Sneezing in the coke / Who do you think I am?

RantWoman is shortly going to get back to reflections on Lloyd Lee Wilson's Pendle Hill podcast http://www.pendlehill.org/lectures/fall2009/253-who-do-you-say-i-am
but Literature Brain is demanding RantWoman go the roundabout way, via RantWoman's initial encounter with the writings of Lloyd Lee Wilson.

In the movie Annie Hall, there is a scene where Woody Allen, pointy hair, nerd glasses, rumpled sport coat and all is at some uber trendy NY party. Woody Allen gets offered a line of coke on a mirror and immediately sneezes, blowing the whole affair away in a cloud.

RantWoman, more's the pity, is no good at substance abuse either. RantWoman also suspects that if holy books provoked the same tantrums in RantWoman's youth as they do now, RantWoman never would have made it through adolescence, but RantWoman is clear that the only way out is through! RantWoman thinks that falling asleep THREE TIMES while attempting to have Mr. JAWS read a Lloyd Lee Wilson item on Gospel Order is perhaps the Quaker equivalent of Woody Allen sneezing in the cocaine.


Okay, RantWoman can be a little bit of a philistine and a skeptic. RantWoman consistently fell asleep at about the point where, in many contexts that to some degree or other trend toward utopian, RantWoman starts to wonder how the children get watched and the dishes get washed. It did not help either that RantWoman, though spiritually hungry was feeling as if she was having Lloyd Lee Wilson crammed down her throat. To make matters worse, this was in connection with someone else's inability to hear what RantWoman needs. RantWoman was feeling like someone else's spiritual plaything in connection with said Friend's parallel need to impose spiritual needs he had already been told multiple times that RantWoman could not specifically minister to at that moment and that involved more of the community than 1 Friend and RantWoman. RantWoman is still fitfully seasoning the question of whether she is somehow being called to more than her initial estimation in connection with this topic, but let us stick to Lloyd Lee Wilson.


Starting off with humor is always a great way to draw RantWoman in and the Pendle Hill podcast does that.


Jesus to Peter: "who do you say that I am?"


Peter: "the escatalogical.. (mumblety mumblety mumblety--about 5 more words of academic theology.)"


Jesus: "Say what?"


Well, yeah, but then a RantWoman tantrum also kicked in. RantWoman has very limited experience with frat boy hazing, but somehow the whole exchange sounded a little like Jesus as frat boy hazing a pledge. RantWoman expects she should interrogate this idea a whole lot more thoroughly before running with it. Or maybe RantWoman is just missing the whole point of people, like Peter, coming to God as they are and being received and loved in that condition.


RantWoman is not accustomed to hearing Friends discuss the exact interval when Christ was most divinely blessed and was amused to hear Lloyd Lee Wilson have an excursion on this topic but RantWoman was more struck by thoughts on the atonement, universal redemption, and hints that what works for Lloyd Lee Wilson might not work for others. RantWoman found herself deeply appreciative of several comments that boiled down, basically, to "Your mileage may vary!"

THAT, more than anything is why RantWoman is a Quaker.


RantWoman has been catching items out of the blogosphere that speak in various ways to the experience and integrity of this point even though the blogosphere brings things from all kinds of directions.
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2010/09/difference-and-discrimination-part-iii.html


http://williampennhouse.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html
(Both the items on Core Truth of Quakerism and Transformational Experiences especially speak to RantWoman.)


Still, RantWoman is going to refrain from a temptation to break out in a chorus of "You can get anything you want at ...." but RantWoman is going to play out a few categories of Friends drawn out of RantWoman's interpretation of "your mileage may vary."


Consider:
-- A friend who feels no compulsion to resolve the theological controversies behind dueling versions of Kumbayah at a women's music festival http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2009/06/god-gender-torture-creation.html but whose attention to equality means telling all the mainstage acts to keep their coffee cups off the soundboard


--Friends who need strict limits and splendid certainty. RantWoman has been listening deeply to one Friend and has concluded that this Friend definitely falls in this category. Unfortunately, RantWoman thinks certainty only comes from God and only if one embraces the plunge of believing ardently. In other words, it's not RantWoman's to confer, though if strict limits are comforting, RantWoman is seasoning what she can do.


--Friends who need to push limits and create space. See for instance the Musings of a Quaker Witch item above.

RantWoman is definitely also the sort to embrace a God / divind presence/ whatever who can handle the questions. This is a good thing because just now RantWoman is again seasoning a documen where some kind of unifying spiritual language is needed and the biggest point of unity so far is that people only want to season matters in person, not by email, not over the phone....

But RantWoman digresses: encounters with a whole bunch of different texts is just provoking RantWoman tantrums, but if RantWoman is going to be intentional about finding something she needs, it is going to be something about the act of choosing to believe, or if one is to embrace thea/ology about nontheist terms other than belief whatever the equivalent is. That is, the power is in the choice to embrace. Maybe if RantWoman stretches she can also get there from "Who do you say I am?"