Announcements Policy COMPOSTED

Originally compiled around Epiphany. More chapters of God the Telenovela. Sin Boldly A Field Guide to Grace

Please forgive RantWoman.

Besides reindeer droppings for the spiritual compost heap, Epiphany brings what, camel dung delivered by wise folk and cantankerous beasts?

The short version: RantWoman is so unbelievably happy that the announcements on the whiteboard policy fell FLAT and splattered howls of protest from a large number of people all over everyone that she can hardly contain herself.

The long version RantWoman leaves to others imagination. Among other colorful streaks one about "well if you do everything you can to avoid RantWoman's point of view, then knock yourselves out. RantWoman is not even going to try to save you from yourselves and RantWoman is SO GLAD there were MULTIPLE other vigorous complaints and it was NOT just "poor implementation" and in particular someone else on RantWoman's list of people struggling with vision issues reportedly complained about exactly the same whiteboard accessibility points as some of the things on RantWoman's list. RantWoman abounds in morbid curiosity and would be interested to hear what other reasons people cited for hating the policy.

Whiteboard?

Read on.
(RantWoman was away on November 2. So was the clerk of the committee perpetrating the outrage. RantWoman has heard that the introduction did not go well!)

From the November 9, 2014 bulletin:
In hopes of helping to extend the grace and Light that rises during our hour of worship, your [Mine? Not so I had noticed! Look, RantWoman has stood aside from the Worship and Ministry Roster for three years running over serious issues of Silencing. Silencing of the form "RantWoman we don't understand, we are really reluctant to try to learn, and wouldn't you please just go away?" Why the HELL does anyone think RantWoman would trust a member of Worship and Ministry to either write down her concerns or read back others' concerns accurately?!!!!]  Worship & Ministry committee is experimenting with a simpler close to 11:00 worship. Rather than sharing late-breaking announcements aloud at the close of worship, anyone needing to make an announcement is encouraged to write it on the wipe-erase board outside the worship room, which will be available starting at 10:50 on non-business mtg Sundays. The person who closes worship will be available to read aloud (or transcribe) any messages as needed. We plan to give this a try for a couple months, and see how it goes. Feedback is welcomed. Questions/concerns: contact the clerk of  Worship & Ministry,

Message via RantWoman during Concerns in Meeting for Business: If you think you are making a reasonable accommodation for someone, would you please consider whether the people you mean to accommodate consider the measure you propose reasonable and accommodating. RantWoman considers the write messages on whiteboard process neither reasonable nor accommodating.
RantWoman stopped and did not provide details. No one asked either.

From the November 16, 2014 Bulletin, which also contained an invitation to a mulching party. Rantwoman might have reread her electronic copy of the bulletin to remember this but did not want her screen reader to squawk and hates earphones.

In hopes of helping to extend the grace and Light that rises during our hour of worship, your (mine?) Worship & Ministry committee is experimenting with a simpler close to 11:00 worship. Rather than sharing late-breaking announcements aloud at the close of worship, anyone needing to make an announcement is encouraged to write it on the wipe-erase board outside the worship room, which will be available starting at 10:50 on non-business mtg Sundays. The person who closes worship will be available to read aloud (or transcribe) any messages as needed. We plan to give this a try for a couple months, and see how it goes. Feedback is welcomed. Questions/concerns: Clerk Worship & Ministry,

(Over the week: thoughtful comments from one Worship and Ministry member
--Return slowly to regular life as Meeting rises
--testing something new to think about why instead of assuming "we always do..."_
(and RantWoman, I resonate with your concern about not assuming everyone thinks the same way but I do not know what to do about it....)

Comments from a RantWoman email:
--Thank you for your thoughts about the white board. I hate it on somany grounds that you deserve not to have to handle my comments alone. I will probably start with my blog. But a couple thoughts:
Kids
 --I love having the kids come it toward the end of worship.
 --I love it when one of the kids has something to say from First Day school.
 --I am not sure that current kid practices give kids enough practice centering and working with what happens as one learns to do something better. I was seasoning a message Sunday about Meeting for
worship being a place we all grow as individuals and also as a community but it did not make it out of my mouth with everything else that came up.
 --The cello concert in October was interesting on the kid front: we had child care and some kids did go there but several kids stayed the whole concert and were really into the music, not unreasonable about snacks, and generally a nice presence. I would love to know whether anyone besides me considers that a worthy vision for Meeting for Worship.
 --I recognize that kid sonic free for all is one indicator that adults are going on too long about announcements. AND I wish there were some willingness to work with the "One person talks at atime" rule. But I could also get interested in a playground whistle, a bell, rousing singing, and various other approaches.
(RantWoman, in search of, um, thoughtful elders, also consulted the Association of Bad Friends on Facebook. The truly BAD Friends suggested, instead of the playground whistle, kazoos, hard and soft sticky candy, and whoopie cushions. So much for the Bad Friends.)

Predictable announcements:
--Some people seem eager to zoom out and drink the coffee but not eager to hear the announcement about signing up to make it, never mind other issues of delivery.
--I am a big giant flake, Even if someone sent me email about the spreading wood ship party, getting reminded of the event and where to find it would help me be more motivated to participate.
--Generic rally: cause to be announced, Westlake 2 pm. This and my badly seasoned P&SC minutes are part of my people wearing too many hats and losing the sense of spiritual center concern.

Other indicators that worship is well held: this past Sunday was LOVELY. LOTS of clumps of people lingered in the WR even after we broke worship, and this in spite of a couple announcements that for good reason bypassed the white board.

From the November 23, 2014 bulletin:
• In hopes of helping to extend the grace and Light that rises during our hour of worship, your Worship & Ministry committee is experimenting with a simpler close to 11:00 worship. Rather than sharing late-breaking announcements aloud at the close of worship, anyone needing to make an announcement is encouraged to write it on the wipe-erase board outside the worship room, which will be available starting at 10:50 on non-business mtg Sundays. The person who closes worship will be available to read aloud (or transcribe) any messages as needed. We plan to give this a try for a couple months, and see how it goes. Feedback is welcomed. Questions/concerns: Clerk, Worship & Ministry,

from email on November 24

The Gospel according to RantWoman, of broader interest:
 but I also tried to explain to him that even getting
the announcement made means people care.

Mostly the rest is not about the Friend above . For now it is hold in the
Light material. If everyone else in the whole Meeting is thrilled with
the whiteboard, I will cope. If the clerk  W&M is deluged by other  emails and
concerns, I hope she will decide quickly to try something else.
See the announcements on whiteboard practice deeply offends me on so
many grounds that I am trying to deal with one bite at a time.

--It matters when the whole room hears the same announcement, and even
more if only one voice is talking at a time rather than general hubbub
from someone trying to read the whiteboard in a crowd. I cannot always
see who else reacts to something but often I can hear that there is
reaction. In the case of the Friend above I know where people tend to sit and
who is likely to have any capacity to help him. And I am darn
sure I know that better than some members of Worship and Ministry. So
hearing from various places in the room means I know others in the
community are connected too. But hearing the voice of the person the
announcement belongs to helps me find that person to talk directly to
them.

--I need to have a full--blown tirade about "if you are trying to do a
reasonable accommodation, please be sure the person you are trying to
accommodate considers your effort either reasonable or accommodating."
But W&M has to wait in line behind Microsoft and a class full of
design students at the UW I school for elaboration about what is on my
mind.

--And I get to be REALLY insistent because of getting thrown off W&M
and nominating committee not even talking to me so I feel so shut out
of a process that I am seriously thinking about options to be more
insistent about my reasonable accommodations issues with this exact
topic.

--And then there is the problem about direct unmediated experience of
the Divine and how does W&M get off deciding which announcements are
important enough... 

--And then there are my twitches about children which also deserve a
separat eitem.

And various categories of announcements. For instance:
--Writing death notices or hold in the Light requests on thewhiteboard just seems cold, more expression of a sentiment I sometimes sense that worship is at its most glorious if it's all just happy talk and twaddle and not worshipfully addressing the realities of people's lives.

--I notice a fair number of people happy to hurry off and drink the coffee but not interested in the announcements about signing up to make the coffee.

--I might or might not muster enough focus to reread things in the bulletin such as the mulch spreading exercise. But I probably will not make either my phone or my Kindle read the bulletin aloud during or after worship. And I am a flake so if I do not have an oral reminder, I might not show up.

On the plus side, we could make some kind of checkoff for things like:
   Generic rally, predictable place. Cause to be announced. 2pm.
   Yucky Topics Festival reading of the week will meet in....

Another note: one of my barometers about end of Meeting sense is how many clumps of people stay in the Worship room and continue talking for awhile after we finally break. That is such a nice way to carry on the sense of worship and pretty consistently I notice a lot of clumps.

Thank you all for thinking about these various concerns.

In the Light.

RantWoman


From the November 23, 2014 bulletin
•For the rest of 2014, Worship & Ministry committee is trying a simpler close to 11:00 worship. Anyone needing to make an announcement can write it on the wipe-erase board outside the worship room, and all are encouraged to check the board as they leave. Please share your feedback with members of Worship & Ministry.

From the November 30, 2014 bulletin
Worship & Ministry will return to inviting spoken announcements after worship effective December 7. We offer Friends the gentle advice that just as sharing news, joys, concerns, etc. is important in building our community, so too is treating each other's time and attention with careful respect. Thank you!

(RantWoman will season leadings involving phrases such as:
--We are all ministers of God
--direct unmediated direction from the Divine
--paraphrasing the Baptists of RantWoman's youth God's table, not Worship and MInistry Committe's to invite or deny....)

(RantWoman is holding in the Light a STRONG need still for a tirade about children and close of worship and one person talking at a time. RantWoman is still thinking about the playground whistle. Meanwhile, RantWoman is pretty sure most readers do not need digressions about 1. RantWoman and childhood realities of religious assembly for the RantFamily, 2. the glorious fact that all Meetings in the Seattle area have children, or 3. the Auntie vs Grandma vibe and need to hold in the Light a suggestion RantWoman found misguided and beside the point of item 2. Cue the Inner Blowtorch. Now Dial it back a little....)

Note to Self: I am an ally here in support of...

RantWoman heartily recommends this item:

http://afsc.org/friends/note-to-self-white-people-taking-part-blacklivesmatter-protests

Quaker Silence: Quaker Speak video now has cCaption / subtitle option in Russian.

A link to the quakers.ru page with the text of the Russian subtitles, so for instance RantWaomn could subject this to the tender mercies (cough) of a screen reader and hear the words about silence in Russian
http://quakers.ru/%D0%BA%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%B5%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B5-%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5/

RantWoman will save for another day meditations about the combination of silence and screenreader.

Silencing the Syrian Ambassador to the UN

This item floated in on RantWoman's email stream. It refers to the Syrian Ambassador to the UN. RantWoman has read accounts of other times that someone from an Arabic-speaking country has had their message distorted by inadequate interpretation. RantWoman is filing this as data and documentation that the problem occurs. RantWoman hopes Friends will remember this is a possibility when considering how to interpret media moments.

This has been a phenomenon related exclusively to me. Let me elaborate. Every time I speak, for instance, at the Security Council, they choose a bad interpreter who is unable to fully interpret what I am saying. So the people do not get my message. They do it on purpose. One day, I was invited to address the Security Council. I saw one of the Security Council staff members addressing the interpreters. He gave them a hand signal: change. I saw it with my own eyes. So they changed the good interpreter with a poor one, thus ensuring that my political message does not transpire fully.

Source: An Interview with Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar al-Ja’afari

PhYM Commitment about Racism

RantWoman posts this link from a recent called Meeting of Philadelphia YM partly as a nudge to read and follow up:

http://www.pym.org/2015/01/10/over-400-attend-called-meeting/

Martin Luther King Day with Bells and Broccoli

Worship via Planet RantWoman:

worshipful centering

in RantWoman's head:
(Will anything tidy make it out of RantWoman's mouth about Martin Luther King Day this year? Tirade about the taming of an icon?Recent Colin Powell quote about President Obama, something like "They should all stop pretending. Their behavior has nothing to do with the content of his character and everything to do with the color of his skin." Rant about #blacklives matter protests, the military, whether or not it's racism when a Target customer asks a very tall but very well disguised First Lady to help her reach something of a high shelf, the glorious fact that the First lady even goes to Target ....)

Bong,

Bong,

Bong,

The bells of beloved Alma mater every hour on the hour one night when the student masses were led to camp out in front of the administration building in connection with some kind of anti-apartheid protest. RantWoman does not even apologize for not remembering the precise details. The Bong Bong Bong is the important part. Talk about way to discourage protracted protests. Bong! Bong! Bong!

Digressions available about pre-graduation sit-in, the African American supporter who called RantWoman with a ringing endorsement and said he did not feel he could participate because he was going through college on a ROTC scholarship and did not want to mess up his commissioning, South Africa's black majority,  the voices of whites like Nadine Gordimer,Truth and Reconciliation

Bong

Bong

Bong

What would it be like if the bells sounded on the timeline for Muslim call to prayer as apparently was proposed and then withdrawn at Duke University?

Bong

Bong

Wonderful speech by British Muslim for Oxford Debate about Muslim culture including particularly all the Arab world's contributions to mathematics while Europe was moldering in the Dark Ages.

Bong

Bong.

Twitter statistics:
Half of the world's population is under 30.
Median age of Christians in Europe: 42. Of Muslims: 32

How are well-educated white people of the developed world called to live within these realities?

Bong

Bong

Bong

Three different conversations that should lead people in Meeting to clearness committees and RantWoman so does not even want to try with ANYONE from Care and Counsel and is so thinking about a "Clearness Committees for Dummies" resource off the internet.

Bong

Bong

(RantWoman CHILL OUT. Just because the last clearness committee for yourself, the first couple questions caused you to realize that the questioner had no clue where to start about ...)

Bong

Bong

Bong

(Are there words supposed to make it out of RantWoman's mouth during worship?)

Bong

Bong

Bong

lovely worshipful silence.

Message about article from December 2014 Friends Journal article about a family who chooses to live below the poverty line in order to avoid liability for war taxes.
http://www.friendsjournal.org/choice-poverty/

Friend offering message thinks its wrong for parents to choose a life of poverty on behalf of their children.

RantWoman thinks of a certain bassoon-playing RantDad

RantWoman thinks of Frida Berrigan writing about visiting her parents in prisons over Christmas.

RantWoman thinks of the large percentage of African American families who must visit family members in prison.

RantWoman thinks that having a very overweight freaky bassoon-playing professional musician father might be plenty and she should be glad her father was not Frida's father Phillip Berrigan.

Hey Wait a Minute.

Parents motivated to resist war taxes also tend to be motivated to find their children good resources that are free or very low-cost.

Having very low income SOMETIMES frees families from timewasting entanglements and cultural attachments and creates space to be filled with other rich experiences..

RantWoman counts her family, a college classmate whose father was a poet,  among those able to live very well on low incomes. The circumstances are all different and do not necessarily involve war tax resistance. RantWoman thinks of some families in her Meeting and leaves the question of war tax resistance as a question mark.

Wait a minute.
90% of the students in Seattle public schools qualify for free and reduced priced lunch. These are not the children of war tax resisters. These parents do not choose this reality. RantWoman is much more strongly called to think on behalf of these children than she is the children of war tax resisters.

(Are there words supposed to make it out of RantWoman's mouth in worship or is RantWoman just supposed to continue as before with the rest of her life?(

Worshipful Silence

Message from parent of hope that their family is on right path.

Bong,

Bong.

Bong.

Recycled Message Friend rises and speaks of eyes, specks, logs, and leaving matters to God.

Eyes.

Specks in others' eyes.

Logs in one's own.

Crash.

Rattle.

Earth to RantWoman. You know, So Out of Order Friend whome you are trying to figure out how to organize a conversation with? You know you make her STEAMING MAD sometimes?

Yesssss! (Look, by the time that Friend is Steaming Mad, RantWoman usually is too. RantWoman is deeply afraid that in that situation, NOTHING good is going to make it out of her mouth. And at this point, RantWoman does not even want to hazard a conversation one on one when people are not steaming mad.)

And you are enjoying it a little too much.

What?

Making that Friend Steaming Mad!

Busted! Okay God, now what?

Of late, RantWoman has had the most peculiar success looking for elders among ...The Association of Bad Friends on Facebook.

After worship God prodded RantWoman to take the matter of Steaming Mad Friend off to consult this resource. The number one most resounding response about how to deal with Steaming Mad Friend was broccoli, followed by an espresso machine and reference to steam engines.
And if RantWoman had any doubt about signs, on top of the broccoli from the Bad Friends the menu at the most recent gathering of a very beloved potluck group featured a magical cruciferous culinary synchrony: cole slaw with red cabbage, roasted brussels sprouts, cauliflower and coconut curry.  As one commenter put it, a whole new take on crucifixion."

Okayyyy God?

Happy New Year Let's Talk about Death: the Advance Directive After Party.

RantWoman writes up the workshop spoken of here:
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2014/12/merry-christmas-lets-talk-about-death.html


Warning: RantWoman is being METAPHORICAL here.
RantWoman, Care and Counsel keeps saying water is wet and you keep talking about snow and ice.
Yeah, and...?


We now return to regular Inner Blowtorch mode:
RantWoman, look at all these people who came. What nice couples. What nice help with notary and experience from a hospice nurse. What nice exclamations about people doing the paperwork and their healthcare providers losing it.

Yeah, and RantWoman will show up. RantWoman will bring the suggestion that if someone brings a notebook with them to medical appointments anyway, that would also  be a good place to keep a copy of the advanced directives, and maybe contact info for the people mentioned. And RantWoman does not know whether she mentioned having RantMom's documents in her purse, but she does.

And RantWoman will also show up with a couple tender moments from interpreting and with tales of a neighbor, a Jehovah's witness. JW neighbor can do these forms in her sleep because of Witnesses' beliefs about blood transfusions, but RantWoman can so imagine family members not being charmed by someone's beliefs.

In fact RantWoman can also relate: Little Sister at one point needed a blood transfusion. She had the hermanas from her church were insistent in Spanish about needing to pray over the blood. RantWoman who a. speaks but usually does not interpret in Spanish and b. tries VERY hard to avoid interpreting for family members still was the one to stop the nurses until the prayers were done. And if only one of these stories needed to stumble out of RantWoman's mouth this time....

RantWoman, it's only a volunteer program to do these presentations about Advanced directives, etc. Why do we gotta think about language access?

1. The place running the program has the same obligations about language access as any other health care organization.

2. Sooner or later you are likely to encounter the need to work with interpreters. Do your employers do anything to prepare you?

3. Some percentage of the people who might attend are gongto want to go home and talk to family members who do not speak English.and it REALLY matters to have correct terminology or at least a place to go look for parallel materials.

4. It would be nice if RantWoman could focus on the paperwork for her own self and let other people get dealt with later. It would be nice, but that is not RantWoman's reality. RantWoman cannot interact with this content without needing to think about materials in languages other than English. RantWoman can TRY to bypass yet another way to make herself unpopular around Little Sister's household (irrepressible Nephew has Adult half-sibilings...) but this still leaves frayed connections related to Ferrener Husband.

Here are some links RantWoman found; RantWoman is not prepared to vouch for the translations, only the reputation of the organizations whose websites she lists:
https://healthonline.washington.edu/get_topic.asp?topic=39&name=Patient+Rights
http://www.washingtonlawhelp.org/issues/aging-elder-law/guardianships-powers-of-attorney-2
http://www.pathwayshealth.org/resources/translated-materials.html
http://www.lawhelp.org/dc/resource/frequently-asked-questions-about-durable-powe


RantWoman, it's only a pilot and we are trying out ideas.

RantWoman interior monologue: RantWoman you keep offering help and they do not know what to do with it. RantWoman, you will show up. You will be present. You wil trust that...


From announcement for  workshop: "You are never too young to think about..."

Census of those in attendance:
Total: 15 or so; RantWoman apologizes for not counting more precisely.
Total younger than 60, counting presenter and RantWoman: 5.
Total who have been around Meeting less than 10 years: 0
Mention of childcare before workshop: 0
Total other than presenter responsible for the care of minor children: 0
mentions of situations involving minor children: 1 or 2 from one attender; nothing in the prepared booklet. Ummmm. RantWoman was called to share from her life in an email afterward.


RantWoman, it's only a pilot and we are trying out ideas.

Yeah, and RantWoman knows that what works in English among people with similar culture might or might not work for people with other cultural backgrouns so as long as you are trying out anyway, let's be honest about language access being a big issue for some families.

Yeah, and RantWoman is happy to sign your consent form about participation as long as you consent to free input including the above list of places with some topical material in multiple languages.


RantWoman, we have all these simple either / or questions we want you to think about.


Really? You do not know RantWoman very well. RantWoman can turn almost any survey instrument with ostensibly simple choices into open-ended essay questions.

Take food: the feel and texture of food turns out to be really important to RantWoman. RantWoman likes things that crunch. RantWoman likes strong flavors and spices that clean out her sinuses. Okay work with that.

Then write similar essays for all the other questions?

Actually, RantWoman wonders if there could be a little time to see whether anyone else in the room has too much to fit into the categories. Sometiems RantWoman really likes hearing about otehr people's too much too.

How about a couple illustrative cases:
Case one: the Rant Family ophthalmologist, ill with cancer. a rich life. Adult children, grandchildren. Content. At a certain point, clear not to linger.

Case two, RantWoman's neighbor Mr. Attack Receptionist. Mr. Attack Receptionist is on dialysis. He has had the lower parts of both legs amputated. Mr. Attack Receptionist is a HUGE sports fan. Even when he is on Facebook from the hospital or the rehab, he posts and wants to chat about Seattle sports teams with ANYONE willing to go near the topic. Unfortunately this does not include RantWoman except in terms of appreciating the anthropological phenomenon of sports fans. Mr. Attack Receptionist already has such a battle to stay alive, RantWoman cannot imagine him signing ANYTHING in advance. Further, RantWoman expects he will still be rooting for the local teams long past when anyone pulls a plug. And he will still be a member of the Still Didn't Get the Memo Committee on Email Immoderation long after that!


It was pretty clear to RantWoman before the workshop that she probably was going to be nowhere near anything to notarize, but RantWoman was surprised about the clarity that emerged from a short interval for reflection:

This life is really precious to me. Even if it looks really difficult to you, I am figuring on staying around as long as possible! I hope it's fun for other people too but I am not necessarily leaving just because it's not fun for others.But if I cannot taste or smell or respond to music and sounds and preferably also find ways to say something is funny and it is really obvious that no fun is happening and I cannot express that myself, then....
And when I die, do not worry about needing to reconstitute me for any Rapture. Relatives who might be worried about this should be assured that if God can pull off the Rapture, I am pretty sure anyone who needs it will get reconstituted in the process. Cremate me. Return me to the earth. If you can leave me in permanent civil disobedience somewhere that needs divine attention but preferably also somewhere with a good view, trees, ocean or water, wind....

Okay, now the question of who....

...and where and not just lying in someone's office safe...

A blog post that seems to RantWoman to belong here:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/2015/01/organize-anyone/


and a couple more resources just thrown in by the way.

http://www.iflscience.com/environment/what-do-when-youre-dead-science-edition
http://peoplesmemorial.org/

Quantum Entanglement and spooky action at a distance

Albert Einstein famously said God does not play dice.

Unlike for the Presbyterians, all is not predestined either.

Alert readers who sit through the whole video should come away with a sense of actual physicaly realities which might lie behind mystical experiences, ESP over long distances, and other seemingly inexplicable realities.
Maybe.
But the assertion should not be overdone.
RantWoman enjoyed the video even though she did not interact deeply with all the physica vocabulary.

Perhaps that is a useful approach for others too.

Let There be Light: Poetry Book Release.

Full disclosure: RantWoman is called to publicize this book release because of having gone to college with the poet's son who now works with light as manifest a whole bunch of ways in connection with the Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

Let There Be Light Jackson Maclow complete poems

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2014/12/let-there-be-jackson-mac-lows-complete-light-poems/

A previous edition available through GoodReads
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1600012.22_Light_Poems

Epiphany: Wise men? Preschoolers? Oboe students?

Pattern Brain is at it again.

Remember Eye Roller Friend, the Friend with the ministry of Audible eye rolling, usually offered as nonverbal commentary on other Friends' vocal ministry. The noise distresses many; as if RantWoman were not already distressing Friends sufficiently, RantWoman continues to consider this peculiar ministry a valid accessibility measure.. RantWoman is pretty sure lots of people roll their eyes sometimes in Meeting for Worship. RantWoman appreciates knowing the identity of at least one when the audible eye-rolling occurs. This is not an opinion about whether audible eye-rolling is the most effective mode of communication or a manifestation of entirely centered worship. Come on, this is RantWoman.

Eye Roller Friend has of late subsided somewhat, but RantWoman observes that he still erupts. Occasionally. He tends to erupt in connection with messages from particular individuals. In connection with RantWomans efforts to TRY for ministry of talking TO rahter than talking ABOUT, RantWoman has a time or two, with varying success suggested that Eye Roller Friend try to assemble his words and have conversations with the people who evoke his particular audible ministry. RantWoman is hearing a call to do that again.

Along the way, RantWoman got to some serious Enter the Kingdom of Heaven as a Child reflections. Hold on for the ride. RantWoman PROMISES to get there.

Some of this probably would do better as Talking TO rather than Talking ABOUT, but there are too many ways for that to go awry one on one, email blockages, pouty hangups..Then there would be past references to poor mentoring and someone Rantwoman will refer to as "So Out of Order Friend, one of a couple voices who seems to think no one needs to talk directly to RantWoman. (Be advised: RantWoman is aware of some stuck moments hwere if she opens her mouth even the least bit carelessly, NOTHING good will come out. See what RantWoman means about needing the help of God and the whole internet and maybe the space aliens.)

Then there are all the joys of RantWoman's charming personality. RantWoman is seasoning a couple Russian novel chapters on email alone, not to mention another chapter on something from a now out-of-date announcement.

Anyway, RantWoman needs the help of God and the whole entire internet and possibly some space aliens. So it's on the blog.

The conversation RantWoman imagines

"Can I talk to you?"

"Yes, you are standing here talking to me so apparently you are able to talk to me. Would you like to rephrase your request?" (Yep, RantWoman's inner Grammar Nazi would have shown up here too; MAYBE a gentler correction would have emerged, but the talking about conversation RantWoman was part of headed for the kind of conflict management that is age-appropriate around preschoolers.

Okayyyy, if preschoolers are what is wanted, how about a very large slightly overgrown one that is LONG overdue for some serious tantrums?

And we won't even talk about all the experience between the overdue for tantrums and today?

Uhhh, could we maybe try a different age group?

You mean like the snot-nosed twits from seventh grade whom RantWoman after awhile just ignored because they were not going to talk to RantWoman anyway? Or the chick RantWoman remembers whose interaction options were:

"Wanna fight?" No.

"Wanna smoke weed?" Not particularly. (RantWoman now laments that it never occurred to her to ask, say, "Wanna do some honework?")

Uhhhh, another age group perhaps?

RantWoman drank coffee. RantWoman wandered about assembling necessities for a vision collage.
RantWoman made a vision collage, helped clean up and got on a bus.

God rattled around on the bus for awhile:

..enter the kingdom of heaven like a child...

..oboe students...

Oboe students? Oboe students who have to be showing promise just to show up at the RantFamily household at 8 am on Saturdays after having driven in from some outlying hamlet. Oboe students who do not even get signed up to be oboe students unless they are already promising and so what if the 8 am rounds sometimes evoke the line about "an ill wind that no one blows good."

Yeah. Those Oboe students...

RantWoman I thought we were talking about preschoolers.
Yeah.
...who might become oboe students?

Preschoolers in the at least it's something school of conflict handling? And something is better than nothing and ...

Preschoolers, even overgrown preschoolers in a sandbox working with Enter the kingdom of God like a child.

Yeah, okay. Start there. Maybe start with the sandbox and let the Kingdom of God work itself out... Look! See what the 3 wise men brought....Now where to start....

Epiphany: Three wise men; three or so words

Cantankerous beasts and lack of clarity, visual and otherwise: RantWoman attempts a three words exercise:

Fast sorts on end / bbeginning of year exercises including:

My three words, after Chris Brogan:
Example from Robin Mohr who certainly blogs more cleanly than RantWoman
http://robinmsf.blogspot.com/2015/01/my-three-words-for-2015.html

RantWoman is massaging her word list but so far:

--True. True to myself. True to my Light, even when sometimes inconvenient or uncomfortable to myself and / or to others.

--Faithful: faithful to calling even when difficult. Unclear why this is not just True, but forgiving, Frank?

--Steady: also unclear why just faithful will not work, but thinking it has to do with refuge in God, attentive, realistic about lmits, limitations, mine and others.

True as in cannot stick to count and have trouble staying in boundaries, within scope:
Further candidate words: COPE, Forebearance, some word noodles about forgiveness and reconciliation and cycles of same. Maybe this last belongs with steady.

True as in:
Top ten lists: RantWoman received two top 10 lists, voices from other members of the WA Council of the Blind. Each list had 10 items. Each item was less than one line long. RantWoman was inspired to make a list.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2014/12/merry-christmas-happy-new-year-top-10.html

--Some of RantWoman's list overlapped with other people.

--RantWoman's list has 14 or 15 items not just 10.

--Most of the items had at least a couple lines of explanation and expansion.

--RantWoman included both people from "that other blind consumer organization" and points reflecting other disabilities besides blindness.

True as in tension between brevity and expansion.
--Think Dostoevsky transmitted by Twitter. Crime and Punishment: Pawnbroker whacked. Perp Tracked. God Unpacked.
--Or maybe not.

True as in called to have a whole multi-layered tantrum about something in recent Meeting life that gets its own post. True to sit with tantrum and see how strands weave with others EVEN THOUGH the weaving connects one strand at a time with different people and almost no one needs to have quite the multilayered fit RantWoman has.

True and faithful as in able to have MANY conversations about a recent Blind couple in the news meme.
Steady as in slowly keep moving small pieces until results add up larger than first imagined. Steady as in RantWoman had a recent visit to her ophtalmologist and again felt possible absurd delight about a certain sidewalk.
http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/08/heartwarming-tale-of-successful.html

Steady as in knowing when to quit, for once, at least for now.

Epiphany: two nice personal statement posts.

A couple really nice personal statement faith and action posts

http://afsc.org/friends/work-spirit-why-i-felt-led-work-afsc

http://pedalseeds.net/changing-myself-not-the-climate/

Karl Eikenberry article on all-volunteer army, poverty draft.

Blog as filing cabinet item:

http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/the-great-draft-dodge-20141212

Epiphany: Don't Worry What Others Think: Shake Off Bullying

This amaryllis is a get-well / Christmas present to RantMom from Someone Else's Mother Friend. RantWoman is deeply touched because the RantFamily often has amaryllises but no one had gotten one this past Christmas. RantWoman sends gratitude for the present and also gratitude because Someone Else's Mother Friend just has problems RantMom could not even imagine. They need to be held in prayer, not splattered all over a blog, except for one point: what is it about RantWoman's face that causes people including Someone Else's Mother Friend to be able tell her about their restraining order issues?RantWoman also likes this video and wonders where else Yothe Youtube would take one about this topic.

 

Fascinating New Yorker article about Angela Merkel

Yes world, I got this via Twitter. Interesting read. Toss-up about which blog to stash it in.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/01/quiet-german?mbid=social_twitter

MERRY CHRISTMAS; HAPPY NEW YEAR: Ismo Leikola - Suicides and terrorism in Finland

RantWoman has no idea what Christmas trees look like in Finland.
RantWoman acknowledges that the topic of the clip below is tasteless and OMG how could ANYONE laugh? RantWoman hopes at least a few of hew readers will laugh as hard as she has.

Merry Christmas: Let's talk about Death, Thank you letter and temper tantrum version

This post reflects RantWoman succumbing to temptation both to meander thematically and  to have a temper tantrum. Hold all and sundry in the Light.

RantWoman honors times people get together and wind up talking about good and bad death and the circle of life.

Yes, RantWoman knows that the image here is blobby  and eerily lit and that it does not do justice to the manger scene that is part of the wreath. And yes, RantWoman understands that making this particular image the avatar for talking about death is, um, weird. Cope. This decoration is from the late RantDad's late Aunt Sister. RantWoman remembers this late aunt for a lot of Jello, for endless gifts of crocheting and smelly Avon products.

RantWoman occasionally tries to imagine childhood sibling dynamics between RantDad and Aunt Sister, particularly with the RantGrandparents  and the family ministry of trips about the wilds of WY doing Dog and Pony shows for God, as supporting roles for Rev. RantGrandad's offical job title, Sunday School Missionary.

RantWoman also remembers some frightening medical challenges, some of them brought about by poorly treated workplace injuries, and many circumstances that contributed to her death. RantWoman also remembers this Aunt crocheting a lot of baby booties for the Crisis Pregnancy Center, maybe more than enough of an association to add the nativity scene.

And in an effort to drag the flow somehwere back in the direction of Death, RantWoman is fuzzay about a good bit of the theology of Sunday School Missionary, but RantWoman does remember Aunt Sister's views on cremation. She was SOUNDLY agin it. She was terrified when RantDad died that if he were cremated he would be unavailable for the Rapture. RantWoman figured that any God who could show up and help clean the Saturday night beer bottles out of the town halls in time for Sunday church could probably reconstitute cremated remains if bodies wer really needed for the post-Rapture experience. That said, RantWoman thinks it is probably a stupendous act of Divine Mercy that no reference to stirring people back together like a box of instant pudding ever made it out of her mouth during the preparations for RantDad's funeral.


Manger Scene on a wreath

RantWoman is grateful sometimes for attention to radio broadcasts during the day. RantWoman apologizes, sort of , for lacking patience to go look up the segment on http://kuow.org she has in mind.

Readers get to be grateful for the moment that RantWoman is aiming for laconic and just posting resources:


Ellen Goodman,
http://theconversationproject.org/

The site above contains several resources for having conversations about end of life wishes. RantWoman thinks these resources would be a great thing before holiday gatherings. RantWoman also thinks they might be lovely preparation for the event below.


RantWoman invites readers to attend this event; if you want to attend and do not already read the Meeting bulletin, leave a comment and RantWoman will forward. RantWoman also posts it here as an artifact and will say more in the same festive holiday spirit as she talks about other themes in the vibrant yucky topics festival that is her life.

SAVE THE DATE: *Free* ADVANCE CARE PLANNING WORKSHOP sponsored by Care and  Counsel: Saturday, Jan. 10, 9:00-11:30am in the Social Hall. Natasha White Marsh, Hospice Chaplain and End-of-Life Consultant, will guide you through completing a 3-part living will.
RSVP by Jan. 3. To request materials in alternate formats or other accommodations please contact Natasha or a member of Care and Counsel.


RantWoman THINKS she should thank Care and Counsel for responding partly to an idea of RantWoman's related to end of life preparations.

RantWoman is trying to think this, but she would find it easier if Care and Counsel did not keep expecting one person at a time to be RantWoman's spokes person for things RantWoman things everyone on Care and Counsel should be expected to interact directly with, oh and turning down offers to contribute further upstream. Hold that problem in the Light because it may turn into a 12 days of Christmas thread.

RantWoman thanks Friend Natasha for responding to RantWoman's general howls about accessibility. For RantWoman, what will work for alternative formats is to get a link or a copy of any proposed documents in advance. RantWoman will be interested to see what other requests for alternate formats come in and offered to help create such if needed. RantWoman supposes others with vision difficulties may do what RantWoman does a lot of the time, just trust people and sign where toldm, never mind niceties like options for accessing the signed document independently after such events, say if one wants to review the text or quote from it or...

Sign where told?

RantWoman thanks Friend Natasha for a preview of the workshop: it's about end of life documents such as living will and durable power of attorney.

And it is two hours.

And participants are expected to come out of the workshop with all the documents all filled out and signed, presumably with witnesses and names on key dotted lines.

Really.

Friend Natasha assures RantWoman this happens, but the whole concept sounds to RantWoman a little like Death Panels: hurry up and get the paperwork signed because that's all the time we want to devote to some major personal discernment.

Really?

People come to these events already with the names they mean to put on dotted lines?

Ummm?

But never mind that. RantWoman wandered into another corner of Planet RantWoman, RantWoman as collector of documents in languages she either interprets in or has extended family members who speak.

RantWoman currently does little spoken language interpreting but does have a reflex both to snag materials for Brother in Law and to check the availability of materials in general. Specifically,
RantWoman really, really, really hates being asked to sight translate routine documents when she thinks a translation should already exist. RantWoman realizes that this preference entails a whole list of prerequisites, but tough.

RantWoman has thought of blurting out "Look you work for a large medical facility that has obligations about Language access under Title VI of the civil Rights act. What is your department doing about it?" RantWoman can live with the possibility that the answer is "nothing" or "nothing yet."

RantWoman THINKS she can live with that possibility. 

Except...

RantWoman did another mental census of our Meeting. There are households, in at least one language, multiple households,  where either for a member of the household or someone from the extended family, person's first language is among 4 of the 8 languages the state of WA certifies interpreters in, not counting the language RantWoman generally interprets in. In at least a couple cases, RantWoman thinks people besides RantWoman MIGHT be interested in snagging materials if they also attend the workshop.

RantWoman thinks this, but RantWoman has enough to do sorting out the ferment of her own spiritual compost heap; she may or may not invest a lot of energy in checking whether some of the households she has in mind are interested in the workshop. That also means she may or may not invest energy in recommending....

Hold ALL of this in the Light, MAYBE in gentler Light than RantWoman's Inner Blowtorch alone.

HAPPY NEW YEAR: Flower of the Day and Freedom School

From Sociedad Argentina de Horticultura, with joy and warm good wishes to all!

And here is a bit about AFSC's Freedom School in #Ferguson, MO