I just sent this to the mailing list, but then thought better of it and decided to email it to the entire group, because a third of the members aren't on the mailing list. My apologies if you are seeing this twice.

As I said in my earlier message, I'd like to make this meetup about the women of the group. So if you're a woman attending the meetup who was raised in a fundamentalist environment, we'd like it if you could take a moment to write down some observation about your experiences, or the changes you've been through, or some event that resonates with the issues of the meetup group, and we'd like to hear you read it in the meetup. Even if you weren't raised in a fundamentalist environment, but have something you want to share with us about how being outside the realm of mainstream religion is significant to your life as a woman, we want to hear that, too. Length doesn't matter. If it's a paragraph or ten pages, it's important and we want you to share it. Mikel will be coordinating this (and, I hope, also sharing something herself), so if you have something you want to share with us let her know.

I'd really like to see a lot of people attending this month, both because of our guest and because I hope to make this an important chance for the woman of the group to get heard. I'd like to ask both men and women to attend -- women to speak, men to try not to speak unless it's to ask a question and then really listen to the answer. If you can make it, please RSVP to that effect. If you're a woman and you think you will have something to share with us, it would be helpful if you could indicate that in the RSVP.

To repost the information about our guest this month --

This month's keynote guest will be Clara Harris, who will be performing her ten-minute play "Good Little Church Girls," which deals with what young girls are taught about being a woman in fundamentalist Christian households, vs. the reality of being a woman today.

Ms. Harris is an accomplished actor, singer, playwright and teacher who has both appeared in and written several plays here in town at Actors' Theater and elsewhere around the country.