When "Spiritual Overseers" isn't Bad Friend enough

Mwraaap! Mwraaap! Mwraaap! Mwraaap! Mwraaap! Red Alert! RantWoman's bad Quaker vocabulary alarm is blaring away. Mwraaap! Mwraaap!
Mwraaap! Mwraaap!

Dear Friend,

The Cliff Notes version: Please try to find a different way when closing Meeting for Worship to describe the charge of Worship and Ministry committee other than "spiritual overseers." If you need assistance arriving at alternate language, RantWoman would be happy to sit in worship with you while you discern about the matter.

1. It's Meeting for Worship under the care of the Holy Spirit. We are all ministers of God. We DO NOT HAVE spiritual overseers.

2. The term "overseer" is offensive to many Friends of African American descent because it harkens back to slavery and the person, often an African American who frequently brutally fulfilled the task from the plantation owner of keeping everyone in line.

RantWoman appreciates your energy in trying to give a good account of and to help worshippers locate members of Worship and Ministry Committee. The God as Plantation Owner model of Divine presence is not necessarily inconsistent with RantWoman's experience either. Still, the word "overseer" evokes slavery. RantWoman is pretty sure a large majority of Yearly Meetings of the Religious Society of Friends disavowed slavery centuries ago.

RantWoman not only is not the least bit nostalgic, if she ever took a break from checks on Friends fulminating beyond Light, RantWoman is pretty sure it would be easy to find many modern manifestations of slavery in need of searing attention from the RantWoman spiritual blowtorch. That is only one reason RantWoman feels some sense of urgency and urges you again to seek some other term besides "spiritual overseers."

In the Light

RantWoman.
(Truth in advertising: RantWoman found it really satisfying to pen this tirade. However, RantWoman neglected to mention this concern today when she needed to call this Friend about something else. Siiigh. Even RantWoman's WonderQuaker persona sometimes falters, has to season its messages,... wobbles sort of pathetically.)


On the other hand, the Really Bad Friend Dial-a-Tirade version:

Dear Friends,

If RantWoman were a nice centered, Friend with even a whisper of capacity to "keep low," she would send this link about the spiritual gift of confrontation http://www.fgcquaker.org/library/fosteringmeetings/0223.html  and simply ask you please, when closing Meeting for Worship, to find a different way to describe the charge of Worship and Ministry committee other than "spiritual overseers."

If that "keeping low" version of RantWoman shows up, someone please take her temperature. Consider a DNA test to be sure some kinder genetler Friend Gone Bad has not tried to steal her identity.

RantWoman has been reading over at the Association of Bad Friends about use of the terms Overseers and Oversight among Friends. RantWoman would not in the least mind having at her electronic fingertips some kind of concise summary of history about Quaker practice and usage of those terms; RantWoman suspects it might also be topical to consider usage of the term "Ministry and Counsel."

Historical groundedness is not RantWoman's strong suit.

RantWoman also was amused by a digression over at Association of Bad Friends about oversight in the sense of "Oops well." RantWoman was amused; RantWoman peculiarly does not feel called to delve deeply into possibly overample applicability of this sense of the term in her own experience.

RantWoman read further of the term Overseer. Unfortunately RantWoman is a true Bad Friend. RantWoman does not remember reading of "overseer" in terms of "one who cracks the whip." RantWoman confesses, she can easily see a need for that function--even if the term "overseer" is offensive.

RantWoman thus proposes that the term Overseers be replaced: RantWoman operates a highly non-profitable, multiethnic, multilingual, multinational, multiconfessional flogging bureau. The Flogging Bureau is all about non-consensual floggings and there are innumerable ways to earn its services. RantWoman's Flogging Bureau is perpetually overbooked which may be why it could easily add a Quaker affiliate.

In that case, RantWoman recommends that overseers due for "terminology upgrade" get their orders in early....

Meanwhile, RantWoman will shut up and pray for the right moment...

and RantWoman will be served up....
The Gospel According to Star Trek!
http://hystery.blogspot.com/2012/01/dream-of-confused-quakers-star-trek.html#!/2012/01/dream-of-confused-quakers-star-trek.html