Insurance

RantWoman's teenage sojourn with her family among Baptists turned RantWoman, eventually, into the relentless social action Quaker she is today! In light of this, RantWoman is not sure whether her junior high Sunday school teachers are going to be charmed with this remembrance or not. RantWoman is to be true to the Light she is given regardless.

RantWoman has been thinking of different adult figures in her life, parents, Safe Adults who set respectable and respectful examples even if they were not automatically people RantWoman would confide in or consult about something outside the content of Sunday school classes, and Trusted Adults, the kind of adults one can ask questions of. Bernie and Doris, who taught the junior high Sunday school class at the Baptist church of RantWoman's youth, were wonderful safe adults. RantWoman has especially been reflecting on the gifts of their presence because she recently learned that Bernie passed away in December at the age of 90.

RantWoman must first note the matter of what to call death. Bernie would probably laugh at "kicked the bucket." RantWoman thinks he would more likely prefer "went home to the Lord" or "was called home to God." Either way, RantWoman supposes it would have been good to say some of what has come to her before he passed away.

When RantWoman was in junior high, Bernie and Doris were middle-aged empty-nesters who faithfully appeared almost every week for the 6-8 junior high aged youth in RantWoman's age cohort. Not going to Sunday School was not really an option in the Rant household: there was one car. The RantFather had to go early for choir practice. The children were not to be left unsupervised, a point for which RantWoman as oldest child was actually grateful. RantWoman, oddly, remembers almost nothing of specifically Biblical content: the Gospels, Acts, the New Testament but not even any stories, just a generalized sense of what goodness was supposed to be.

Perhaps the Biblical content was not the entire point. Bernie and Doris genuinely loved each other though they clearly lived in two different realms, she a passionate gardener, he still active in his business and professional capacities. Feminism did not seem to have hit but it did not seem to matter: Bernie and Doris exuded an inate sense of equality and mutual respect that they both clearly were delighted with.

Bernie sold insurance. To someone with even minimal grounding in business, this does not necessarily sound like a revelation. RantWoman's family on the other hand had a number of twitches and dysfunctions about money, shellacked over judgmental Calvinist absolutism. For RantWoman, the concept that one could both interact with risk or scary eventualities AND believe deeply in God, in Divine mercy was a huge revelation. a wondrous breath of fresh air.

Equally liberating was Bernie and Doris' view of evolution. This came up in some mix of conversation about Genesis and the study of science.Doris just said, "who knows how long God's days were?" RantWoman realizes that some of rigidly scientific bent would be appalled; RantWoman on the other hand again found it extremely reassuring that there was room in the conversation both for the struggles and striving of scientific inquiry and for appreciation of the ineffable, the unknowable.

Here is Bernie's obituary
http://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/announcements/obituaries/article_3e9a5bc3-f41a-56e6-9331-29ed66328632.html

RantWoman is imagining a Divine pat on the head: well done, good and faithful servant; RantWoman also sends Doris heartfelt prayers.