Contagion?

Who do you say I am?

RantWoman hereby celebrates the election of a new Pope, a Jesuit who has chosen his Papal name to remember St. Francis of Assisi's focus on the poor and humble by invoking.....Robert Barclay, educated by Calvinists and Jesuits, ... and John Woolman. RantWoman needs to get a couple Quaker in-jokes out of her system; RantWoman also promises she DOES mean to poke and probe at what the living presence of the Holy Spirit asks of her Meeting or at least of RantWoman.


Furthermore, RantWoman hereby celebrates both Nominating Season and the season of drafting the State of Society Report. "Celebrates" is a peculiar word. RantWoman is wondering whether she has been fed some weird too much of the truth serum of quinoa, guacamole, and 4 stars spicy salsa or whether some stray bedbug left over from last year's contingent has just been scouring her email:



Recent email from....Conflict is a Gift of God Friend:

"We are facing a significant down-tick in participation this winter -- worship attendance is down almost 20% from last winter. "


RantWoman:

Thank you for sharing this concern. I appreciate info about something I would not necessarily have noted.

--To what might we attribute this decline?

--the annual flu / crud being worse than average both in firs instance and in tendency to recur?

--a significant number of Friends called to travel because of deaths in their families, work, pleasure?

--the exhausting barbarity that passes for work schedule for many working age Friends

--the expense and tiresomeness of travel by car or bus

--childrearing, eldercare. grieving, medical events all the matters lurking amongst us trying our spirits right now

--The demands and darned inconveniences of aging. We have many weighty wonderful but rapidly decrepitating elders. Without in the least making any effort, for instance, to ask Rantwoman's permission (Rats. RantWoman would not grant it anyway) many of these weighty souls are beset by hearing loss, rheumatism, Parkinsonism, various forms of vision meltdown, digestive obstructions, dyspepsia, disinclination to leave the house, and multitudinous other distresses. A certain Pendle Hill pamphlet may well go on as to "Hallowing our Diminishments" but what if Friends really need is "Howling about our Diminishments"?

--weird weather?

--people coming once and not feeling led to return?

--People besides RantWoman sometimes feeling bored and stifled by all the beloved Friends in Adult Religious Education who are certain they have things figured out and need to say so instead of listening when some of us don't?

--People afraid of being accosted by someone loudly calling them to the community of coffeemaking?

--People who want other people just to shut up and go make coffee and don't deign to listen about spiritual matters or who demand conversations about spiritual matters predigested according to each person's individual tastes?

--Fear that Nominating Committee will try to draft them for something frustrating that does not feed them spiritually...?

--Something else which has somehow evaded the fog and blur of RantWoman's oh, so limited Light?


Have you considered whether you should also perhaps share your concern with:

--the clerk of Meeting?

--members of Worship and Ministry?

--members of Oversight?

--the clerk of Finance Committee?

--someone on Nominating Committee?

--random people who those listed above do not necessarily talk to



What would YOU have us do about this? Any guesses what others might feel led to do about this?

--Different format activities?

--Weekly invitations on Facebook so that all the people who Beliefnet tells are Liberal Quakers know how to find us? Oh dear. That means presuming we have something to offer a world hungering for spiritual communion. Actual agents of contagion? (See below)

--Potlucks at arbitrary intervals, perhaps featuring random rambling moments from RantWoman's dorky documentary collection, disaster preparedness, other slightly demented entertainment?
--The harangue a month Saturday brunch club?

--some sort of neighborhood based gathering / witness and gardening party

See some of these ideas definitely speak to Rantwoman and RantWoman is having problems finding other Friends who either share her enthusiasm or are willing to be carried along, say for the sheer privilege and delight of hanging out with RantWoman, the joy of walking in the Light....?

Recently RantWoman saw something connected with flu season about infection control and different religious practices including communion. Having read Barclay's Apology last year, RantWoman might offer one comment about infection control through spiritual rather than physical communion, including HOPEFULLY the immune boost from just showing up around one's community.


(Disaster Preparedness Brain also recalls encountering a story of one community whose residents during the 1918 flu epidemic were too scared of contagion to go out and care for each other. Guess which community suffered a much higher than average death rate!)

The Woolman reading group this year is getting a really different spin on infection control and particularly sometimes deliberate exposure to small pox.

Put this all in the salad slicer with someone's definition RantWoman read recently of being an elder as "agent of contagion for the Holy Spirit." What might "agent of contagion for the Holy Spirit look like around our Meeting?

Read More

Quaker NON-drinking game

Greetings from the Ministry of Mirth lately travelling in ministry to the Ninth Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology conference.

Many women from Northwest Yearly Meeting who attend this conference have connections with George Fox University, currently GFU, formerly George Fox College or with George Fox Evangelical Seminary. Time was, when RantWoman was permitting educational institutions to deluge her with promotional materials, she received something from George Fox. RantWoman registers the fact of this correspondence. RantWoman remembers being slightly intrigued; RantWoman also definitely remembers the required Statement of Faith being just too much for RantWoman. RantWoman cannot imagine going to college in earlier decades where youth were forbidden to drink, dance, even play cards with faces on them! Now, though, RantWoman is wondering whether knowledge of important points of history and custom would have made a difference in RantWoman's preferences. To wit: Beware the Snare of the Tricky, Tricky Bear.

A phrase RantWoman liked from another frined about the conference: spiritual hospitality. Perhaps drinking songs with upside-down drinking cups are also spiritual hospitality in the Barclay sense of the term.


Beware the Snare of the Tricky Tricky Bear

Understand, RantWoman heard the title of the game as "Beware the STARE of the Tricky, Tricky Bear." RantWoman is terribly, grateful, after her second trip in two days to the Pool with a View,  to have arrived back indoors at the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology conference in time to observe several of the assembled women seated in a circle around a table holding upside-down coffee cups from the dining room, chanting the words above, moving their upended cups back and forth and laughing uproariously, all without evern having touched a drop of anything more intoxicating than water.


Beware the snare of the Tricky, Tricky Bear indeed.

Read More

How fares the Truth among us--as told by our bedbugs

Time is upon us for generating our Meeting's annual State of Society report. Unfortunately, dyspeptic dissension has broken out among our ranks of Quaker epistle writers and a horde of bedbugs has managed a divide and conquer takeover of the process. This is a first draft of their effort. PLEASE note: this is a DRAFT. RantWoman is pretty certain that her Meeting's official bonafide State of the Meeting report will have almost nothing in common with this offering. RantWoman is also unsure to what she should attribute her unusual capacity to commune with the co-authors. As with any translation, RantWoman supposes it is only sporting to acknowledge possible responsibility for all errors in transmission and transcription.

(RantWoman aside: The entire Puget Sound region has been overtaken by a veritable Biblical plague of bedbugs or at least the need to talk about bedbugs. RantWoman spends a lot of time outside her Meeting talking about Bedbugs. RantWoman finds a certain testimony on equality / single standard of Truth integrity about this reality. RantWoman's Meeting, like many places in our fair city has been spending A LOT of time talking about and dealing with bedbugs.

RantWoman notes two points: First, the difference between faith communities who house SHARE shelters AND have bedbugs as compared to houses of worship with SHARE shelters who do not have bedbugs seems to boil down to whether or not the church has bathing and washing facilities. Our Meeting is among the churches who DO have bedbugs and do NOT have bathing / washing facilities. The professional bedbug wranglers also regularly remind us, our Meeting also has, basically, bedbug high-rises in the form of carpeted acoustic tile on our walls to enhance our silence. Second, the year-long battle of the bedbug has included regular detection and elimination efforts. RantWoman is unsure whether anyone in Meeting has actually been munched on by bedbugs. But if they had...)

To all Friends Everywhere.

Warm greetings from soggy Seattle. We hope this epistle finds Friends and Bedbugs alike firm in the Light, aglow in the searching Light of God.

We the bedbugs at University Friends Meeting have endured a year of being snurfled at by That Dog, alternately blasted out of bedding with high heat and gassed with vile poison, but we have stood firm in the Lord / Holy Spirit / Eternal Light. Out of gratitude, we have taken it upon ourselves to inform the world as to the State of Society, at least in our vicinity.

This year featured much spirit-centered discussion of stewardship. The Remodel Committee has finished the remodel of the Meetinghouse. Members of Meeting think it looks wonderful. We miss having all the extra contractors around to chew on.

We especially wish to thank Oversight committee and the sex offenders of our community for ensuring that the Meetinghouse is filled with warm bodies attending a threshing session, a Q&A, a presentation by someone from the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center, and lots of business meetings. Sex offender discussions fill everyone with stress hormones even when there are powerful stories and important awareness. This is not necessarily our favorite flavor of the month but we guess it's better for the community as a whole to try to share the burdens. We appreciate how the general conversation MOST of the time moderates truly stratospheric levels of stress hormones that we find sometimes when we much into isolated individuals.

We also find the stress hormones preferable to the hunger enzymes people were emitting in the months of May, June, August, October, January, February, and April. Those months featured the zillionth, zillion-first and so on discussions of RantWoman and Worship and Ministry Committee. RantWoman and her Meeting most assuredly are NOT getting each other's memos right now. We wish we could tell the difference between worship and ministry with RantWoman and Worship and Ministry without RantWoman but sooner or later we get lunch either way.

We have been in extensive negotiations with Finance Committee. Finance Committee peculiarly thinks we should pay rent. We are budget-conscious bedbugs of modest means, with nowhere near the cash swirling around us that some of those tony bedbugs at the big hotels downtown have.

Peace and Social Concerns held a retreat and work party devoted to Equality in November. To be honest, we find it easier to find lunch when everyone is all crammed into close quarters. If the dining is good with the 99% who cares about the 1% who get away? We also increased our numbers because of Friends' visits to the Occupy Seattle camp, but we thank Peace and Social Concerns for blessing us all with a Minute for the occasion.

Personnel Committee is really not our favorites just now. For some reason they think we should just leave the staff ALONE. We believe in that of Lunch in everyone.

Education Committee is proud to have a decent number of children afoot. People tend to get kind of upset when we nibble on children: we even had to kick a few bugs out over the problem! But more children guarantees more adults, just having a good number of kids around keeps the adults tastier.

Adult Religious Education committee held its annual Dark Time of the Year interaction with Death and Dying. Frankly we are bedbugs, not maggots. We need to drink from living waters and we are very glad to let the maggots handle Death.

We thank Friends very much for the boxing day meet and greet during all the severe weather over the Christmas holidays. We really appreciate more time with all our tasty hosts.

We were also honored to be able to donate fiber materials to the annual vision collage-making on New Years Day.

The bunch that were reading Barclay's Apology finally reached their goalposts in August. Barclay flavored hosts just were not doing it for us; we are reserving judgment about how John Woolman's journal is going to affect the tastes of the new bunch.

In February many of us gratefully attended the New Bedbugs Potluck. Some of us also piled into the cars headed down to Olympia for Quaker Lobby Day. We thank the Friends Committee for WA Public Policy for opportunities to develop personal relationships with the people who represent districts Friends live in.

In March we helped Arts Committee stage a Bedbug Revue. We did a lot of song and dance and were joined by other performers for a hoedown to benefit homeless bedbugs.

In April we held a rousing send-off for Friends travelling to the World Gathering of Friends in Kenya. We particularly gave the travellers a travelling minute we hope they will present to any sister and brother bedbugs they meet in the course of their travels.

Again warm good wishes to all. May God bless and keep you throughout the coming year--even if you insist on speaking of Him / Her / ... in some other terms.

In the Light,

The Bedbugs of UFM.

Read More

Pith for the Day

RantWoman does not automatically look to blind geek email lists for spiritual guidance. Perhaps RantWoman should consider it a blessing sometimes to find such there anyway:

"People who say something is impossible should not interrupt those already doing it."

RantWoman feels obliged to seek spiritual guidance as to possible issues of pridefulness and how with at least a teensy bit more finesse to share her Light related to the above item. For RantWoman's trouble she has been served up:

"As we search the Scriptures, we must allow them to search us,
to sit in judgment upon our character and conduct."
Jerry Bridges, author, speaker and staff member of The Navigators
http://www.navigators.org/


From Musings of a Quaker Witch:
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-didnt-speak-up-and-my-conscience-is.html

RantWoman is reading this, substituting concepts and realities significant to RantWoman, to stiffen her own spine and force those around her to try again. Hold this in the Light!

I'd already asked a question that morning, which I felt was misunderstood and taken in a direction I hadn't meant at all.

There are other areas of my life where I feel criticized for "talking too much."

Most of all, I guess I was afraid of that cascade of things that can happen, that does happen all too often, when I stick my head up as a minority.

Ugh!

Even though the issue we were already talking about was one of justice for a minority among us -- what's more (!), one of which I'm a member, and pretty obviously, too, sitting there holding hands with my wife, who'd also given vocal ministry as a member of a same-sex couple.

I didn't want to go there. I didn't want those things to start happening. I didn't want to feel more alone. I didn't want stand up, expose myself as a further minority within my community, and risk things like being more isolated, having my concerns not heeded or simply not seen, being put down or dismissed because I'm a minority and therefore less/not important/because I'm not Christian and therefore less/not important, being told yet again that of course Quakerism is Christian even if not all Quakers are Christian, or that reality and the truth are too complicated for us to present to outsiders/too complicated for this document/not relevant to this issue...

...As if integrity and the truth are ever too complicated or irrelevant to our testimony and witness in the world and to each other.

And I kept hoping that lovely thing that sometimes happens in worship or worship for business would happen -- you know, where someone else says or brings up something, and then you don't have to. Every other thing I was at all uncomfortable about in the draft, someone else brought up. I really hoped someone else could be in the spotlight on this one and I would be off the hook.

Here, apropos of the above, Micah Bales on the glory and responsibility of abolishing the laity:
http://lambswar.blogspot.com/2012/01/abolishing-laity.html
RantWoman is meditating about how on earth thoughts phrased in such terms can apply to the Friend above without the verbal framing being completely disrespectful of that Friend's experience of what RantWoman is used to calling God.

Read More

Contracted Braille--with Freight Train

RantWoman awhile ago took note of the date of our September Meeting for Business and based on past experience predicted that our entire nation would be bathed in endless coverage of the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11.

RantWoman's heart specifically was full of detritus from her spiritual compost heap including some screaming moments of the form "My faith community is busy reminding me why I REALLY need a faith community." Then there was the media week as well as remembrance and not repentance of the "If...God Forgive me, but..." message RantWoman remembers being called to at our Meeting's called Meeting for worship the day of the attacks.

This year, Meeting for Business was to go forward regardless. For additional cheer, RantWoman knew that the agenda would feature an item about the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet or not exactly The Safest Sex Offender... himself but a much-needed adjustment about our Meeting's organization of our support for him.

For better or worse, this time around, RantWoman got most of the hyperventilating her own STUFF can cause around this topic out of the way ahead of time; all the emotional energy of this was parked in RantWoman's head like a freight train full of grain with a few cars of miscellaneous material needing to be unloaded. There would of course not be time to unload the whole train in our shortened Meeting for Worship; RantWoman gets to keep bearing he load regardless.

RantWoman is blessed to have had the following author reading preview for Adult Education:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2011/09/seattle-area-readings-authentic.html


Business Meeting teetering on the horizon is the main reason that RantWoman jumped up almost impermissibly soon after another message, from Deuteronomy about God being close at hand among ye, in worship on Sunday.


RantWoman gave more or less the following message:
It is funny to be called to give a message about the overhead lights in our worship room on a sunny day when the lights are not on. Our overhead lights form the outside of a 4x3 rectangle. To RantWoman they look like, from either side symmetrically like the two Braille contractions for And You.

A completely blind person would never know this unless someone with enough vision to see the pattern and knowledge enough of contracted Braille told them so. Sighted people, even sighted people who have glancing contact with, say, one of those educational braille alphabet cards also would never know this unless the likes of rantWoman told them so.

RantWoman likes this image very much. To RantWoman, the And You is both Quaker baptism, the holy spirit filling, energizing an individual, and Quaker communion, the holy world of sharing worship with others.

RantWoman lately has had to have several long and difficult conversations of the form "That could not possibly be a problem. How can you say that is a problem....Ohhhhhhhhhhhh, NOW I see!" RantWoman is not particularly enjoying these conversations; she can tell they are not really a lot of fun for her counterparts either, but RantWoman wants to bless and deeply appreciate those who have stayed present. Staying present matters.

RantWoman frequently has a problem with messages arriving in long freight trains and needs to stop here for today.


RantWoman did stop but decided to put more of the freight train into her blog.

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/09/freight-train-first-week-of-school.html

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/09/freight-train-tour-guide.html


http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2011/09/freight-train-one-for-elijah.html

Read More

Baptism Barclay Style

RantWoman needs to get a Barclay bit out of her system enroute to something else. RantWoman is still glad to be slogging through Barclay's Apology. RantWoman is glad she is doing so in the company of others and also glad not to be doing so in pursuit of any kind of grade. RantWoman is not sure how the last episode of the reading group got from Barclay to comparing elements of different Yearly Meetings' Faith and Practice. RantWoman would not have minded being more awake for wherever the reading led.

Bullet points:
--One reader used the word "tired." The chapter on Baptism is flabbily deficient in the kind of invective that makes some of the other chapters both such a slog and occasionally such a delight to read.

--"Whatever other sects are doing, they are doing it wrong."

--Perhaps this is because they did not have the benefit of wisdom from Walking Encyclopedia Friend. Walking Encyclopedia Friend observed that the word used in Greek for baptism is the translation chosen for the Hebrew word for ritual bath, mikva.RantWoman finds this point fascinating but is going to have to let things seep around in her brain for a bit on the off chance that seepage will eventually lead to greater clarity about water baptism and baptism by fire

Read More

Barclay bits for the filing cabinet

Barclay-themed bits for the filing cabinet.

An FGC thing pointing to the other items below
http://www.fgcquaker.org/fgconnections/publishers-of-Truth/bloggers-of-Truth



Will Taber's Blog of Barclay and other topics:
http://gtitl.blogspot.com/



A Cliff's notes style astract of all 15 propositions
http://www.qis.net/~daruma/barclay.html#INTRO

Read More

The oatmeal people ride the bus.

RantWoman got up and chowed down her customary bowl of oatmeal, lately blessed with very cinnamon-flavored flax oil donated by a denizen of the Barclay book group. The flax oil is SO cinnamony that it overpowers the flavors of both nutritional yeast and the flax oil which makes for very upscale oatmeal, possibly more upscale than Quakerism's origins as a revolt of the masses might suggest.

Then off RantWoman bounced for pre-Meeting for worship bus ride to Meeting for Worship. RantWoman has previously written though not everything she might of Metro as zone of ministry; today though RantWoman was also musing about about the famous Stephen Prothero on Stephen Colbert moment.


"Quakerism is the best religion...Meeting for worship is... like riding the city bus..."

RantWoman is still seasoning some posts related to themes from a couple months ago. Elderly Friend posed the question "the world really needs what Quakers have. How come they are not beating down our door." Today, in that vein, RantWoman's inner crowd control geek was musing: Would our Meetinghouse be overrun by throngs of bus-riding masses so taken by Metro as mystical experience and such devout acolytes of Stephen colbert that they would know just where to turn for more mysticism without Metro?

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/379250/march-29-2011/stephen-s-next-religion---stephen-prothero?xrs=share_fb


In a word, nope.

Sorry, Stephen, no one but RantWoman even brought it up and Friends in RantWoman's meeting are already a little too used to rantWoman waxing rhapsodic about Metro.

Adult Education outlined four routes from outward to inward spiritual life based on John Youngblood: Worship, Righteousness, Activism, and Study and then quickly added a fifth, mysticism based on starting from the spiritual center and seeing where one is led. When RantWoman is feeling like a better student, maybe she can pen an item about how all of these are done aboard the bus.

Meanwhile, today's discussion featured extensive wanderings among mystical traditions of various eras in the history of Christianity, the desert fathers early monastics, St. Francis, St. Teresa, St John of the Cross.

Along the way we also visited developmental neurology, the collective unconscious, and several other conceptual destinations, but no Stephen colbert and no city bus, at least until RantWoman brought them up. On the other hand, apparently, it is a pretty revolutionary act for the laboring masses to decide God needs to be the center of their lives and then to order their life and work to make that so.

Read More

A vow of mellowness

RantWoman is more of a salty salsa girl than a customer for The Ketchup Advisory Council and all those natural mellowing agents. For instance, RantWoman like as not will fly into a lather about all the corn syrup in ketchup AND cheer on her favorite brand of salsa, long ago outpacing ketchup in the national condiment face-off. RantWoman has to admit this EVEN THOUGH she really means it about trying to take a vow of mellowness for Lent.

RantWoman, being a good Protestant / Quaker would not automatically observe, say, a Lenten fast in any case. The subject came up though because Orthodox Bus Rider friend was talking about the Orthodox fast: believers basically become vegans for the period of the fast. RantWoman confessed that she does not even attempt say the Catholic practice of fish on Fridays, well at least not since the long ago days of school lunch. Orthodox Bus Rider told RantWoman about how her adult son raves about the experience, about feeling so light he is practically flying. RantWoman refrained from comments as to the effect of adding flying fasters to her bus-board faith experiences, but the vow of mellowness idea wandered into a later conversation.

The idea wandered in, but getting it to stay there may be a problem.

RantWoman recently took her quarterly trip to exotic Bellevue. Even though it is now dramatically easier to get to exotic Bellevue by public transit than it used to be and more pleasant to walk around once there, RantWoman finds it frighteningly easy to be drawn into rants about car culture and building more and more 8-lane freeways.

Some Friends from RantWoman's Meeting have also been going to some site destined soon to be covered in concrete. Friends have been taking advantage of native plant rescue opportunities and bringing the rescued plants back to plant in the grounds around Meeting. RantWoman quite appreciates the plantings and quite appreciates the love behind the gesture. Again though, RantWoman is seasoning calls to grumble more vehemently about ever expanding zones of concrete.

Finally, RantWoman has been reading Barclay. RantWoman's mellowness Light of the Day on that: I'm not just being obstreperous and single-minded and, urk, possibly self-righteous. I'm submitting to God!

Maybe it would be easier for RantWoman just to try to be vegan?

A Lenten post about sacraments, worship, children, parents
http://weedragon.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/doing-our-own-things-alongside-one-another/



A post about joy in finding like-minded seekers among Friends
http://www.quakerquaker.org/profiles/blogs/should-this-be-harder

Read More

Rob Bell by blog

RantWoman's filing cabinet model of blogging:

Victoria Pearson
Evocative of Barclay plus universalism plus "feminist God-seeker"
http://www.quakerquaker.org/profiles/blogs/will-the-real-christian-please




Young Anabaptist: Rob Bell and the Anabaptists
http://young.anabaptistradicals.org/2011/03/23/love-wins-the-book-review/



Peggy Parsons raves
http://sillypoorgospel.blogspot.com/2011/03/and-fit-us-for-heaven.html


Wendy McCaig mentioning Rob Bell before talking about her experiences of Quakers
http://wendymccaig.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/mud-slinging-christians-dreaming-of-another-way/

Read More

Morning Light

RantWoman is posting partly in an effort to demo some blogger features so she can explain them to other screen reader users. RantWoman promises to avoid further technical digressions, except to the extent that the technical digressions are somehow theoretically on RantWoman's path to more solid economic presence in the world.

RantWoman would like a steady infusion of tea to counter the pollen from the lovely cherry blossoms. RantWoman will settle for being glad she can detect new pink fuzz on a row of trees near her abode.

The nighttime temps are also holding steady enough above freezing that RantWoman expects very soon to succumb to temptation and GET HER HERBS PLANTED and out onto the balcony.

Yesterday was our Meeting's annual book sale. Easter is late. Quarterly Meeting is early. It's a La Nina year which has nothing to do with anything but sounds nicer than fretting about triple disaster earthquake / tsunami / nuclear power plant events in Japan. Anyway, the book sale seems early because of other schedule contortions.

Despite RantWoman's fitful efforts to avoid acquiring more PRINT, RantWoman is reflecting on two acquisitions at her Meeting's annual book sale, the Reina Valera edition of the Bible in Spanish and a first edition copy of Reweaving the Web of Life, a book on feminism and nonviolence. RantWoman has enough people in her life who care about the Reina Valera to justify the shelf space. The first printing of Reweaving the Web... has Blind Roommate on the cover and RantWoman's previous copy long ago got lost in some move. Still, RantWoman is reflecting on how differently she feels about some of the chapters now than when she first owned the book.

RantWoman is still vexed by Barclay, lately in connection with Worship. Those assembled last night like Barclay's thoughts about what actually happens during silent worship. RantWoman demurs, though, about Barclay's vehemence regarding music, forms and schedules. Perhaps God showed up more reliably for Barclay than for RantWoman; RantWoman generally has to make regular and orderly time allotments--and still sometimes needs more on top of that.

This month, RantWoman's computer is still ill. SOME of the time RantWoman is finding this good discipline forcing RantWoman to do numbers of things in more measured and intentional ways. RantWoman went back to reading visually, with a magnifier. This was painful enough that RantWoman is glad to have printed the next chapter in larger print. RantWoman still gets to whine and grumble about it being so tough to skim. Yeah, right and RantWoman gets to be happy to have enough vision both to try to skim and to have something to complain about. Or Rantwoman gets to think in terms of mobile devices...or...


RantWoman is grateful FINALLY to have hit some good conversations about things on her mind. There is more to say, but such as have already occurred also need more chewing and Quaker process is still inching along.

RantWoman MEANS to post some reflections from last weekend's Salt and Light event in Seattle. RantWoman is vexed: RantWoman offered to take notes and needs to treat the notes seriously. However, RantWoman showed up as well. Stay tuned.

The short version: RantWoman was listening to sermons on a few short Bible verses as well as stark and powerful accounts of living the Peace Testimony under VERY challenging circumstances, and RantWoman felt strongly eldered just to get over it about a whole bunch of topics not really to her taste and comfort. The topics are still not to RantWoman's taste, but RantWoman has decided just to get over it and work with who and what is available.




RantWoman is holding queries from the following post:
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2011/03/happy-eostara.html


What signs in nature tell you we're on the balance point between Winter Solstice and Summer Solstice, between Brigid and Beltane?


What's happening in your own spiritual life that reflects what's happening in nature?


How are you still stuck in the cocoon or shell of winter?


What environment are you emerging into?


How are you transformed as you emerge from your shell or your cocoon into spring?



RantWoman has an email correspondent on a non-spiritually-themed email list whose outgoing mail has Bible passages in the footer. Today's message:


faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.
And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who
comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek
Him.
--Hebrews 11:1,6 (NASB)

Read More

Blogroll vaguely evocative of Barclay

RantWoman has been causing vexation in the realm of sending various flavors of email to groups of Friends she has activities in common with. RantWoman notes that there are numbers of other issues behind the email vexation, but RantWoman hereby offers summary of a couple links that seem to be riffing on themes connected in some way with Barkley:


Somehow a more concise summary of various strands of theology Barkley was railing about. Also Mical Bales take on Christian universalism

http://lambswar.blogspot.com/2011/03/is-universalism-heresy.html



Digest of Laurence Lessig book on Remix culture

http://gatheringinlight.com/2011/03/04/remix-culture-and-the-church/



When the first of these items showed up when RantWoman was looking away from her work to blog roll, RantWoman blithely forwarded it to the Barkley reading group.

When the second of these showed up, rather than just clog people's email boxes, RantWoman decided she should at least TRY to respond to a suggestion about including some kind of digest description of the article and what caught rantWoman's eye. RantWoman suspects that this digesting is a bit like movie reviews: readers are likely to agree and find RantWoman's assessments reliable or disagree and interact accordingly. What say ye?

Read More

Who is Jesus to Me

RantWoman long after the fact is dumping Barclay drafts to the blogosphere. This item seems especially rich in themes not especially well tied together. RantWoman reminds her readers of her Blog as Filing Cabinet model of information delivery; RantWoman is also meditating about whether she is ever going to be led to revisitthematic jumbles like this to bring the resonances better in tune. RantWoman wishes she could promise.

From Ashley W at
http://questforadequacy.blogspot.com/2011/02/jesus-and-me.html


One of my classmates is writing a paper on Jesus, and she sent us the following questions:

Who is Jesus in your life?

What does it mean to you to live a Christian life?

What one thing would you say to people to describe your relationship with Jesus?

RantWoman has bitten. RantWoman is not really going to follow directions. Instead she is probably going to write what's on her mind all in one muddle.

RantWoman is going to start with the last question first: perhaps one should not treat the core of one's religious formation the same flippant way one might describe relationship status in other contexts, but "It's complicated" will do JUST FINE.

Jesus is the reason for a whole bunch of important conversations, the light about HOW to have the conversations, and motivation for the conversation!

Even though Albie the Enormous Laptop is ILL and RantWoman is having to get her usual ranting and must-do's done in less time and more aggravating circumstances than she even wants to pretend to tolerate, RantWoman is going to bite and to respond to the queries above.

Be forewarned: this is Rantwoman. If you are not prepared to be made uncomfortable, distressed, bothered, twitterpated, led tastelessly down intellectual dark alleys or twisted among psycho-historical, mythepoetic, emotional, spiritual mazes not to mention the vast morass of RantWoman's attempts at interpersonal connection, please feel free to click away.



"Jesus is my Lord and Savior?"

"Jesus as Savior and Friend?"

RantWoman:
"I don't need no stinking Lord and Savior."

Jesus: "Wanna Bet?"



Jesus is who sent me off to meet the Peace Camp witches. I mean this. I did not have the word "leading." I just knew I HAD to be there and way kept opening, over and over.
http://peacecampherstory.blogspot.com/


Jesus is who helped me put up with the peace camp witches as prerequisite for making peace in different contexts.



From One Quaker Take
http://onequakertake.blogspot.com/2011/02/question-one.html



From Margery Post Abbott's workshop in the Twin Cities
http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2011/02/other-tidbits-and-reflections-from.html






Further Dialogue on that Jesus Bit:

http://young.anabaptistradicals.org/2011/02/21/why-i-agree-with-brian-mclarens-answer-and-why-it-matters-that-more-of-us-do-the-same/


and One Quaker Take riffing on Themes Barclay

http://onequakertake.blogspot.com/2011/02/third-question.html


From The Lambs War, one of those threads of conversation that always weaves in something important even though it's not the thread I usually weave
http://lambswar.blogspot.com/2011/02/there-is-power-in-name.html

Read More

Candlemas St Birgid Fire Water

Wherein RantWoman free associates about light, liturgy, fire cults, purification after birth, fertility, smithcraft, gender and technology, recent anniversaries of two fiery space shuttle calamities, and what are a passing radio reference to Chernobyl or the Egyptian internet going dark doing in here too? If RantWoman writes out her whole excursion, can RantWoman just have some WonderWoman bracelets too?

RantWoman started out by posting some naive questions in response to references to Imholc, Candlemas, and St. Birgid's day.
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2011/02/blessed-brigid-to-you.html

RantWoman was hoping for some well-digested review of topical symbolism at a tad more depth than the blog post or the post history tagged the same way. RantWoman got back, basically, invitations to go read Wikipedia her own dang self--along with exhortations not to believe everything she reads, particularly since it's all meant to be mythopoetic in the first place. Okay, careful what you ask for.

Understand, RantWoman's background is really Protestant with very minimal interaction with the liturgical year, well beyond Advent, Lent, sometimes Passover, Easter, Pentecost. RantWoman has a time or two been witness to several days running of the wanderings of unprogrammed Quaker worship. Oh heresy; the holiness of everyday life notwitstanding, these wanderings sometimes actually make RantWoman appreciate liturgy for applying oh maybe just a smidgen of structure to the whole range of human emotions and experiences and cycles of day and year and life.

Unless someone wrote good music about something on the liturgical calendar, though, RantWoman is unlikely to have encountered it. See for instance Candlemas, the presentation of Jesus to the temple, the end of purification after a mother has given birth, typically in modern eras also a time when a family will start toting their newborn to more social activities than right after the birth. Anyway, RantWoman had to go Wikipedia Candlemas.

The presentation of Christ at the temple, the purification of Mary 40 days after the birth, conveniently melding Jewish law, presumably various local practices and Christian tradition. RantWoman notes the acting out of rituals in pre-literate societies where otherwise people might not have obvious ways to help remember the calendar and planting points connected with the stories. RantWoman also notes that if Candlemas falls during Lent the rituals are modified.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlemas

RantWoman, occasional technology geek broadly understood, that she is notes that the Bible, the New Testament in particular is not necessarily a terribly good source for meditations on many technological questions. RantWoman has been especially thinking about that following links from the Wikipedia article. The items above all mentioned Imbolc and St. Brigid, so off RantWoman went on excursions about water, fire, light, springs, wells, fertility, animal husbandry. RantWoman still has no clue how St. Brigid's connections with smithcraft arose. Needing some historical connections longer than the Biblical eras though, evoking the Bronze Age does nicely. RantWoman for the time being is content just to believe the associations and run with the metaphors. RantWoman is happy to grab the fire and light and molten metal and see where that goes.

Links from the item above about Imholc and St. Birgid, a goddess of water and fire, poetry, smithcraft, the timing of this sabbath with the birth of lambs and first planting, more calendar things that the ritual helps track.
http://www.witchology.com/contents/february/imbolc_static.php

http://www.applewarrior.com/celticwell/ejournal/imbolc/brighid.htm


But for this occasion, RantWoman continues to meditate about a high proportion of serious fog and blur in what passes for her own visual experience even if Light is otherwise clear, strong, and bright about ongoing evolution of several simmering matters.

RantWoman will close with two more conceptual excursions. First, RantWoman is seized from time to time with an urge to have a tantrum in the direction of the Baby Boom, the ENTIRE Baby Boom. Technically, by some versions of how the Baby Boom is reckoned, RantWoman IS the tail end of the Baby Boom. In fact, RantWoman would be the Korea generation if the RantFather had ever had any military service AND the children of that era did not just get swallowed up in the Baby Boom. RantWoman from time to time wishes she had older siblings to help break her parents in, to save RantWoman some trailblazing, to let RantWoman slack off about some or another weighty responsibility. RantWoman thinks sometimes of this wish for older siblings when she grumbles about the Baby Boom: that is not what she had in mind.

RantWoman would consider a tantrum only because the Baby Boom all starts turning 65 this year, with all their high expectations and overhang of weird fiscal practices and underinvestment in infrastructure and a whole bunch of dumping on future generations. RantWoman thinks it is PROBABLY not fair to paint the representatives of the Baby Boom she regularly interacts with in all the colors of her exasperation, but who said anything about fair? On the other hand, RantWoman has no idea what form of purification to prescribe; more to the point, RantWoman has more than enough to do just tending her own endless internal compost heap.

But if it's Candlemas, the season for presenting babes to the temple, RantWoman and the Purifying Baby Boom present to the world scene a whole bunch of countries like Egypt where a huge percentage of the population is under 30 or even under 18, underemployed, and overeducated. RantWoman is most assuredly meditating on what transformations this reality implies for the future but for today will be glad that the Egyptian internet is again alight with the torrents of unbounded content we have all become accustomed to.


=========
A curiously also topical item that speaks to RantWoman's condition
http://onequakertake.blogspot.com/2011/01/equality.html

Read More

Baptism, Barclay, Conversion, Silence

RantWoman really likes this item:

http://michaeldavidjay.wordpress.com/2011/01/15/do-friends-have-a-future-part-3-what-drew-me-to-join-friends-and-why-did-i-stay/

Read More

New Year Tidings

RantWoman sincerely wishes all her readers, admirers, Friends who click here by accident and anyone else vaguely a hanger-on of this blog a happy new year full of joy, peace, spiritual growth, love, good health, nourishing witness, vibrant community, and whatever diversions delight you. Anyone happy to leave things at that is invited to do so and click away NOW!



























































Anyone with a taste for Quaker telenovela, continuing revelation, Bad Friends, or RantWoman's entourage of alter egos is invited to continue reading.












































If you made it this far and are still reading, it's YOUR choice. DO NOT say RantWoman did not warn you, invite you to come back at another time, attempt to ameliorate some downsides of electronic communications.... If you are wondering why the heck RantWoman is presenting things as she does, she promises a separate tirade about email.





About three days into a average Invasion of the Grandchildren, the Rev. RantGranddad would start to murmur things like "Go away so you can come back." RantWoman is at that point. What with multiple appearances of Bad Auntie and Worse Auntie, and various other seething family matters, RantWoman has had an especially festive spell of holiday restimulation, thankfully seasoned by now more than one "yucky topic, good conversation" event. Even worse, the bad economy and sundry upheavals mean Bad Auntie and Worse Auntie may be crashing on RantWoman's couch for awhile.


This is a problem. For one thing, RantWoman does not have a couch, and Sensible Auntie is likely to have her hands full if the entourage is underslept. For another, RantWoman has gotten so giddy with the extra few minutes / day of daylight each day since the solstice that she is kind of quaking in the corner murmuring over and over "I am to be true to the Light I am given." RantWoman is sparklingly clear she is to stay where she is, but is also quite clear that this may be a bumpy ride for awhile.


RantWoman got eldered the other night about use of email in connection with a Meeting role. RantWoman promises a separate tirade about email. RantWoman will do what she can in her blog, but even RantWoman has standards about what should or should not be public. That, along with a desire to SEASON material is one of the major POINTS of RantWoman's use of email in the first place. That and accessibility, but as RantWoman said another post may be in order.



The point is, RantWoman did not repeat some points she has previously presented in email. RantWoman did NOT promise not to use email. In fact, RantWoman THINKS she has been taking all kinds of steps to give people CHOICES about how to interact. RantWoman did not say what Worse Auntie thinks: if RantWoman gives you multiple clues as to whether something is urgent or not and multiple options to avoid getting sucked in immediately AND you still cannot interact with the measures RantWoman is offering, then DO NOT BLAME RANTWOMAN.




The conversation did not engage with any ofRantWoman's concerns and RantWoman did NOT unite with the predominant point of view. When Sensible Auntie is on the scene, RantWoman can hear the part about "we do not know how to deal." Unfortunately, when "we don't know how to deal," turns into "therefore don't send," "shut up," or "learn to season yourself" Worse Auntie crashes onto the scene and insists there are points that Friends NEED to deal with, that spiritual concerns do not always show up in tidy, already-seasoned bundles, and that it's the job of certain committees to season!


Here RantWoman must present other elements of her background. RantWoman, as previously mentioned, is a bit of a language geek. RantWoman is the sort of person who tests processes by for example punching the line to get customer service information in languages she speaks just to test that part of the customer service package.



There is a language test element of RantWoman's story. RantWoman in one of the offending emails mentioned a challenge in RantWoman's life: RantWoman very occasionally gets so upset she cannot talk and uses email instead. Those who know RantWoman in person may find this surprising. Those who know RantWoman only by the meditations of her heart and the torrents of words off her keyboard may wonder how it is that RantWoman could be at a loss for words. RantWoman herself is peculiarly grateful to have encountered enough trauma-recovery literature to have language for this problem: trauma reaction.


RantWoman can outline some of the whys, the dynamics of the issue, but functionally the whys are irrelevant, an unhelpful metaphysical question RantWoman gets to discuss regularly with a mental health professional. The point is the problem exists, and some circumstances can make it worse. RantWoman has been getting a lot of messages by email and in person that feel to RantWoman, when RantWoman feels heard at all, too much like "shut up" including several about the topics RantWoman thinks need attention. These topics exist in RantWoman's mind right next to the trauma reaction landmines. RantWoman has not detected anyone else in the vicinity with language to make the "trauma response" connection. If anyone else has made the connection....





RantWoman was all set to be thoroughly peeved about this problem--until that flock of guardian angels currently on duty showed up--AGAIN. Worse Auntie said, well, let people experience the reaction, with or without the language to deal: at some point the experience might prove useful if, say, they have the misfortune to encounter much worse trauma reactions. Sensible Auntie just says "Breathe, Breathe, now embrace it as another opening."


RantWoman apologizes to those who, even after 18+ years of worshipping alongside RantWoman do not realize RantWoman HAS trauma reactions. RantWoman is in fact DEEPLY grateful to her community for space to sort some of this out without having to talk. RantWoman does not know whether to blame / credit Bad Auntie or Worse Auntie for her leading to let others be present with the trauma reactions problem just now.



In any case, RantWoman must take the results as an opening, a way to come at some discussions about what does it mean to walk alongside survivors of abuse, what does it mean that we are all ministers of God? RantWoman finds herself meditating here about the difference in Quaker pastoral care terms between any ordinary friend and Friends with certain professional qualifications and letters behind their names: Friends with assorted letters behind their names are allowed to worship in reticence, not obliged in any direction. One of the miracles of RantWoman's experience with Quakerism is the heal inwardly / heal the world around you dynamic.


RantWoman has, a time or two in the past, been the sort of obstreperous civilly disobedient who has pointedly NOT promised, say to a federal judge to refrain from something the federal judge with power over RantWoman's life and liberty wanted her to promise.


Present-day RantWoman thinks two things about this, besides that it is indeed a Quakerly experience: almost any large-city Friends Meeting should have at least one person like RantWoman with similar experiences on its Worship and Ministry Committee. RantWoman suspects this frame of reference may not exactly be soothing to others on Worship and Ministry. RantWoman wants to assure all concerned that for the time being, RantWoman is REALLY grateful to be reading Barclay, helping with Popcorn Patrol at Meeting for Worship and cutting WAY back on obstreperous behavior before federal judges.


RantWoman is also VERY humble about the challenges of current peace begins right before our noses projects.

Happy Bleeping New Year to All!

Read More

Worse Auntie / Grow your own Lava Lamp

Warning: children who do not need more distractions from their paths of goodness and purity should click away quickly. Quaker children who do not have Santa Clause around anyway may continue reading as long as you also acceptRantWoman's prayers regarding your immortal soul and ask some trusted adults to help season the following.

RantWoman, for her part is thinking of that phrase "Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me." RantWoman is thinking if that's where to start, boy are we in trouble.

RantWoman's clearness committee recently asked her what would happen if RantWoman were more open around Meeting about things to do with vision loss. RantWoman found herself thinking, careful what you ask for.

RantWoman mostly has not filled her audience in on every weirdo visual effect that comes her way. One or two groupies ask in low-key ways for updates and RantWoman repeats the family mantra, "my eyes have not fallen out of my head yet." RantWoman has a time or two shared some or another nugget from all her optho frequent flyer experiences with someone who brought up something related in conversation. RantWoman also mentioned a popcorn meeting and the interaction of eyes and light.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/02/popcorn-factory-minority-report.html

RantWoman has the strong, unshakeable impression that even those increments are too much for many around her. RantWoman so far has not made her clearness committee or another topical committee sit with a whole bunch of messages coming RantWoman's way that sound to RantWoman's febrile sensibilities too much like "shut up" when RantWoman THINKS the speakers could do fine with "I don't know how to deal with what you just told me." But never mind; save that thought for a couple other different threads. Let's start with Bad Auntie .

Remember Bad Auntie the sudoku-obsessed would-be role model of proper comportment during Meeting for Worship. Here is more of the story:

Bad Auntie rides the bus to worship. The Sunday bus run features several clumps of people getting on and later decamping to various houses of worship. The effect is centering and inclusive in a much gentler way than the multicultural maelstrom aboard Metro the rest of the week. RantWoman likes the walk to the bus. She likes the sense of many different forms of worship in one vessel. She likes caffeine and a walk at the other end of the route. In short, RantWoman's routine IS preparing for worship even though it might as well be something from another planet to many.

Then there is sudoku. RantWoman is VERY glad to be able to see enough to do sudoku, provided the print is big enough and RantWoman can use fat pen. RantWoman likes hard puzzles and did not always finish her puzzles during her bus ride, so there is A LITTLE bit of addictive behavior involved in doing so for a few minutes at the beginning of worship while RantWoman settles in, centers, gets a handle on her ill-behaved eyeballs' efforts to shift focal length.

There is also another messy eyeball issue or RantWoman's eyeballs interacting with light conditions in our worship room. RantWoman's pupils do not dilate and constrict correctly or very fast in response to changes in light conditions to begin with. This means for instance that even though RantWoman is an optho frequent flyer, she gets to skip dilation some of the time simply because too many gallons of drops have to be poured in to have any effect.

The worship room at RantWoman's Meeting has one glass wall facing south with plenty of bright sunlight on good days. The other three walls have a row of small windows several feet above the floor all the way around the room. RantWoman most of the time feels so grateful to be among community that she does not even attend to the fact that there is NO place in the worship room where RantWoman can count on being visually comfortable. Bright sunlight has one set of issues; clouds and glare have a completely different set.

RantWoman tries glasses on, glasses off, sunglasses on, sunglasses off, large-brimmed hat on, large-brimmed hat off and various combinations of all of the above. Each takes RantWoman to different frontiers of fog and blur, possibly to slapstick effect. None of them take RantWoman measurably closer to being able to center. One thing that does REALLY help is focussing on something close, which sudoku does WONDERFULLY.

Apparently silently doing sudoku during Meeting for Worship for silent waiting on God greatly distresses many in RantWoman's Meeting. Various people, members of Worship and Ministry and otherwise eldered RantWoman about this. No one got the full dissertation here but They all went "Oh, we had no idea..." when RantWoman talked about both generalized eye stuff and centering preparation for Meeting for Worship. Some people were more categorical than others about wanting RantWoman to stop. RantWoman said thank you for your opinion. Then RantWoman got sent off to a clearness committee and learned of the issue of the child objecting to RantWoman's example written of earlier. RantWoman still thanks the child for speaking up. RantWoman still thinks it's parents' job to teach children what is right regardless of what others around one may be doing.

Tonight Bad Auntie is ba-a-a-a-ck, only now she's Worse Auntie. Worse Auntie is not only unrepentant, she could really fast get into elder with a snarl mode! Worse Auntie is wishing she had said "why does it bother you? Please tell me how this specifically impedes your ability to worship? In particular what is it about being present with other people's pain and difdficulties that you find challenging?"

RantWoman / Worse Auntie personally really cannot see well enough to be annoyed by all kinds of quiet behaviors in Meeting for Worship and Worse Auntie MIGHT be tempted to tell some to be glad someone else's quiet behavior is the worst problem they have in life. RantWoman might also say she is darned glad to be able to do sudoku.

RantWoman might even read people the riot act about the lighting in the Worship Room. There are a million different ways light conditions in the worship room can be uncomfortable between light conditions, things in RantWoman's eyes that do not work normally, and variables like hay fever and sleep. If RantWoman only went places that are visually easy to deal with she would have no life and Meeting for Worship is important. Unfortunately, not only is this a whole welter of oddball messages, RantWoman also gets to figure out how to deal with the "shut up / I don't know how to deal" part she is already far too well-acquainted with.

But hold that thought. Worse Auntie, among other things has some ideas about things she needs around her Meeting. RantWoman needs to communicate specifically with children and her clearness committee has been a great help about ways to get that started. RantWoman has ben gratified too by reaction to a generalized query departing from RantWoman's reflection: other adults also like some of what is on RantWoman's mind. Now that is being seasoned and RantWoman gets to think first of all about dealing with vision loss and talking about it to children.

Worse Auntie and sudoku matters keep showing up though, and keep showing up and keep showing up, and RantWoman is going to have to figure out and strive to articulate some more matters involving adults as well before she even wants to wade into talking to kids. Ai-yi-yi-yi.


Then there would be Conflict is a Gift of God Friend, Friend who is a walking encyclopedia about many topics but has trouble sharing space in conversation with some categories of people. RantWoman had been detecting this problem to really serious and stifling effect for months before certain conversations melted down. RantWoman STILL feels no leading to have attempted to play fairy godmother or to sugarcoat the problem. RantWoman notes that it took Conflict is a Gift of God Friend SEVERAL more months to absorb what seemed to RantWoman VERY direct simple statements pointing in that direction.

During the several months, Conflict is a Gift of God Friend more than once engaged RantWoman's physical safety radar REALLY hard in situations where RantWoman otherwise would very much have enjoyed certain exercise-related activities with said Friend. RantWoman keeps turning over this issue. NOTHING is shaking her clarity that she owes NO ONE, not said Friend, not the clerk of Oversight committee, not the Pope, any explanations for her rules. RantWoman does not even apologize for blunt emails connected with the circumstances even if the point was not crystal clear in the email.

Furthermore, RantWoman considers waiting around for MONTHS while someone else gets a message involving the laws of physics completely unreasonable in the specific context she has in mind. RantWoman does not need argument. RantWoman does not need to be told she is being ridiculous. RantWoman does not need ANYONE telling her what is or is not in her own head! Nor does RantWoman need anyone without exactly the right cred telling her how to get about with Ambassador Thwack the badly-behaved white cane.

RantWoman is pretty sure, despite having told said Friend multiple times of her concerns that he still has no clue about RantWoman's issues. Unfortunately he is not alone; RantWoman was explaining the issue to someone else recently. Conflict is a Gift of God Friend is one of a couple people in RantWoman's life who INSIST they should help RantWoman navigate the mean streets, impose their own agendas, INSIST they know more than RantWoman about what RantWoman needs and are completely incapable of listening. Misery does not love company and Worse Auntie could easily ship them both off for reeducation in Quakerism 101, the listening module.

The other night before the Barclay reading group plunged into our Barclay time machine and flirted with the concept of Barclay the Musical, others were checking in with Conflict is a Gift of God Friend. Conflict is a Gift of God Friend still has eye yuck which his doctors have decided involves edema and capillaries looming large in his visual field, "like the crack patterns of dried up mud." He also has annoying floaters, but apparently he has managed to avoid the Grow Your Own Lava Lamp effects RantWoman dances with on top of oddly functioning pupils, double-vision, fog and blur multiplied with bifocals. At least that would be the impression from RantWoman asking teasingly during the checkin.
RantWoman is meditating about her motivations in insisting on Taking up Space in a public conversation about her issues too. RantWoman is sorry someone else is having eye yuck. RantWoman is NOT sorry for taking up space in the same conversation. RantWoman feels like a very large 3-year-old about the topic. What's worse, Worse Auntie is who's on duty for adult supervision. Happy Christmas to all; Lord have mercy on us all.

Read More

The Barclay Time Machine

RantWoman has returned home from her monthly Battle with Barclay, aka the Barclay reading group. RantWoman apologizes, not in the Barclay sense, for getting some Bad Friend twitches out of her system in time hopefully to qualify for something besides lumps of coal for Christmas.

Tonight's topics were Justification and Perfection. RantWoman feels neither justificated nor perfected. RantWoman would NEVER get to either place on her own and is grateful for the moral support of others in this quest. RantWoman is grateful even if the discourse tends to wander.

It occurs to RantWoman with the benefit of several months of hindsight since December that RantWoman has a little bit been missing the point. Maybe RantWoman will wade back in for another look.



A blog post
http://theimageoffish.com/2010/12/14/gnosticisms-divine-spark/



Silent Worship: the musical
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUJagb7hL0E&list=PLECD6008713D98712&index=7&playnext=4

Read More