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Monday, February 7th, 2011 12:21 pm
Could my sensitivity be so high that forgetting my prozac dose last night (along with all the other supplements and pills) could lead to the sense of overwhelm and tenderness today?

I'm trying to pace, to breathe, to be conscious of the effective work i am doing, to partition escape/release/relaxation from work. I'm trying to let myself meander, not blast myself like a firehose in the worry of trying to attend to everything.

JN shared with Meeting on Sunday his recollection of a Yearly Meeting Peace and Social COncerns session decades ago, where the gathered had been brought to a depression over the so many causes and concerns that clamored for attention. He described how an elderly Anna Brinton[1] slowly made her way to the microphone, the gathering falling into a deep expectant silence to hear what one of the founders of the Yearly Meeting had to share. "Do less better," she said, JN clearly imitating her delivery, with equal emphasis on each word. And she sat down.

Do Less Better. I can take that as a mantra.

[I also canceled by 2:30 meeting, as the other seemed to have more than enough to do.]

[1] Anna Cox Brinton (1887-1969), see Pendle Hill pamphlets #176 (1971) Anna Brinton: a Study in Quaker Character by Eleanore Price Mather.

Howard Brinton and Anna Cox, the daughter of Charles Cox, also began attending in about 1919 after being married under the care of San Jose Meeting. They are first referred to in 1920 as "our Friends the Brintons" and "our lately-married friends."
--http://www.quaker.org/berkmm/history.html
The character of this movement was shaped in large measure by Joel Bean's granddaughter, Anna Cox, and her husband, Howard Brinton. Between them the Brintons helped the College Park Association face up to what it now was, a yearly meeting in all but name, becoming Pacific Yearly Meeting in 1947, and the "mother church" of three independent liberal yearly meetings in the western part of the U.S.

The Brintons were similarly influential in the east, when they directed Pendle Hill near Philadelphia from 1938 to 1952. There they were actively involved in the movement to reunite the two branches of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, sundered for over a century, on a doctrinal basis that, in essence, is much like that of College Park.
-- http://www.quaker.org/liberal-history/bean.html