Ministers, hireling and otherwise

"How are you?" is generally not an essay question. Nor does it necessarily call for the sort of pleasantry one generally carries around as an elevator speech for making the desired impression quickly. Sunday, though, that very question threw RantWoman for a loop. The person asking is someone both in a position to know many details of RantWoman's Compost melodrama, including particularly rasping terms of its current status and professionally steeped in vocabulary highly topical for ministry about the situation.

Yet, when this particular Friend asked RantWoman "how are you?" RantWoman did not offer her standard ask me more if you dare line "Cranky and irascible." That line frequently provokes mirth and even honest exchange of truths. Alas, RantWoman is genial enough that people do not necessarily always believe her, and RantWoman has also found herself asserting her need and capacity very selectively to deliver temper tantrums!

RantWoman is still weighing the efficacy of temper tantrums as part of an overall communications strategy, but the temper tantrums point has caused her a short digression: how much do Quaker modes of ministry assume that both those doing the ministry and those needing ministry can precisely articulate needs, issues, concerns, preoccupations, barriers to spiritual growth or even simple things like answers to ordinary pleasantries. RantWoman thinks lots of different things at different times about matters like her choice of major in college, but perhaps today's Literature Brain point is simply that our various texts and traditions exist not only because of any explanatory value in literal terms but also precisely because they wander back and forth like the trails of a labyrinth giving us different ways to frame problems.

But back to pleasantries for today. RantWoman also reckons that, if offered a decent elevator speech version of what's on her mind, How Are You Friend might actually have been able to offer helpful thoughts about the current phases of the Compost melodrama. The timing was bad, the scene a little too hurried. RantWoman has historically not been in the habit of offering vocal ministry every time the word restraining order has crawled into her vocabulary in personal rather than professional terms, even if the current thoughts, acute intractable and tiring job and housing concerns for others are mere echoes of old issues. RantWoman was kind of thinking "How the bleep do you think I am?" Still, for now, RantWoman just answered "Okay."

RantWoman has been thinking about this encounter in context of discussions on other blogs about training for ministers and hirelings and other such freighted terms. How Are You Friend has eminent professional qualifications and RantWoman has observed her many times adeptly apply skills likely developed in this Friend's professional life to the work of Meeting. Meeting is unquestionably the richer for application of these gifts and this Friend seems to strike a fairly generous but very precisely targeted balance about extending her professional qualifications to problems in Meeting life.

Here RantWoman comes to the world of very different gifts and experiences, to her experiences offering some of her skills with similar limitations, and not automatically to precisely articulated clarity about gifts playing out in service to Meeting.

RantWoman long ago had a job where she was the voice and face of technical support for the computing services at a very large university. This position brought the sort of notoriety which occurs when many more customers recognize one than the reverse. RantWoman got very used to being accosted with computer questions at the mall, on the campus bus, on the city bus, in the campus libraries, in the public library, on the street, in the supermarket, at the pharmacy and in innumerable other situations. RantWoman found these demands so exhausting that she instituted a rule: she only admitted to knowing anything about computers while wearing her work name badge. Of course, RantWoman is exactly the sort of nerd who would forget to take off her name badge. but the policy SORT OF worked. In terms of Meeting and Quaker life, RantWoman knows other Friends who weigh carefully how they extend their professional gifts; RantWoman is also weighing whether there is more she specifically can or ought do about her areas of expertise -- besides NOT keep queries about this topic tangled in the Compost melodrama!

RantWoman has taken note of lively exchanges about training and ministry and "hirelings" and requirements of knowledge and study

http://hystery.blogspot.com/2010/03/unqualified-hireling-ministers.html

http://stasasblogthis.blogspot.com/2010/03/plainly-pagan-unqualified-hireling.html

RantWoman has previously written of her bean counter / social worker taxonomy.

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2009/09/blittery-butterflies.html


RantWoman has been thinking about this taxonomy and the matter of training and life experience analyzing several moments along the long arc of the compost melodrama.


RantWoman has been acutely conscious of sharing details of her emotional landscape and stage in life with others who she does not necessarily know well , things that others have not necessarily previously thought about, topics these Friends might also have no training or experience beyond general Quakerish good intentions. RantWoman in fact decided at certain points just to risk and share in limited ways and to trust that there are ways for others to figure things out / ask for help. RantWoman her particularly notes one gift of a good faith community: connections with people of different generations to steady one and keep refocusing as one's body and spiritual life lurches through the challenges of different ages. At some point RantWoman supposes these moments of sharing might actually benefit from more systematic framing in terms of Quaker pastoral care practices. Well, maybe, if RantWoman for instance can summon time and intestinal fortitude and some other sources to help with discernment in order to revisit circumstances yet again.

The point: RantWoman at a couple junctures said things which might ring alarm bells; other Friends did not interact very deeply with the alarm bell points. Perhaps it is enough that the conversations in question got RantWoman and Dear Friend back to talking. Perhaps RantWoman is simply supposed to add further consideration of these points to her "intend to think further list" for now. RantWoman admits her mind might rather go mess with tomato plants or check out the latest web emanations though not particularly the latest live experiences of the Rat City Roller Girls