Tardy or Just in Time?

RantWoman, herself such a continuously centered and well-grounded paragon of Quaker virtues, naturally tends towards friendships with other challenging and challenged souls. RantWoman supposes she is to feel blessed to be offered several such right in her very own Meeting.

Lately, one topic exercising RantWoman has been tardiness. For one thing RantWoman has been paying visits to 9:30 worship. RantWoman is deferring judgment about whether more silence is doing her soul any good. RantWoman's soul is such a jumble that RantWoman figures if she puts herself in the way of more shared worship opportunities, sooner or later the right things will land. Plus Adult Education is on hiatus for the rest of August.

In any case, RantWoman is intrigued by the degree to which 9:30 worshippers apparently favor silence, or personalized messages only--as well as flagrant tolerance of total and unrelenting tardiness. RantWoman actually feels blessed that frequently once she is seated, others' tardiness is of little distress, though RantWoman finds herself tempted to install a drive-through window for those who arrive 5 minutes before the end of worship. Selling lattes too comes to mind, but that would be too much noise even for RantWoman.

Uh-oh. One sin RantWoman sometimes excels at is self-righteousness. Besides the above, RantWoman can get herself, either sorry or totally unrepentant to Meeting on time ON THE BUS. RantWoman knows people who arrive on time by bicycle as well as by car. RantWoman thus knows that arrival on-time is possible via a number of modes of transport, from a number of directions, and even from considerable distance. Besides, RantWoman is a greedy sort who wants to enjoy as much of everyone's "irregular ministers" presence as possible, so RantWoman permits herself to be peeved by others' tardiness.

In view of this peevishness, RantWoman thanks the Friend who sent her the following comments recommending

the wonderful Pendle Hill pamphlet "A Joint And Visible Fellowship", by Beatrice Saxon Snell (1965), which speaks both to the condition of the late arriver and to the condition of the irritated person who had arrived on time. It also, by the way, has good passages on preparation for meeting, how to center down and dealing with troublesome ministry.

A few of the paragraphs: [For the late person] . . . "it is wise to forego conversation on the way there, stepping into the state of worship and 'breathing to God' as we step out of the house. Not only is it wise; we owe it to our fellow-worshippers."


" . . . so also it is essential for the punctual not to be resentful and self-righteous in their attitude to those who are late. If our thoughts are so loosely knit to God and to the offering we are trying to make to him that we look around with angry curiosity at the creak of the opening door or rise in
stiff irritation to let the newcomer pass to his accustomed place, we are not helping either his fault or his misfortune."


" Yet how rewarding it can be when a real effort is made to feel not that the worship of God has been interrupted but that yet another of his sons and daughters--our brothers and sisters--has arrived to share it! I sometimes think that we are spoilt by modern conveniences in travel which keep strict time; in the days of horse travel and unmade roads the Meeting often took far longer to assemble in body, but was more gathered in spirit . . ."

RantWoman notes that this pamphlet is also available as a downloadable pdf fromhttp://www.quaker.org/pamphlets/PendleHill.html RantWoman will also at some point recount her preparations for worship aboard the number 48 bus.

RantWoman appreciates the thought that God is generally glad to see worshippers whenever they appear. However, a lot of people in daily life are quite a bit less than godly and thus considerably more prone to offense. RantWoman's concept of eldering includes the thought of feeding back the deleterious effects of tardiness on both fiscal and spiritual lives. This would be in line with RantWoman being blessed (?) by affection for / entanglement with the sort of problematic mortals who really do sometimes need to be upbraided in whatever spirit of loving attention will help them get their acts together and also from time to time to need her own reinforcement in the keep act together vein as well.

For instance, RantWoman has a personal friend who seldom attends worship right now and has gone for exceedingly long spells of arriving at 11:35 along with certainty that she is called to offer vocal ministry. Because RantWoman talks to this Friend regularly RantWoman knows that baselessly expecting the world to conform to her desires causes her problems in many aspects of life. RantWoman therefore feels that she must speak up to be true to the whole picture. Plus, when RantWoman has been speaking up, this Friend says it's refreshing. Refreshing or no, RantWoman would not mind feeling called less often and meanwhile is working on just "walk with me."

But the other point of this item: Last week RantWoman missed 11:00 worship and got the digest version from Chronically Tardy Friend. Chronically Tardy Friend mentioned two messages, someone else's which RantWoman has now forgotten and her own. Judging from reported comments there was update about Chronically Tardy Friend's latest dramas as well as recounting of a Chinese story about complaints resulting in capital punishment rather than an apology from an offending party which was all that was wanted. RantWoman wonders for whom if anyone that message landed.