Vocal Ministry Stats

Warning: the following is only part of RantWoman's spiritual excursion during Meeting for Worship this week. Only part of this got shared and only by phone.

RantWoman of late has been compiling a mental list of frequent flyer Friends, Friends who seem rather often to feel called to offer vocal ministry. Some of the ministry turns out to be weighty. Some of the time RantWoman finds herself wishing that Frequent Flyer Friends would subject their leadings to particularly fierce scrutiny. In particular, should these Friends take care, sit in expectant waiting rather longer than usual to see whether their message gets delivered from others' lips?

RantWoman admits to a certain flair for the quantitative. Inspired by the world of baseball where RantWoman wanders only rarely, RantWoman even found herself formulating a numerical frequent flyer index, the percentage of a Friend's messages that RantWoman wishes would wait to emerge from others' mouths.

Bear in mind, RantWoman is judgmental and opinionated, but even RantWoman would never permit herself to assign a frequent flyer index of 1, the suggestion that 100% of a Friend's messages should be forced to wait to be delivered through others' mouths. Meeting for Worship, after all is an act of faith. Messages meaningless to one are sometimes deeply moving to others. Friends who can muster absolutely no faith or forebearance for the Light as it arrives to their neighbors, either those who speak or those who listen, should at least face stern eldering. This most definitely includes RantWoman.

Nor would RantWoman make more than rare exceptions and assign a frequent flyer index of 2, equivalent to batting 500 in baseball. Okay, okay, in the case of one Frequent Flyer, RantWoman gets simply to be grateful that the Friend moved away before RantWoman got around to deciding what index to apply.

Today's worship featured Hold Friend in the Light Traumatic circumstance Pastoral Concern Definitely Due Friend flanked on either side by two Friends, Friends RantWoman respects and esteems but to whom RantWoman would still assign Frequent Flyer indexes somewhere between 5 and 6, Poetic Friend and Call Me Up and I will Figure it out For you Friend.

Lately Poetic Friend's messages have all been short, Heminwayesque. RantWoman appreciates brevity but herself tends to favor more florid word flow. RantWoman persists in her frequent flyer rating even though there is a great risk that Poetic Friend's messages would emerge more verbose and muddled if the Holy Spirit gave them to someone else. RantWoman is aware of many circumstances calling her voice to vexation around Poetic Friend so RantWoman feels especially called to check whether others assign Poetic Friend any kind of Frequent Flyer index at all.

Call Me Up Friend's messages run longer and frequently more judgmental and tied to specific circumstances than those of Poetic Friend. Today's offering came right at the end of worship. It was a "Thank you so much; maybe someone else will share on this difficult theme" message. RantWoman would SO like it if that Friend had exercised restraint RantWoman's gripe with today's offering: RantWoman had ALMOST gotten her mental broom closet lined up well enough to do exactly that, but Call Me Up Friend sucked away the last of the time and someone closed worship rather directly. So now, is RantWoman actually going to call up Call Me up Friend and say this...?

OR...

Is RantWoman going to call up Call Me Up ... Friend and talk about her beloved baseball, say fantasy baseball teams? See, RantWoman thinks just MAYBE Call Me Up ... Friend would relate to a long passed away gay friend of RantWoman's who compiled fantasy baseball teams based not on the statistics some fantasy baseball team compilers rely on but on long passed away friend's ratings of players' physical appearance.

Here RantWoman must acknowledge a problem, a full-on testimony on equality problem in the realm of gender equality: RantWoman would unquestionably consider long-deceased friend's ogling practices sexist if he directed them at women. RantWoman does not think it terrible if men also experience frank ogling, either by Call Me Up ... Friend or by long-deceased friend. Either way, though, RantWoman finds it all just a bit much but she is amused to get from frequent flyer vocal ministry to fantasy baseball to questions of gender equality around the Religious society of Friends

http://petersontoscano.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/gender-equality-and-the-religious-society-of-friends/


Just imagine where RantWoman could get with a real travel budget.