That Nunnery Again

RantWoman supposes it would be prettier to frame this excursion with tidy Bible references or quotations from the journals of others' spritual travails. RantWoman could digress and weave some Old Testment prophets and Gene Sharp into news from the Middle East, but really, the best RantWoman can do is an off-the-cuff Shakespeare reference.

RantWoman invites her readers to put nunnery into the blog search bar for the correct reference because RantWoman is in too much of a hurry to put in links herself. RantWoman promises by the end of this excursion to be at least incrementally clearer about why and which part of the previous blogdom nunnery reference is applicable to what follows. Hint: it's not the nunnery phrase; it's the other one.

This week RantWoman has been turning over her spiritual compost heap in connection with some recurring themes on her path to spiritual perfection.

First consider the drama factory where so many sirens are blaring, alarms are flashing, nerves are howling, and pains are throbbing at once that one only notices something that would be a big red flag to others after something else even larger has quieted down. RantWoman is thinking for instance of her worst summer of eye yuck: more than once over the summer, RantWoman could only isolate and address one issue after something else got dealt with.

RantWoman further thinks of a specific moment of drama in her Meeting previously mentioned involving two people with hidden disabilities. At the time of the event, RantWoman filed several aspects of the issue in her "just another day around denizens of the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme Computing" box. Only later did it dawn on RantWoman that it would have been entirely reasonable and appropriate to try to talk about the circumstance with a member of Oversight Committee. RantWoman specifically does not even want to comment about any assessment of whether members of Oversight Committee would have heard her or had conceptual space to interact. RantWoman is also humble about the degree to which she herself has needed to be whipped into more refined awareness through repeated flogging with different realizations, self-examinations, and re-encounters with related topics. RantWoman thinks the specific episode still needs a conversation but RantWoman is seasoning where and with whom to start.

RantWoman is also thinking of a specific mundane safety-related circumstance at Little Sister's household about which RantWoman urgently prays for guidance and centeredness to attempt to address. This issue has already vexed RantWoman a very long time; it is only because Little Sister has made so much progress in so many other areas that RantWoman even feels there is space to bring the matter up. RantWoman specifically needs Light to see whether the circumstance can be tackled on its own, without enmeshment in the weight of much bigger problems. Remember this is RantWoman. That is precisely WHY such Light needs to be sought.

Next consider family medical matters. RantWoman will write of the specific event in another post. Little Sister has had 7 abdominal surgeries in 11 years. Thanks to LOTS of healing and letting go and mental health intervention and WHO KNOWS what all, the last one has been dramatically easier, smoother, with a shorter hospital stay.... than any of the others. There is still ample family psychodrama for which RantWoman requests the entire cast, Little Sister and her brand of Ferrener Husband, Irrepressible Nephew, RantMom and of course RantWoman, be held in the Light, but RantWoman is DEEPLY grateful for many forms of progress. RantWoman will spare her readers most of the details: they involve suffering, anxiety, grief, aggravation, trauma, drama, and LOTS of circumstances RantWoman would rather not have to deal with never mind their impact on Little Sister, the star of the show.

Here RantWoman must specifically bless Huge African American Neighbor. Huge African Neighbor knows Little Sister from here and there, including the bus and RantWoman moments. Huge African American Neighbor shares with Little Sister some medical concerns but has fewer options for pursuing the surgical remedies Little Sister has battled her way into. Huge African American Neighbor loves to talk about sex and religion, alone or together. Little Sister shares this trait but Huge African Neighbor amuses RantWoman by conducting such conversations with people it would not occur to RantWoman to talk of such matters with. RantWoman is especially amused by the data thus collected, particularly because it specifically would NOT occur to RantWoman to collect data in exactly the way Huge African American Neighbor does.

The reason RantWoman must bless Huge African Neighbor though: Huge African American Neighbor is mercifully unencumbered by Rant family psychic baggage or perhaps she finds what she knows of the Rant Family to be vastly sunnier than her own. She frequently asks about Little Sister and ministers to RantWoman by just shaking her head and saying "Oh, your poor sister." RantWoman is SO grateful, for one thing because of her own rabid judgmentalism: Little Sister is sometimes prone to go on about God's help in a way that causes RantWoman SEVERE temptation to froth at the mouth about certain behavior issues involved in Little Sister's problems. Most recently though, RantWoman did one of her grab someone else's concept for herself things: RantWoman HAS to be tending her own psychic compost heap but there HAS to have been God in there somewhere this time around for RantWoman too.

RantWoman has been turning over these circumstances in the context of her Meeting. In this time, RantWoman and Little Sister also cheerled RantMom through treatment for two kinds of cancer AND RantWoman herself has had substantial life drama of her own including midlife vision meltdown and other matters of principle and vexation. RantWoman has categorically NOT poured out every detail of these festive circumstances to many at her Meeting. In fact, RantWoman is coming to think that she has been doing FAR too good a job of shielding her Meeting from opportunities for spiritual perfection.

Here are RantWoman's excuses:

For one thing, this sort of concern just sucks up a lot of time and energy so one hardly even has brain space for anything else. For another thing, sometimes at Meeting RantWoman would so like for a few precious moments to live and breathe and cling to demonstrations of comparative sanity. For yet another thing, it's a LOT of work sometimes just to tell, never mind shouting one's way past the, um, well, unQuakerly language alert, thick heads of many around RantWoman's Meeting. RantWoman regrets to inform her readers that the list of names attached to the term "thick heads" is far too long even for a whole season of telenovela. RantWoman also again just pleads general fatigue and ennui. Unfortunately, the soul and fortitude of Attack Receptionist are kind of kicking RantWoman in the butt. RantWoman's inner blowtorch is going off. Some people around RantWoman seem to want to sit and silence and feel good about themselves. Worse Auntie is likely to show up fairly directly on behalf of people who come to worship with actual mammoth cares on their hearts and struggles in their souls.

But FIRST, RantWoman needs to stop by that nunnery: one person in her Meeting who has ranked above the, cough, average at RantWoman's Meeting has been Conflict is a Gift of God Friend. Especially lately, Conflict Is a Gift of God Friend has been decidedly disrespectful and downright tiresome about these topics. However, he has listened more than average AND he has SOMETIMES even made RantWoman laugh. So for the time being, RantWoman is hanging out that that nunnery trying to figure out what to say to a whole bunch of people too stuck on Conflict Is a Gift of God Friend's MANY, er, issues for there to be space for RantWoman. Look out. Here comes Worse Auntie!


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For eccentric reasons, RantWoman is led to include this link here.
http://chronicler-3.blogspot.com/2011/02/using-vocal-ministry-to-meddle.html

RantWoman confesses: her leading so to minister is connected to further spiritual excavations in the zone of discernment and God's personnel managers but that is grist for another post.