Young Adults, Contrarily

RantWoman has been meditating for various reasons lately on what drew her in and kept her coming back to Friends Meeting. RantWoman thought of visiting herself upon Quakers a few different times but it was not until she was at the upper edges of the "young adults" age group that the right bus connections and yellow pages leadings all lined up to get RantWoman in the door.

Frankly, RantWoman did not even mess around identifying as a young adult. RantWoman plunged into the life of her Meeting. Worse, when presented with an opportunity to journey away to some kind of young adults gathering RantWoman decided she had enough to do just getting to know the generously multigenerational new faces around her and did not bother about her age group cohort. RantWoman has never lamented this lapse.

RantWoman, choir director's daughter, relentless Baptist Jesus makes me do it social action type, did not take easily to the silence. In fact, the flock of elderly women who put up for months with RantWoman calling them all by each other's names were one very big draw. Another, equally if not more important was this wonderful sense of theological openness, space for the very different language people used to speak of their spiritual lives, and the mystical way messages from quite different traditions sometimes wound together into a coherent whole over the course of Meeting for Worship, sometimes in spite of RantWoman's most vehement protestations.

One example of RantWoman protestation zones is messages from a Buddhist center. Many in RantWoman's Meeting identify as Buddhist. RantWoman has sometimes heard and continues to hear messages grounded in Buddhism with great annoyance and certainty that RantWoman, on numerous grounds, would make a lousy Buddhist. Other times, RantWoman has experienced great openings from messages grounded in Buddhism. sometimes including exact parallels with something RantWoman knows of the Gospels.

RantWoman found herself thinking of her own first encounter with Quaker worship when she read this wonderful item about someone who, RantWoman supposes, is of young adult age, his background and seeking, and his first experience of Meeting for Worship.

http://rachelheldevans.com/guest-post-tim-mcgeary?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RachelHeldEvans+%28Rachel+Held+Evans+-+Blog%29


RantWoman sometimes finds the internet's capacity to hold chatter arising from almost any piece of writing kind of an annoyance and vexation; RantWoman makes an exception for the comments accompanying this post.

A good case could be made that RantWoman should just stop with the miracle of silent worship. RantWoman is still Baptist enough, though, not to shy away from the theological equivalent of passing the collection plate. RantWoman considers questions of cutbacks in young adult program staff in Philadelphia Yearly Meeting some kind of call to stewardship and passing the collection plate.

RantWoman asked her readers' forebearance: RantWoman has formed the impression that some east coast Yearly Meetings are spending a lot of money taking care of staff retirement needs and keeping up 300-year-old Meetinghouses. RantWoman would be too happy to grapple with information that would complicate her impression. Nevertheless the impression is sufficient bridge to RantWoman's next point, questions to young adults who have grown up Quaker. Are you aware of newcomers to your Meetings in your age group? Are you aware of what about the community or the worship experience speaks most deeply to the condition of these seekers? Do you have a sense of your Meetings growing in size and if so, what are the ages of new seekers drawn into your community?

See RantWoman has been sitting with a sense of spiritual hunger around her and of spiritually trying circumstances vexing our nation, our planet. RantWoman means no disrespect to people coming to the end of their working lives or to the need for thoughtful stewardship of one's property, but RantWoman just keeps sitting with calls to openness, to struggle in faith, to revelation continuing, continuing and to a sense that feeding the spiritual hungers of our age will also help about material concerns. But what does RantWoman know?


http://www.pym.org/blogs/sadie-forsythe/pyms-crossroads-with-YAFs