RantWoman used to have a co-worker, an Episcopalian, who refused to schedule meetings on Good Friday. He would explain "Jesus is dead and you expect me to WORK?" Quakerish calendar homogeneity aside, the sentiments seem in keeping with RantWoman's mental state, now being catalogued after the fact.
RantWoman is still digesting bits of her Compost melodrama. Today she is wondering what about the situation is still ferociously kicking at her reflexive allergy to others playing God, whether this allergy is just some weird form of spiritual asthma and oversensitivity. RantWoman would not mind further Light as to whether this is just some kind of colossal miscommunication, but every time prayers arise about it the answer is no. RantWoman has a deep sense still of some specifically personal things that need to be tried again at and community threads still getting woven as well.
RantWoman just received an emanation from Dear Friend quoting Gandhi and proclaiming conflict a gift from God. The fabulous surfeit already of conflicts in RantWoman's life on top of compost-themed ones puts RantWoman in mind of a wonderful elderly Russian friend whom RantWoman deeply admires for two reasons. First, he was as much of a religious CO about the lack of options connected with his military service as one could be in his homeland during wartime without doing the paperwork and getting to have an even rougher go of it. Second, he lived for a long time in a hard and difficult place he did not have to live except that he was in love with someone who had no choice about being there.
Russian friend would say sometimes that people are all about "Gospodi Blagoslovi," God Bless, when they really need "Gospodi pomilyi," God be Merciful. RantWoman is still having serious difficulty distinguishing between divine leading and someone playing God. RantWoman is perfectly happy to live with ambiguity about that as long as there is decent community discernment. RantWoman's meeting has been doing really well about generalized discernment during our Year of Discernment. In some individual situations, not so much; RantWoman is still meditating about her own screwups but RantWoman is also resoundingly clear about much not to regret. RantWoman is noting another new wrinkle and not being so patient with more discernment.
But back to Russian friend. If RantWoman weren't busy being allergic to anyone playing God, she might say "Enough already on the Blagoslovi thing" and toss a "Gospodi pomilyi" into the conversation. Either that, or RantWoman gets to invoke worldly and pedestrian phrases like "skill-building" and "capacity building" and muddle forward.
In the meantime, RantWoman would not want to be Pope. For instance that papal infallibility thing seems like a really tough act to maintain, no matter how much Divine assistance is involved. Considering that RantWoman is an uppity Quaker / Protestant WOMAN, personal experience with the mantle of papal infallibility is a problem she is unlikely to have in any case.
Come to think of it, RantWoman does not even think it sounds like fun to be the Pope's confessor. RantWoman thinks there are times when the Pope might really need good Quakerly eldering, it might still be way too easy to just be a "yes-man." Today's news is that the Holy Father is not having such a great week. Consider new waves of sex abuse scandal matters and whatever unfortunate comments antagonized a lot of rabbis during Passover and Holy Week.
RantWoman realized she knows at least two people for whom the latest sex abuse scandal tidings might be restimulating; RantWoman has conversational basis to maybe float topical inquiries in one case. In the other, RantWoman has two independent streams of information suggesting the strong possibility but not really any basis for bringing it up. RantWoman knows she is supposed to use more florid Quakerese, but maybe "shut up and pray" will have to be adequate in terms of those in RantWoman's acquaintance, especially since they are not Quakers.
RantWoman had a related conversation about cycles of abuse and realized that RantWoman would really, really like it if the Pope would stop hiding his head in the sand and express even the mildest capacity to speak to that problem, much to be prayed for at least. Meanwhile RantWoman will again return to tending her own moral waste heap, trying, at least some of the time, for some other model of conflict dynamics than tit for tat.
RantWoman is seasoning thoughts about Passover. RantWoman remembers for the first time really thinking about Jewish history when the Baptist church of her youth celebrated a seder. Okay, they celebrated but then Sunday School was all about how Christians were beyond all that dietary laws stuff.
RantWoman had observant college housemates whose supplies of stale whole wheat matzo went really well a time or two with PB&J for lunch. RantWoman has it on pretty reliable authority from a couple directions that peanut butter is not really kosher, or at least not in some traditions. That lovely cardboard flavor of whole wheat matzo still always makes RantWoman think of her even more impetuous youth though.
Anyway, this year's topical message is about the miracle of parting the Red Sea being followed still by a long spell of wandering in the desert; RantWoman thinks if the Jews had followed some of the message RantWoman has been encountering about "submit, submit," they never would have gotten their act together to be in the way of the parting of the sea. Wandering in the desert works great as a metaphor for a lot of things.
For peculiar reasons though this seems like not the right year for one of RantWoman's cracks: "when Baptists celebrate Passover, there's a crucifixion involved." That would be one way of phrasing the truth of RantWoman's experience, but RantWoman strives to keep the proportion of people she says this to who laugh hard at least equal to the number who choke on their tea and this year things may still be running a little ragged.
RantWoman admits to being quite peeved that it took Dear Friend 3 days to send the above-mentioned conflict document by email, particularly since one of his excuses was multiple seders. RantWoman realizes that, in terms of many Quaker timelines, three days is lightning speed, but RantWoman's brain bounced back to some emails from last year where RantWoman was needing to set very firm boundaries about others' (guess who?) efforts to assume management of her time and it seemed to RantWoman appoint himself custodian of her spiritual life and decided just to go with the peevishness.
In case her readers cannot tell, RantWoman sometimes quite resents all her vision issues. Having to wait three days for something that others got on the spot is one of those little thoughtless things that can make RantWoman feel really marginalized. RantWoman discovered along the way that of course others in her Meeting are not all that much more suave than Dear Friend. RantWoman of late has been requesting that things like Business Meeting handouts be emailed prior to Business Meeting. If RantWoman says all she can do is ask, her readers may use their imaginations; RantWoman has also become a lot more frank and even hard-nosed about just asking.
RantWoman notes this on top of a ferocious sense last year of needing to talk about her spiritual life with others, specifically more people than one person, coincidentally a Friend who was also having his own intractable life difficulties, maybe not at his best on many grounds because of that, and maybe not making full use of his Meeting's pastoral care resources.
RantWoman tried to tend to her need for spiritual conversations and diverse reading digesters by signing up for spiritual sharing but that did not happen. Then along comes Dear Friend, being rude about RantWoman's time and insistant on scheduling things RantWoman needed to put in queue. Next there would be demanding that RantWoman talk about things she already had not felt listened to for a long time about and not even getting until months later that his messages were not getting through. RantWoman by this time is getting desparate: reading is such a chore that RantWoman really relies on good discussions to help her digest multiple perspectives.
By good discussions, RantWoman means many voices. But again there is Dear Friend, jumpingup and down on another long dormant set of nerves RantWoman could barely even articulate and getting in the way of a very important way for RantWoman to participate in her community life. In other words, still more ways for RantWoman to feel marginalized and even elbowed out of very, very important conversations. Among that number some conversations that seem to RantWoman as if they may have become clear to Dear Friend but not necessarily engaged with, let alone been embraced by others.
Here, RantWoman is also still struck by how hard it has been to find the right people to have the conversations she needs to have. This is NOT, of course a problem it is reasonable to expect, say, Dear Friend to solve, and for now RantWoman is just taking note of many ways for things to be hard.
RantWoman has for a number of reasons not felt clear yet to spell out in her blog numbers of other points where things got bungled by RantWoman and by several others. RantWoman is also quite humble about not really intending just to help catalogue a large number of ways for things to go awry. In fact, the accumulated mountain of screwups is so high that at a certain point RantWoman decided she could not possibly interact about every problem going on and would just have to sit with her own spiritual mudpots and hope that God and other Friends got things closer to in order regardless of RantWoman's specific efforts.
RantWoman out of some kind of perversity helped write her Meeting's State of Society report his year; after the report is approved by Business Meeting, RantWoman may post and will allow her readers to draw their own conclusions.
RantWoman is collecting comments she may or may not get further reflection done about:
A good teacher's students better be able to grow up and argue with the teacher; a good teacher must be open to such argumentation.
Frame of reference matters:
RantWoman has previously posted about once when Dear Friend was being an interpreter and got loudly and publicly corrected for a small mistake with a difficult construction.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2009/10/morning-compost.html
What RantWoman did not think to say in her earlier post: meaning no disrespect to many of Dear Friend's gifts, that sort of public correction has happened to RantWoman. RantWoman thinks it comes with the interpreter business and that if one does not grow some kind of a thick skin about such, one will just not have a very good time as an interpreter. For now, RantWoman will leave to her readers to make the leap to what in heck the public face aspects of a conflict might have to do with RantWoman's compost melodrama.
Finally, RantWoman is reading the queries in her Meeting's weekly bulletin. These are selected on a pretty particular cycle from our Faith and Practice. RantWoman supposes she can at some point formulate an opinion about this practice, but the queries are more than enough for today.
From Faith and Practice of North Pacific Yearly Meeting, printed in my Meeting's weekly announcements:
Are we prepared to let go of our individual desires and let the Holy Spirit lead us to unity? Are we charitable with each other? How careful are we of the reputation of others? Do we avoid hurtful criticism and gossip?
RantWoman's observations:
--Unity Schmunity: coming to unity is only required a small percentage of the time. COMmunity means a lot of conflict and diversity on the way to unity. If Quakers do not practice dealing with conflicts among ourselves, how the heck do we propose to deal with conflicts involving others.
--Reputation: RantWoman's Meeting is the mothership for half the Monthly Meetings in her Yearly Meeting. RantWoman thinks that she might wish that there would be only tidings of profoundly centered worship and miraculous unity after spirit-led threshing in Business Meeting. RantWoman thinks it is FINE to show struggles and people learning to do things that are challenging, that no one is born knowing. RantWoman will graciously note comments to the effect that RantWoman should not quit her current day job and go into PR.
--Hurtful Gossip and criticism: RantWoman again points out that for all of what is in her blog, there is A LOT which is not. RantWoman is wondering whether the blog would be more comprehensible if there were more detail. RantWoman on this score suggests her readers just turn on their favorite soap opera /telenovela, likely to have better scriptwriting.
RantWoman is stunned to have run multiple searches and not discovered anything on either of her blogs about the highly multilingual Flogging Bureau she and some of the interpreters she hangs with on the interwebs keep threatening to organize. RantWoman had to stop and remedy this:
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/04/flogging-bureau.html
RantWoman thinks that, while she expects this also to be a multifaith endeavor, she will have to comment specifically in Quaker terms about the Quaker version: The Association of Bad Friends has an Alternatives to Nonviolence Committee. In RantWoman's Meeting, when Friends think there are too many committees, a subcommittee is created instead. RantWoman thinks there is call for a Flogging Bureau subcommittee, but RantWoman is unclear whether to call it "Consent is Overrated / Friends By CONVINCEMENT" or just the "Flogging a Dead Horse Bureau of Mutant Miscommunications."
Resurrection arrives none too soon.
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