So apparently, sometimes it isn't the just speaker who is doing the quaking, sometimes it's the listener.

Last week was a rough one for a lot of reasons, including the feeling that it seemed at times like my mission for the week was to upset people who mean so much to me, including Cheryl, Mike and another friend I think very highly of.

(Though as I later told Mike and Cheryl at dinner Friday night, at some point it also hit me that I may have had it backwards - that it was a week for people I love to piss me off!).

But then, in a job interview with a fellow Quaker, he told me about an encounter he had had some years back with a group, where the conversation became somewhat heated, with frank opinions being expressed with seeming little regard for the discomfort the statements may have aroused in those at whom the comments were directed.

When the group (which was a meeting of the committee to choose the winner of the very prestigious Newbury Book Award) was in the hallway taking a break from the discussion, one of the other committee people approached this Friend to apologize for the tone of her arguments and the discussion in general, to which he said:

"Don't worry about it! I'm a Quaker. We do this all the time!"