Epistles and Ice Water

Sometimes RantWoman hates epistles. Boiling down a whole rich weekend with interwoven themes and thematic counterpoint is not a task for the faint of heart. Boiling this down on a tight schedule with severe space constraints is even more daunting. RantWoman already found the theme of the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference "Walk With Me, Mentor, Elder, Friend" rich enough to generate several layers of reflections herself and offers that comment in all humility to Friends reading the conference epistle.

RantWoman further thinks anyone involved with the planning of an event should stay away from immediate interaction with epistle writing on both sanity and seasoning grounds, especially if there are topics still needing seasoning behind the scenes. Alas, RantWoman is gifted with inclination to run off at the keyboard and is seasoning several topics she think are safe for the blogosphere, though the exact timing depends on RantWoman interacting with the rest of her life as well.

As an aside, RantWoman especially recommends public wordsmithing with 200 people in plenary at Annual Session for extra thrills and spills. At that scale, there is no room for ego and it's all God and Light and Friends. RantWoman, having done this task is too happy to be an elder in the conception of elder elaborated at the panel on eldering at the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference and gratefully uphold the efforts of those doing the epistle at different events.

In any case, RantWoman supposes that epistles can always be taken as points of departure for conversation. RantWoman especially invites Friends with comments about the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference epistle and who might see RantWoman at upcoming events to join her for refreshing beverages (sometimes defined as ice water) or really good frozen desserts and further conversation.

RantWoman decided she should make this offer after seeing comments over at http://northmidwest.blogspot.com/2010/06/pacific-northwest-quaker-womens.html and repeated at
http://onequakertake.blogspot.com/2010/06/epistle-from-quaker-womens-theology.html about issues of sexism. For one thing, some of the threads woven into the conversation are indeed about sexism; others are more generally about what makes good mentoring, passage of wisdowm and weight among generations, and Friends communities continually learning and relearning historical Friends practices in new eras. RantWoman may get something more written, but even RantWoman needs to pry her nose out of her computer and interact with live humans n real space now and then.