Revelation, Empire, Charism, Origin Stories, Throbbing Present

RantWoman apologizes in advance: here are two meaty blog posts RantWoman is walking around digesting. It would be nice if RantWoman were to break things down and weave together her meditations. That, sadly, in this case is not going to happen right away and RantWoman is clear to blog loose threads anyway.

Here, Enjoy the readings at least.
Wes daniels on Matthew, Revelation, Personal Origin Stories and Resistance


Speaking of origin stories, family and otherwise, there is a RantWoman Quaker origin story connected with the meditations below.

RantWoman's favorite Charismatic Christian on the relation between Quakers and the Vineyard.
Hye Sung on Quakers and the Vineyard

RantWoman has a favorite charismatic theologian partly because she reads Hye Sung occasionally. Rantwoman both finds herself intrigued and quickly realizes, re-remembers that she is unlikely ever to turn into a charismatic Christian, no matter how much she might also want to keep saying "See, See. LOOK at the range of Quakers No, not all Quakers are like you or you or you...and we are all richer for..."

Then there is the speaking in tongues part from the post above. RantWoman was going to say she has little personal experience with speaking in tongues, well except for that part about studying foreign languages, oh heck, and the part about thinking it entirely reasonable to need to be faitfhul to one's light about talking regularly about accessibility, inclusion, the ADA, disability. RantWoman is trying--and not succeeding--to be faithful to her Light, to be gentle as people lurch along a path of reluctantly received language immersion. Who are we kidding? A lot of the time, judging for instance, by almost ZERO mention of any such concepts in a whole year's worth of minutes and not even in minutes dating back several years to a previous effort to look at disability, RantWoman might as well be speaking in tongues although what if we free-associate to immersion baptism, plus or minus either the Baptist dunking tank of RantWoman's youth or just immersion in the Holy Spirit as in the Barclay sense?

RantWoman, MUST YOU digress like this every single darn time? MUST YOU? And you go on and on and don't know when to quit. And we are having trouble finding God in your words. And we really really really feel entitled to a break and we really do not even notice that you don't get a break from blindness at least.

To quote Scooby Doo, Ruh roh. Please forgive RantWoman because her excessively plain English to Quakerese filter is about to severely malfunction--again.

Just because YOU can't find God ... does not mean God is not present. Remember, RantWoman has a versatile God who gets things done lots of ways. God keeps sending people with disabilities to live among ... and suggesting rather strongly that everyone learn how to get along. Oh and then there is the part about people with disabilities sometimes being called to be present in situations where they are either explicitly or implicitly not wanted.

And if you are going to complain that RantWoman is known to test limits, please consider that also means RantWoman is being faithful to her Light, grabbing every tiny shudder of inching forward in directions RantWoman's light is pointing and looking for paths to squeeze further increments of progress out of the Quaker process everyone professes to be in love with..

But wait! RantWoman has also actually been around people speaking in tongues.  Little Sister for a time attended a Latino evangelical church, La Iglesia evangélica de Dios Pentacostes
. The service was in Spanish, though at times the pastor sounded just like the Righteous Reverend Rant Granddad. People at the church also sometimes spoke in tongues, as in clearly distinguishable from Spanish and no interpretation of the experience ever asked for. They also needed to pray over units of blood to be transfused into Little Sister. They also had a couple threads of Challenging Congregational Drama.

Please bear with RantWoman. The details above are perhaps a digression from the theme of this post, but will be highly germane to another post seasoning. Now back to RantWoman's origin story. Before Little Sister worshipped with La Iglesia evangélica de Dios Pentacostes she worshipped with a Vineyard congregation. This was also about the time RantWoman moved to town, so RantWoman a few times also worshipped at the Vineyard. A few times.

The noodly music did not agree with RantWoman's sensibilities. At the time Little Sister was madly interested in a guy who, no matter what the church said, was gay and going to stay that way. And one day while sitting with all this, God sent RantWoman a message about the yellow pages. RantWoman learned that there was a Quaker Meeting with easy public transit access. Actually there were two, and one was walking distance from where RantWoman was living at the time. But the walking distance one had an answering machine and the easy bus ride one had a live human who answered RantWoman's call.

All of that is now part of a decades-long tapestry of relationships and connections and Sunday morning encounters and holding in the Light.

RantWoman has  heard more than one person talk about the labored discussion at the October Business Meeting. RantWoman has a sense that people were NOT at unity and in fact that some people besides brave newcomers who stood aside, did not understand what all was going on.

To repeat: there is a narrative that we have tried and tried and nothing has worked. If a Care and Accountability committee for a person with disability cannot even interact effectively about how disability interacts iwth people's expectations, Quaker testimonies, process, what could POSSIBLY Go Wrong? RantWoman thanks the Care and Accountability committee for a number of meaningful moments AND for clarity both that further work is badly needed and that the work they were trying to do needs to be shared among the whole community.

RantWoman frankly is APPALLED that everyone thinks that she is supposed to unravel almost 3 decades of relationships because one roomful of people is at unity and was determined to hold the meeting without her in the first place.

RantWoman is appalled that people think it's a giant humanitarian gesture to allow her to come to memorials but NOT to connect with people at UFM BEFORE they die.

RantWoman is appalled that no one is interacting with objections to separate and unequal participation in worship and RantWoman is  appalled that anyone thinks trying to enable that is in any way compatible with an understanding of a testimony on equality. RantWoman will be addressing a clear leading about this in a separate post.

RantWoman is appalled: despite ferocious issues about various location issues and separate and unequal time worshipping with the community. became stunningly clear that she is called to invite people to do something not really happening at UFM right now, talking about prayer, that no one sees fit to share the invitation in the bulletin.

RantWoman did not even get relevant sections of NPYM Faith and Practice in a format accessible to her until days AFTER the October 13 Meeting for business. RantWoman is particularly peeved about this because it was her attention to budget and job description issues helped encourage NPYM to budget for a webkeeper who is able and competent about accessibility issues in the first place.

RantWoman is aware that a decades-long tapestry of relationships also mean many Friends dear to her are aging and not enjoyably.

RantWoman feels awful actually about some circumstances she feels responsibility for that emphatically have NOT helped create the kind of family-friendly environment she feels called to try to tend.

And RantWoman thinks it would be REALLY nice if there can be a first reading of names to actually form an Ad-Hoc committee on Disability at the next Meeting for Business.

In Light and Faithfulness.

RantWoman