Stories are Just Data with a Soul

RantWoman deeply appreciates worship that is both very gathered and very on point. Last First day's Meeting for Worship, a week ago, featured nearly 45 minutes of truly nourishing silence, followed by two messages, one of the terms worthy but not special and a second about the people of Egypt wanting democracy on their own terms, thank you very much. RantWoman especially appreciated that the latter message was both concise and on-point. More on the first message further on.

Both of these messages occurred AFTER Eye Roller Prophetic Friend departed to make coffee for coffee hour. Afterward Eye Roller Friend said he was relieved that silence rather than popcorn ruled the day with regard to Egypt. RantWoman was grateful for "in their own terms!" RantWoman notes an ongoing and recurring theme about our Meeting purifying challenging persons with a long stint brewing coffee. RantWoman notes the theme and is seasoning what it suggests. There are people who find being able to feed community with hot liquids, tasty noshes, and clean crockery deeply nourishing to their own spiritual lives. Often these friends make many social and creative connections. RantWoman does not necessarily rule herself out of this number, but RantWoman is still terrified by laws of physics, her own communications challenges, and the pastoral concerns that sometimes turn up hiding out in the crockery. RantWoman is also meditating about the spiritual concerns tied up in physical work, food and drink, and the mechanics of commuity. RantWoman is meditating about this but back to today's item.


RantWoman's brain was running around worship "like a hummingbird on a holiday," in more than one language to boot. RantWoman has been seasoning a metaphorical message related to blindness for several weeks and part of the message needs a second language. It was also sudoku weather, defined today as cloudy and enough to make eyes itchy. RantWoman's brain also decided that being headachy was the best it could do with optic nerves not able to live up to brain's expectations about range of focus, with or without glasses. RantWoman decided to subtract her glasses and to continue fantasies about exactly what kind of shades would both cut the glare and look fabulous. RantWoman is too vain about the brain candy aspect of the puzzles left in her sudoku book to break it out even though the light and glare strongly suggested that option. RantWoman HAS decided though that her readers get to be present whether they care or not with more of the peregrinations and peculiarities of RantWoman's eyeballs.

One of the items immediately summoned to RantWoman's mind after the message discussed below.
Ashley W:
What does it mean to you to live a Christian life?
Basically, to love God with all your heart and to love your neighbor as yourself (which means you'd better love yourself!).

The rest of the post, with hyperlinked Bible references:
http://questforadequacy.blogspot.com/2011/02/jesus-and-me.html


The second message was about being able to be vulnerable as a prerequisite for making connections. The message referenced a YouTube item by Breme Brown:
Brene Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4Qm9cGRub0


RantWoman means actually to interact with the contact of the video, but first this will be filtered through RantWoman's eyeballs: RantWoman watched the video on her home computer using her screen enlargement software. This means RantWoman could actually see the speaker's face and to see it enough to make sort of catty remarks about the speaker's hair style: RantWoman thought the haircut had a really nice shape. However, the cut featured a lot of longish hair that kept falling into the speaker's face. RantWoman would have been happy to pay more attention visually, but the speaker every two seconds kept brushing her hair out of her face and RantWoman completely lost patience with the visual interaction.

RantWoman suspects she could exhort herself to be grateful actually to be able to be driven crazy in exactly this way, but that is NOT the RantWoman who showed up. The RantWoman who showed wandered into meditations about all manner of individual specialness, a separate thread from Light within and universal worthiness in God or worthiness with or without what words an individual uses, regardless of the vexations that come with specific categories of specialness. RantWoman also hears pretensions in some corners that being vulnerable is really optional.


Rantwoman means to look more at comments in the video about shame and empathy. RantWoman also remembers comments about Courage / Compassion / Connection including a wonderful old dictionary definition of courage:

"to speak your mind with your heart."

Another Breme Brown item:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQiFfA7KfF0&NR=1



Also a reference to: ordinary courage in soem work by Andy Rogers