Auntie Typology with Angels

RantWoman has over the last several days spent considerable time either drenched in holiday worship services, 3 times at 3 different places in one day, or in basically unformatted presence of several of her kith and kin, or sometimes both at once.

Before anyone starts shouting Hallelujah and proclaiming that RantWoman has suddenly found religion, RantWoman must confess, basically, to being a floozy: RantWoman owes her exercise in theological and geographical heterodoxy to efforts at least partially to refill her famished soul with music, Real MUSIC with harmonies and complex arrangements and a whole lot less insidiousness than say drug store muzak.

Auntie RantWoman and a whole entourage of alter egos feel WELL FED on that score, and that candle thing over and over with Silent Night did not hurt either. RantWoman is pretty sure there must have been angels present too, but let us start with the cast.

Sensible Auntie is an all-purpose sensible adult role model.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/08/sensible-auntie-shows-up-at-business.html



Sometimes RantWoman achieves Sensible Auntie; sometimes RantWoman has to summon both angels and some of her own Sensible Auntie figures. RantWoman especially thanks the first Quaker she ever knew and Sensible Choir Auntie for the gifts of seeing and acknowledging and calming simply by seeing. But let us stick with the babe at hand.

RantMom, Little Sister, Irrepressible Nephew and Kindly Brother-in-Law, the entire Rant Entourage collected ourselves in time to attend the mid afternoon Christmas Eve Spectacular at Little Sister and Nephew's church. One of the ushers trying to shoehorn in some more of the Presbyterian masses asked everyone to please "cozy up." RantWoman found herself thinking that if the Rant Entourage got any cozier, there might be a nuclear meltdown. Sensible Auntie managed to keep a grip on things.

Sensible Auntie had help from a darling babe in the next pew. Darling Babe in small red dress and blonde curls was fascinated by RantWoman poking out notes in Braille. RantWoman apologizes that Sensible Auntie prevailed only because the tyke was way too small to realize RantWoman might have been having a Bad Auntie moment managing twitches in aggressively maintained privacy.

Sensible Auntie showed up at the post service Christmas Eve pizza feed. Sensible Auntie has been eating the featured salad for years; Little sister finally had a nibble and pronounced herself hooked also. Irrepressible Nephew made an offhand 10-year-old comment about wanting to sprinkle plutonium on his pizza; mercifully he laughed when Sensible Auntie said she was not going to eat dinner with him if he insisted on bringing the plutonium.

Bad Auntie, who sets bad or challenging examples UNINTENTIONALLY
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2009/11/bad-auntie.html

Bad Auntie giggled about the plutonium on the pizza before Sensible Auntie insisted on taking over.

Worse Auntie who sets challenging, problematic, difficult examples on purpose and may snarl vehemently if eldered about same.

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2010/12/worse-auntie-grow-your-own-lava-lamp.html

It must have been Bad Auntie in charge of RantWoman's interactions with the obligatory candles. RantWoman did okay the first time, but at RantMom's church RantWoman's first candle just vanished, perhaps into a parallel universe and RantWoman had to get another one.

Then RantWoman got home from RantMom's church in plenty of time to run with her leading to hit one of the big church services advertising on public radio. RantWoman knows both the public radio churches are really good venues for music; RantWoman chose the option with the more workable bus and was NOT disappointed.

Such is the station of Big Downtown Church that even the candles were swanky, with plastic drip catchers instead of the humble paper ones everywhere else. This did NOT help RantWoman hold onto her candle and RantWoman even had to have a choir member sitting near her get her another candle.

After many kinds of wonderful music, it came time for Silent Night, RantWoman realized she had another problem: RantWoman has a weird nerve thing going on in her face and RantWoman just COULD NOT blow out her own candle. RantWoman had to have RantMom help her twice. The third time was way past RantMom's bedtime but somehow some kind of angel delivered just the right really fast wrist flick to snuff the candle without blowing.

Worse Auntie ALMOST lost it after the service. Big Downtown Church has one way out that goes to a parking garage and Worse Auntie could far too easily summon rants about the general preposterousness of parking garages, especially when RantWoman found herself in the hallway on the way to the parking garage instead of out the door to the bus. Fortunately angels and the parking masses quickly got RantWoman turned around the right direction. The parking garage lecture can wait, especially if one is shamelessly and unabashedly in attendance solely to hear music.

Worse Auntie also nearly showed up at the holiday feast the next day. The Rant Sisters were joking around about our childhood relationships to a stuffed Santa Claus our grandmother sewed somewhere along the way. There were some morbid elements and something set RantMom off. Worse Auntie found herself thinking that maybe it would be fine to make RantMom appreciate that her kids can argue with non-lethal effects, but a big flock of angels dragged Sensible Auntie onto the scene with hugs and reassurances for RantMom.

RantWoman is not sure whether it was another legion of angels or a whole lot of time hanging with Quakers, but the post-party RantSister telephone debrief of the Santa Claus incident along with a hypothetical pending visit from Alcoholic RantBrother, though the conversation started out testy, kept hanging in and hanging in and hanging in. All of a sudden, it was a VERY real conversation. There were VERY yucky topics involved, the kind of topics where RantWoman has known pieces for awhile and not thought it was her place to bring things up or has sat on topics chewing on her nerves very cautiously seasoning choice of place and approach and absolute necessity of conversation.

This time, Sensible Auntie just kept listening. Sensible Auntie was not necessarily delighted with new details, but there seem to be angels hovering helping to hold the new information. Sensible Auntie was deeply grateful to feed some very positive observations into the conversation and to hear more echoes of sense from the responses' resonance. Sensible Auntie and the angels are filing the fact that there are some "you can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink" angles relative to one of the figures at the feast, more than one actually but for a different reason.

But in case anyone is getting bored with all this peace and centeredness, Worse Auntie and the angels are now seriously wrestling with what it is realistic to expect of one's faith community both collectively and in the person of specific individuals at certain times.

There would also be certain temptations toward extremely public tirades about how "that is EXACTLY how NOT to do it." At the moment the angels have their hands full about more than one person on that score. Sigh.

Meanwhile, RantWoman sincerely thanks some listening angels at a checkin who simply took in the "good conversation, yucky topic minimalist description an angel boiled down for RantWoman.

PS If this makes it to a live post it is going to be because Sensible Auntie, Worse Auntie, and a whole lot of angels have duked it out about what to say about whom all over the internet, especially if the whom includes people with throbbing issues and frequent live conversations.