Presidents Day Prayers and...

RantWoman, unfortunately as predicted, is NOT spending President's Day in Olympia loggying her soul out. RantWoman would more describe today's tasks as attempting to clone and multiply herself or as spiritual compost heap upturned again, anew.

RantWoman thanks her public radio station, KUOW, for regularly finding federal holidays occasions to air material requiring RantWoman to reflect on matters of race.


Today's theme is "emancipation" as in President Lincoln, the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation freed states only in the rebellious states, not yet in the ones who remained in the Union. General McClellan did not see anything to do with emancipation being in his military interest. At this point RantWoman's attention skipped. Oops, well.

RantWoman can definitely see that "emancipation" is the point of view of the dominant / white culture and that if one looks at things from the point of view of those getting emancipated, a more topical term might be "white people sort of kind of getting it or at least some of it." RantWoman thinks there should be a shorter phrase that encapsulates this point and is shaking linguistic trees seeing what might fall out.

Another segment of the broadcast was about President Kennedy and the Civil Rights movement. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson also had to be dragged along pretty directly. RantWoman makes no pretension to be able to expound in any more depth than that, but appreciates the opportunity to hold these realities.


RantWoman is interested by further broadcasts about Pres. Johnson inviting former Pres. Eisenhower sometimes just to run key meetings about the Vietnam war. When RantWoman wants to mix in threads of the era, she might go read sections of Matthew Brzezinski's book Red Moon Rising about how moments of the space race intertwined with moments of protest about civil rights matters. But that is not to be the tasks of today.



A memorial topical to race relations
Richard Triss Allowed himself to be a lightning rod.
http://sojo.net/blogs/2013/02/18/richard-twiss-allowed-himself-be-lightning-rod?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sojourners%2Fgods-politics+%28Sojourners+God%27s+Politics+Blog%29

RantWoman has never heard of this person but is posting this link to a remembrance to remind herself maybe to come back to the theme of Indigenous people and Christianity. RantWoman heard a little too much "spiritual warfare" language in the church of her youth and is REALLY energized by the thought of gatherings of people who both profess Christianity and hold drum circles in native American tradition.

RantWoman is also thinking of a native Hawaiian grandmother spoken of last time RantWoman visited the Baptist church of her youth. The wise grandmother recognized that church life was offering her granddaughter something the granddaughter needed and part of the story was of these two women's reconciliation over time.

(RantWoman also notes that going off to be missionaries to Native American communities appears, in the church of RantWoman's youth to have been something acceptable for powerful women to do; RantWoman has a sense of needing to research that point further and notes it here as a placeholder.)


In the realm of wrestling with the Holy Spirit, also perhaps themes to come back to.
http://maphead.blogspot.com/2013/02/old-books-3-lathe-of-heaven.html