Three Offerings

RantWoman has her usual multi-layered stewpot of contentious and challenging issues on her mind. She proposes maybe to get to some of them slant, by writing more of Three Offerings in the Baptist church of her youth. For those challenged by RantWoman's style, this item likely will have three elements, the simple story of RantWoman's experience interspersed with some of the nebulous and all-encompassing ranting RantWoman excels at, and some links to current reading about money.

The Three Offerings were:

--the usual weekly offering
Quakers do that too, though as RantWoman has previously written, at RantWoman's meeting, we are coy about it.

--A special offering to support retired ministers
RantWoman could relate to this since RantGrandfather was in fact a retired Presbyterian minister and also because there were a couple powerful and colorful retired female missionaries in the congregation . Contemporary Quakers, having done away with hireling ministers would likely skip this collection and thus leave some Friends with lifelong and not heavily remunerated service to fend for themselves or to struggle with the overload of multiple part-time or intermittent jobs along with a lot of other people in our individualistic current economy. RantWoman notes further the problem of a great deal of worthwhile work needing to get done with no money to fund it and radio commentators wringing their hands about the need for jobs, jobs, jobs no matter how stultifying and dehumanized but this still does not add up to any kind of fund for retirees.

--The annual Church World Service offering near Halloween for UNICEF.
RantWoman thinks there might be some Friends Meetings who participate in this, but hers does not. As long as RantWoman is horrifying Friends in her Meeting with her tolerance for being asked for money even though she herself frequently feels pinched, RantWoman notes that she always really, really liked this offering because it made her feel so connected to children all over the world. Well, RantWoman did not care for the little assemble-yourself boxes children were supposed to take home and fill with contributions but RantWoman really, really liked this offering. Maybe RantWoman's affection for the symbolic connection to children all over the world was another of RantWoman's Quaker-in-Training moments.

RantWoman feels a parallel rant about use of time and sharing work and gifts among our whole community. RantWoman feels this rant coming on hard and strong and loud enough that it needs its own posting and it's hot enough out that for now maybe RantWoman should chill out and season it longer.

Meanwhile, other recent blog posts that speak to themes monetary.

About the work of sitting with what comes when Friends must ask our communities for different kinds of presence and accompaniment. Well RantWoman is paraphrasing but the entry is definitely topical to several conversations RantWoman is having.
http://gemjourneytopeace.blogspot.com/2010/08/fiscal-equality.html

RantWoman especially notes the section of this entry talking about how adoptive parents of different classes respond when their adopted children turn out to be less than the bundles of joy they hoped for:
http://tapeflags.blogspot.com/2010/08/there-oughta-be-lemon-law-more-about.html