Ben Pink Dandelion at North Seattle Friends

If news somehow has missed you of Ben Pink Dandelion delivering 3 days of Woodward lectures at North Seattle Friends Church, on the topic "A Short History of Time, Transformation, and the Quakers," there is still time for two more lectures.

http://www.facebook.com/events/157298894410964

If you are short of time, get on the road to the lectures and skip the rants below!


The stories of Ben Pink Dandelion's name make RantWoman smile, not only for the utterly engaging delivery. Ben was born a surprise to parents, "devout atheists," in their 40's. For some reason a Biblical story about parents in a similar state led then to name him Benjamin. The surname? Oh, the surname. That dates from a peace camp in 1984. All the anarchists there took very silly names. Everyone else with even sillier names changed their names back the next year. Pink Dandelion did not. RantWoman wonders whether the concept of parental consternation applies to atheist parents faced with such choices.
RantWoman is  Biblically challenged as far as the finer points of theNew Testamentand the evolution of Paul's thinking. RantWoman is also severely challenged as to early religious tracts and the history of 17th century England. Perhaps it is no wonder that some pieces of the story Pink Dandelion is trying to tell have not cohered in RantWoman's mind. Alas, RantWoman is going to be unable to attend the Sunday lecture where the part about what all this means for our life today is on the schedule. So RantWoman wil have either to get the lecture secondhand subject to idiosyncratic digestion,  , read abook, or trust her own Light. Oh Dear!

Speaking of reading a book, SIGH! RantWoman visited both Amazon and Pendle Hill sites. Pendle Hill is selling NOTHING electronically, not even so much as a PDF version of a pamphlet. SIGH! RantWoman found a number of things on Amazon and bought a small pamphlet for her Kindle. RantWoman gets to debate about any more of the subset of the total titles that are availabe for her Kindle. Sigh!

And then there was Powerpoint, aka Death by Powerpoint in Quakerese.

RantWoman congratulates Pink Dandelion for his very first Powerpoint ever, a VERY Quakerly Powerpoint.

First, RantWoman was told there were three slides;RantWoman remembers only two. In eihter case, RantWomanappreciates numerical modesty. The title slide was appropriately plain. Bold font, womehwat larger would not have hurt.

The other slide RantWoman remembers featured some kind of a line drawing of timelines tying together the first Coming and the Second Coming. The image was very Quakerly in the following sense. No one expects RantWoman to see anything but fog and blur; almost no one else could see anything either. This approach certainly evokes a certain visual sense of Waiting on God. If that was the intended effect, RantWoman thinks this Powerpoint virgin succeeded remarkably. RantWoman is not feeling nearly as absolutist as sometimes about Powerpoint. In fact, she is compiling a couple of Powerpoint sins forto send to a blind Powerpointer needing to make some pedagogical points; in the Spirit of integrity and single standard ofTruth, for purposes here, advice: if you are going to sin with Powerpoint in the first  place, PLEASE sin boldly!

In the meantime, another concept to check out at the lectures, get thee to  the next two lectures!