Silent Retreating

RantWoman was offline for almost TWO WHOLE DAYS. The horror.

RantWoman was not completely without literary devices though. Here reprinted are some middle of the night emanations to the Twitterverse via RantWoman's cellphone while she was at the PNWQM silent retreat:

#haiku twittering worship?
bad friends association
signing em up fast!

#haiku the silent retreat
coworker used to call it
silent seminar

#haiku rantwoman offline
twittering incessantly
stop! no retweeting

#haiku Can you see the sky?
cloudy night tall trees slight breeze.
river running by

#haiku Rantwoman at camp
sleeping dormitory style.
more like not sleeping

#haiku Three in the morning.
boxing nun exercises!
do them silently?

#haiku silent seminar
angelic troublemakers
discerning leadings

RantWoman was gratefully attending the annual Silent Retreat organized by our quarterly meeting. RantWoman has attended this before twice, over a decade ago. RantWoman learned that by finding traces of herself from the journal kept in the dorms where people stay.

RantWoman notes that in the interregnum, at some point there was a MASSIVE flood with the nearby river carving out a whole new channel. Between the river reroute and some subsequent massive landslides, quite a substantial chunk of former camp property has basically fallen or drifted away. This sort of massive divine relandscaping frequently fills RantWoman's heart with awe even when it results in much greater pains for people using something such as trails.

RantWoman is not sure what to make of the journal, but there it is, now with extra enhancements including entries signed in retrospect and not just in scribble font, but now also in extra large scribble font. RantWoman frequently loses patience with the electronic universe and growls something like "what happens if the power goes out?" RantWoman freely admits her own handwriting is a good argument for not overdoing that line of thinking. Well, RantWoman can read it. Other people is another problem.

(RantWoman guesses she is SUPPOSED to be glad she can figure out something written pre-vision-meltdown in ballpoint pen was written in her handwriting. RantWoman does not automatically manage everything she is supposed to; she will however admit to being too narcissistic even to attempt to read more than a tiny bit of anyone else's handwriting besides her own.)

RantWoman sort of kind of thought of taking along her laptop and making Mr. JAWS scream through some of the cool Quaker stuff she has been downloading all over her hard drive which is about to melt down. RantWoman even ASKED permission in advance, which she noticed a different laptop user did not. RantWoman is glad she did NOT push herself--any more than she did.

Before leaving, RantWoman looked at the pile of reading she was taking:
--An NIV Bible in large print. RantWoman likes the large print and two-column format. She decided she is not so crazy about the NIV but it is better than the Good News, the other thing she has in large print and in a weird wide format that does not work for the holes in RantWoman's visual field. RantWoman at some point over the weekend wondered what ever happened to the Rant GrandFather's large print Bible which she suspects was probably KJV.

--One article, in tight multicolumn format, off our Meeting's literature table. Article was written by Dear Friend and had a thread related to RantWoman's compost melodrama. RantWoman scraped her eyeballs over the entire survey of world religions to strain at some point which needs more expansive elucidation. RantWoman even looked up a Bible verse the article mentioned.
Then RantWoman read the next verse besides the one referred to in the article and discovered it mentioned something sort of important to one of RantWoman's points in the whole melodrama, exactly what Dear Friend has not so far done. Then there was a reference in a footnote to something in Deuteronomy that segued in close succession to something about stoning adulterers. At this point, RantWoman threw up her hands, went back to Acts and the Psalms and resumed her "I don't want to think about it" stance about numerous topics.

--The rules of linear literary braille: about the right length of anything RantWoman might get read in two days.

--An issue of Science News in Braille, already overkill on the quantity front.

--Some minor sewing projects that RantWoman thought she might be tempted to do even in bad light without enough table space.

--writing supplies in both pen and stylus form.

In short, RantWoman brought plenty she could have done. What RantWoman actually did:

worship
eat
hike a little, over to the labyrinth
sit outside in various places and listen and stare into space
sleep
worship some more.

RantWoman most assuredly does not apologize and feels MUCH renewed.