War, Peace, Meeting History

Today in worship Friends were full of remembrances generated by a historically themed adult discussion hour. RantWoman felt vexed not to have had more detailed advance notice of who the featured speaker was, but the brutal reality is that getting to 9:30 discussion hour is darned difficult for RantWoman no matter what.

RantWoman, for her part, was worshipfully seasoning thoughts of what level of cantankerousness is needed for this generation, whether and how to join the cantankerous pantheon of difficult and challenging personalities who founded our Meeting and wove a community out of many clashes and collisions of character. The message thread eventually turned to more outward-oriented customary Quaker meditations on war and peace, but not without a RantWoman mental excursion related to sudoku.

It was cloudy and there was a lot of glare, so RantWoman was definitely feeling proddings in the direction of sudoku or at least messages about sudoku. The latest thought exercising RantWoman is that she has been doing sudoku sometimes in Meeting for Worship for probably close to a year at least. No one said anything--until RantWoman got nominated for a certain committee.

RantWoman remembers a certain uptick in her sudoku habit after an eye procedure basically did what it was intended to do but also added and enhanced some of the annoying visual effects RantWoman deals with all the time. Okay, so enhanced light trails and even bumpier double-vision are not necessarily the first thing it occurs to one to share when someone asks "how are you?" RantWoman can certainly also articulate reasons sudoku helps her center, but RantWoman is meditating about options for more verbal communication.

RantWoman today also found herself wondering how many others around her have things on their minds that they do not know how to share. RantWoman finds herself ambivalent about even wanting to know. A few weeks ago, a Friend offered a message about someone she knew who, when faced with expenses for an upcoming trip decided to double her contribution to her faith community and then never wound up worrying about money on her trip. RantWoman wishes that were feasible for her on the financial front, but RantWoman realized doubling her outlay of compassion MIGHT be achievable, at least part of the time. RantWoman is pretty sure that would not suffice for everyone around her, but she darn well supposes others could do their part too....

By this time, the last message was pointing out that the state of WA contributes 10 times the projected state budget deficit to certain war efforts. That is, programs that aid the most humble of people in the US are being gutted to buy bombs for... Well, you get the idea, and RantWoman is already trying not to gallop any further ahead of her Light. In a similar vein, warning: the following item is chock full of frank and unQuakerly language, but then that would be exactly the sort of material that RantWoman would rabidly recommend
http://susiebright.blogs.com/susie_brights_journal_/2009/11/mad-men-ft-hood-and-the-stupak-amendment.html