Laboring with Love / Forgiveness

God! It's GOD, not Compost, that one would hope would be the most frequent tag on RantWoman's blog. RantWoman likes to paraphrase a certain, decidedly non-quaker public figure: you go to life with the God you've got, not the God you might want. RantWoman SO FAR has not been struck dead by a bolt of lightning for uttering such, but the compost material continues to accumulate!

It's Nomination Season again and there seems to be a certain theme and variations resonance from last year.

This year, RantWoman learned she is not the only person who turned in a form and heard nothing or in RantWoman's case not quite but almost nothing until almost the point where the slate is first reported to Business Meeting. RantWoman is humble about ours being a big Meeting where we ask a lot of Nominating Committee. RantWoman has a long enough list of other peeves not to have time to stay peeved very long, and RantWoman has given herself permission to be present with her peevedness, as the next item on a list of MANY things to be present with.

In the course of a phone call before Business Meeting, it became very clear to RantWoman that, despite some process points previously tended to publicly in Business Meeting there are still substantive conversations to be had. In fact, the need is quite acute in spite of total lack of clarity about how and among whom to start. Such problems are definitely still flipping RantWoman out, on a nice more or less monthly schedule to boot, a dynamic which does not automatically facilitate either better centeredness or more timely clarity!

RantWoman notes today's blog roll

laboring together in love about difficult issues
http://thegoodraisedup.blogspot.com/2010/04/excerpt-from-letter-about-racism.html

about forgiveness and confession
http://gatheringinlight.com/2010/04/13/the-cross-of-repentance-thoughts-on-forgiveness-and-confession/

RantWoman thinks she would like it if the Compost situation were in either of the zones above, but it's just not. In fact there are many rows to hoe and God only knows whether the compost thread is even headed there.

RantWoman has been trying to apply lessons from her conflict resolution exercises to certain complicated messy hairy multiply mutating conflicts in her life, basically to no avail. Perhaps no avail is an overstatement. RantWoman was sort of surprised when she sat down to apply her conflict resolution homework from her other class to the Compost melodrama at what came out first: a really, really, clearly formed insistent pastoral care message. RantWoman dumped this into Dear Friend's lap with a copy to the Friend providing adult supervision for email. Okay, it's a pastoral CARE message and sorry the details are NOT for the internet even though there are comments available...

Then came the call from a nice person from Nominating Committee, probably someone on the list to have more conversations with, but how? Testy email? Uh... The call did after awhile summon a nice mad at the world list which RantWoman was seasoning with satisfaction on the bus to Meeting. The mad at the world list got even clearer with an infusion of caffeine and RantWoman even poked it out in Braille so she would not forget if she decided actually to excoriate anyone. Then RantWoman sat down to the Adult Religious Ed session and was so enfolded in the energy of Friends' concern and engagement with the morning theme that the mad at the world list immediately mellowed!

The next step was two conversations almost in passing. RantWoman, upon reflecting but not necessarily with any foundation, HOPES the who of the conversations suggests that a certain really categorical message about pastoral care concerns got through.

And now RantWoman MUST do actual, non-Quaker WORK!