Must Fiddle with Knobs: the Ministry of Talking Art Supplies

RantWoman is again stuck with her brain only halfway home from latest physical excursion, this time to the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference.

RantWoman totally blesses Bernie B for:
1. Inviting RantWoman to be part of Facing Bench during the message at closing semi-programmed worship.
(Data nerd digression: Ya know, actually semi-programmed sounds even more scary, kind of like vaporware or endless beta testing than unprogrammed. Never Mind!)
2. Bringing a message about Mandelbrot / Julia sets and, in perfect riposte to some tiresome "God does not exist" physicist in RantWoman's tweet stream on the way home, "If the definition of a field is something that acts across space then God is a field and I want to see what the Gospels say to back me up!"

RantWoman blesses one speaker for the phrase "low threshold creatives." Okay, RantWoman gets nervous around modern hipster lingo and suspects that this phrase also encodes a lot of possibly unexamined privilege. Nevertheless, RantWoman is thinking of grabbing it as cover for all her traits demonstrably driving others around her CRAZY. Actually, RantWoman is thinking of Cover; RantWoman is also thinking that too much cover might deprive others of opportunity to lurch along their own paths to spiritual perfection. God(dess) help everyone!

Lately God has been saying to RantWoman in various ways, Ya know, more music.. and ya USED TO play the piano and you don't need as much of an ear for the piano as for the cello because you can always get one of those folks from the NORTHWEST Blind Piano Tuners school to tune it and the visual part of reading music / memorizing anyway might be solvable and and ...

In the meantime, science to back up the nostalgia:
http://mic.com/articles/91329/science-shows-how-piano-players-brains-are-actually-different-from-everybody-elses

God was actually nudging RantWoman at one point toward poking at the piano during a plenary but the available piano was serving as platform for art supplies.RantWoman also apologizes: her brain was meandering worse than usual and RantWoman has little memory of the well-chosen words brought for a message before Friends were invited to see what the art supplies were saying.

RantWoman remembers an invitation to help some fruits of the Spirit find their way to a tree in the corner. RantWoman was given Fruits of the Spirit in Sharpie on a whole piece of paper; other people were given smaller considerably paler fruits so if there was some message RantWoman was supposed to get from others' fruits, God is going to have to try harder in media RantWoman can interact with.

But here is what came to RantWoman from the Ministry of talking art supplies:
The art supplies laid out on the piano included lots of stickers, little round ones, bigger square and rectangular ones. RantWoman has no idea what was on the stickers but conversation with a Friend in line to use some ofthe art supplies and  shapes and leading to speak of a "must fiddle with the knobs" matter at RantWoman's Meeting muddled out onto a page from one of RantWoman's endless tablets.

The particular "must fiddle with the knobs" matter: RantWoman's Meeting has an assisted listening system. It has microphones that hang down into the worship room. It has a console with lots of nobs. It has an induction loop for the benefit of people with hearing aids. And it has handheld receivers for people who do not have hearing aids.

The sound system is fussy in various ways: performance is better in some places than others. There can be mysterious buzzing of various kinds. A brave Friend has been working for months to rid the system of extraneous and undesired noises. Preferred settings for the console have been derived. People with hearing aids are learning whether their systems have the needed switches. And... and... Meeting is figuring out how many more than one test receiver are needed.


There is MUCH trial and error and trial and error involved. In particular, one of the handheld receiver guinea pigs listened to the buzzing in the receiver and the buzzing in his own head, and who knows what else and experienced an irresistible leading to fiddle with knobs, not only the one available knob on his receiver, but all the knobs on the central console! Can we say Friend in need of eldering?

So now, back up. Begin again now. And in the meantime bless the talking art supplies for the stories spilling out.