support same-gender marriage. h/t Qira.

Why two black D.C. pastors support gay marriage - washingtonpost.com:

We are sometimes asked what accounts for the homophobia within the African American community. This question seems to assume that the community is disproportionately homophobic compared with other racial and ethnic groups. We are not aware of any credible study that has conclusively proved this assumption. However, our first-hand experience has convinced us that homophobia within the black church and the wider community is real. And the factors that have nurtured these beliefs over the years are complex.

...A final piece that shapes black attitudes toward same-sex marriage is the preoccupation with racism in the black community. This obsession, although justifiable, has led to a failure to appreciate how racism is inextricably connected to all other forms of oppression. Those who fail to see this connection may resent the comparison of gay rights with civil rights. But as Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

...We will continue to stand at the altar in our community, telling all the couples who come before us: "Let it be known that you are joined together not only by your love for each other, and by our collective love for each of you, but by the love of God."

Twin Cities Friends Meeting stops signing civil marriage certificates for 3 years

Twin Cities Friends Meeting has approved a new minute on marriage equality. The minute is presented in full over at Liz Opp's blog. There's also an interview on Minnesota Public Radio with the Clerk of the Meeting.

The minute is powerful; doubly so, with the bits and pieces I know about the process behind it and the path by which the Meeting came to unity.

Blessed be.

From the interview:

St. Paul, Minn. — A group of Twin Cities Quakers has decided to stop signing marriage certificates for opposite-sex couples until the state legalizes gay marriage.

"We're simply trying to be consistent with the will of God as we perceive it," said Paul Landskroener, clerk of the Twin Cities Friends Meeting, in an interview with MPR's All Things Considered on Monday.