They have threatened us with the Resurrection

Festive ways to observe Easter:

1. In honor of the women at the tomb and of Christ's practice, unusual for his time, of actually talking to women, permit oneself a good feminist snit-fit and spell of shaking drooling print withdrawal on the way to Meeting. There is a wonderful used bookstore right on RantWoman's path from her bus stop to Meeting. RantWoman feels like an addict staring longingly at the titles even when she does not dare buy all that tiny print. This week's window display: April is National Poetry Month. One window had a display of titles including about 10 things by MEN and about 3 by WOmen. One of the women was Marge Piercy. Neither of the other two was either Adrienne Rich, recently passed away or Julia Esquivel, see below.

Adrienne Rich has long been on RantWoman's "would read more of if I read more poetry" list. Last week RanWoman decided to use some of her precious Amazon gift card balance for a memorial purchase. Adriennne Rich apparently does not enable the Text-to-Speech on her books. RantWoman's budget also was not large so RantWoman scraped her eyeballs across an essay including reference to several poets Rich esteemed. RantWoman's feminist snit fit is tempered by the observation that Rich also cites only men.


2. Meeting for Worship for Business (?!?!?!?). The sense of the Meeting last month was that we should go forth thus on our regular schedule. In contrast to frequent Easter experience of spring gushiness and occasionally something about the resurrection, this year there was exactly ONE message about "ching ming," bright clarity for spring in China in Meeting for Worship before Business Meeting and one from RantWoman in closing.

2.a Meeting for Worship for Business with an item of business about the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet, also known as a topic where people might be expected to have much to say.

2.b Meeting for Worship for Business as above with an inspiring (cough) reading from Lloyd Lee Wilson about silent waiting on God.

2.c Meeting for Worship for Business with an item about the Safest Sex Offender on the planet, the aforementioned reading from Lloyd Lee Wilson, and a WHOLE BUNCH of Friends with hearing loss spread about the room instead of gathered up close to enhance hearing, other softspoken Friends including some with hearing loss not being heard by others and NOBODY articulating the words "movable mic system."

2.d A Friend whose title has pointed been omitted opining that it never seems to someone like enough is being done for abuse survivors, some testy words and an ad-hoc committee which is tasked to report by June on spiritual community and abuse / sexual abuse survivors.

RantWoman was seized by a sudden spell of reticence about the subject of ad-hoc committees. RantWoman is aware there is some kind of adhoc subcommittee related to disability issues. RantWoman notes the point that committees take the time they take to work, but RantWoman is AGAIN finding herself resenting that the committee is comprised of people who have the option of dealing at their leisure.

RantWoman has the impression the committee has been working on things to do with hearing loss. For a few different reasons RantWoman has been proceding on her own behalf, not really waiting around. However since the subcommittee arose because of a LONG exercise of RantWoman's in Business Meeting, RantWoman would NOT mind in the least hearing from the committee, hearing some sense of initiative!

2.e Meeting for worship as above, items a-d and, HALLELUJAH, the Safest Sex Offender on the planet is now permitted to go to anything he wants as long as he arranges a chaperone in advance!!!! There was noodling around about spiritual sharing group signups where the norm seems to be that, rather than encouraging people to seek that of God in others, people are allowed to turn up their noses at each other for all kinds of reasons. RantWoman is holding in the Light the person behind the conversation she had: the conversation is one reasons RantWoman's "hold the struggles of Friends tenderly" box is FULL just from matters close to home.

3. A poem served up just in time for RantWoman's feminist snit fit. RantWoman thanks Wes Daniels over at Gathering in Light for posting this wonderful challenging poem by Julia Esquivel

http://gatheringinlight.com/2012/04/06/they-have-threatened-us-with-resurrection-1980-by-julia-esquivel/

RantWoman was so deeply struck that she went and found a Spanish language version to link to on one of her Salt and Light fora.

http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2010/04/for-national-poetry-month-julia.html

RantWoman SO likes the faith and hope an internal fire unquenched in the poem.

RantWoman has been noodling about mentally about what presently seem to her, after a zillion years talking about the topic, poorly defined sense of whatever are the key elements of her Meeting's ministry to abuse survivors, how spiritual life and spiritual community play into this. Mixed up in this is John Calvi's formulation of when is Jesus crucified and when resurrected in one's daily life. RantWoman is pointedly not commenting further for now.

RantWoman now digresses to a more customarily Quaker formulation of Easter.
http://quakersusanne.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/experience-the-resurrection/

RantWoman further digresses to the RantFamily and Neighbor Friend of Irrepressible Nephew. Neighbor Friend's name comes up in Irrepressible Nephew's household in one of those "Oh HOLY JESUS. Could intercultural parenting be any more vexed?" contexts which RantWoman HOPES is under control. Neighbor Friend's family are Jehovah's Witnesses who of course do not observe Easter any more than traditional Quakers. Neighbor Friend has, in the past, apparently declined offers of holiday sweets, which probably makes her more virtuous than the Rant Children. The Rant Children used to invite ourselves over to the homes of friends of ours whose parents' understanding of holiday celebrations included more chocolate than was permitted in the Rant household.

This year family feast at RantMom's got postponed. Instead RantWoman and RantMom both stopped at Little Sister's, held a guessing game for irrepressible Nephew and then got a bus to our respective domiciles. Christ is risen.