One Vocal Ministry Zinger after another

RantWoman takes issue with an assertion early on in the item below that worship in Quaker Meetings occurs mainly in silence. Worship in unprogrammed Meetings occurs mainly from the silence, but worldwide and across different strands of Quakerism, there are WIDE variations in the quantity and quality of silent worship as well as other worship practices such as singing and message. That said:





http://practicalmysticmusings.wordpress.com/2010/01/27/the-hot-button-issue-ministry-in-quaker-meetings/








RantWoman glommed onto the word elder, lately causing consternation, confusion, and quest for coherence in the land of RantWoman, and found these three items from her searching.





http://practicalmysticmusings.wordpress.com/?s=elder





and especially





http://practicalmysticmusings.wordpress.com/2009/09/27/leadership-and-circles-in-quaker-meeting/

Middling level deadly sins

Today's Our Daily Bread Bible item is from the gospel of John:

"You now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you." —John 16:22

RantWoman is having the sort of spell where even such a passage comes across as the God as Stalker mode of divine presence. This may have a great deal to do with RantWoman's occasional life experiences of feeling the divine close even in the presence of, um, abusive jerks or more diplomatically people who can come across as such even if that is not what they, giving more benefit of the doubt than RantWoman is capable of on her own right now, do not mean such or worse yet are not even conscious of doing or seem not to be able to stop. Okay, just because this represents kind of familiar emotional territory for RantWoman most assuredly does not mean RantWoman WANTS to be here.

This is a longwinded way of saying RantWoman is still processing material from her Compost melodrama. Subtracting for the time being one question and annoying monthly proddings from people still missing the point definitely does not mean all the matter's complexities have worked themselves out.

--Right now, RantWoman feels need of further conversation, and hopefully shared conversation with several people in the room. RantWoman thinks rather than a Clearness Committee, she just wants prayerful threshing, with space for many people to speak honestly, supervised by one or more people with credible mediation experience and she knows who she has in mind. Beyond agreeing to show up and general interest in knowing more about the topics of mediation and conflict resolution though, RantWoman is going to go on strike about any more of a specifying role than that.

--One of these days RantWoman will post separately about all the aggravations of RantWoman's different reading options. RantWoman knows perfectly well she has much to be grateful for and is suffering severe "spoiled American syndrome" about many things to do with the topic. Again this is the RantWoman we've got though and RantWoman does not even feel called to spell out much of how this is tangled with the Compost melodrama.

--Taking one set of questions off the table has given RantWoman emotional space to go back to a different point, a point that RantWoman has previously written about, a point which so enrages RantWoman that, every time she starts to doubt her leadings around this topic, causes her backbone to quiver and straighten, a point which RantWoman cannot even vent about in every venue it might occur to her to vent because it involved RantWoman's intervention in a situation where Dear Friend was causing problems with Meeting personnel. RantWoman is not even going to connect the dots about exactly what she is thinking, at least not in personalized terms. However, RantWoman is going tofire some questions off to someone(s) whose workshop at Ben Lomond just came to RantWoman's attention on the assumption that the exact problem on RantWoman's mind might not be exactly unique.

But back to RantWoman's morning reading.The text accompanying the Bible passage, , for no reason apparent to RantWoman mentions the seven deadly sins.

"You may be familiar with the list of seven deadly sins that was formulated during the sixth century: lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, vengeance, envy, and pride. But you may not know that the original list compiled during the fourth century also included the sin of sadness."

In other words, in addition to God as Stalker, there are plenty of traps on the road!

RantWoman regrets to inform her public that, although she is doing really, really embarrassingly well about some of the seven deadly sins, she does not really expect to be able to provide full service in the sins department this week. RantWoman further acknowledges that this blog might be much more fun to read if she would detail exactly which sins she is excelling in. Let us just say, RantWoman may tell a little too much of the truth a lot of the time, but even she has her limits. Plus, RantWoman's current sins of choice would do well as country western song as well as telenovela, but RantWoman is sure her readers have febrile imaginations of their own, not to mention their own favorite temptations.

RantWoman has been digging:

The Conflict section of Chapter 20, Living Faithfully Today from Britain Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice.

http://www.quakerweb.org.uk/qfp/qfpchapter20.html

PS if you read it online, it's nicely hyperlinked to related passages in other chapters.

The Blind Boys of Alabama clip, in case she needs tips about sinning, here:

http://sillypoorgospel.blogspot.com/2010/01/blind-boys-of-alabama.html

(RantWoman was so taken by this clip she went to look for others. This is definitely the best of the ones she looked at!)

Patti Smith on the radio: "Jesus died for somebody's sins--but not mine!" Oh Yeah? And oh, boy the conversations that starts in Quaker land!

And from last week:


RantWoman really needed the following messages:
http://earofthesoul.blogspot.com/2010/01/great-expectations.html



http://qqqqanda.blogspot.com/2010/01/responding-to-accusations.html

http://sillypoorgospel.blogspot.com/2010/01/patrick-stewart-hero-of-faith.html

Ministry of Crabbiness and Living on Planet Earth

RantWoman misspeaks. General Crabbiness is an overstatement. However RantWoman is crossposting from her transit whines blog in an effort to further a general ministry of supportive presence for elderly Friends no longer able to get to worship unassisted.

http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/01/saturday-night-live.html

RantWoman particularly commends the paragraph in the above item about use of paratransit. RantWoman has been in dialogue with Persnickety Friend. Persnickety Friend thinks someone from Meeting OWES the Friend who needs a ride, as well perhaps as the other Friend who lives in her retirement facility. RantWoman thinks Friends unquestionably have all paid in more than enough taxes to take advantage of the paratransit service!

No one with a vehicle lives close or even on a good drive route. Neither Friend at the retirement community can take the bus unaided. RantWoman is darn sure not going to volunteer to drive. In fact, RantWoman is offering what she CAN do, help shepherd the application through the needed bureaucracy and then help other Friends interact with the process of scheduling pickup and return trips. This is NO mean effort and RantWoman would appreciate it if Persnickety Friend would get over herself about other expectations. RantWoman will now resume her efforts to render the above thought in appropriate Quakerese!

Partial Credit in Iraq

RantWoman is posting this here with modest appreciation:

http://www.juancole.com/2010/01/one-year-later-did-obama-win-iraq-war.html

Shameless book promo

RantWoman has nothing to do with the following book beyond clicking a link off a thread on one of her blindess email lists.

The Color of Sunlight

This forthcoming title is co-written by a hospice nurse and a blind transwoman who lived in Kalispell MT.

RantWoman is in awe of the very idea of a blind transwoman in Kalispell MT. RantWoman is pretty sure she has never been to Kalispell, but RantWoman has been enough other places in MT to be able to imagine.

Don't quite have the beatitudes down

Today was our first week of moving the time children are in worship to the end rather than the beginning of 11:00 worship.

Based on today's very gathered worship, RantWoman approves.

RantWoman is also COMPLETELY down with the last message. The last message was about the Beatitudes, all about the Beatitudes, all about the Beatitudes for a long time, like wandering in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.

How, you may ask can one use a phrase like "wandering in the desert for 40 days and 40 nights" with reference to the Beatitudes? Remember, this is RantWoman we are talking about here.

And what exactly was the Promised Land? Friend Moses proclaimed that he is not at all sure he has a handle on that "Love one another" stuff. Friend SO speaks my mind.

Quaker surprises

RantWoman is seasoning a whole jumble of posts partly about needs to talk more explicitly of the presence of God / Christ ... in one's life and some key points of cultural and technological shift in Christianity / Quakerism. RantWoman is seasoning these posts. and they are still pretty much a squirming mass of muddle. In the meantime RantWoman wants to speak of one of the things that keeps her coming back to Friends, what she calls Quaker surprises.

RantWoman has a lot of life history and recent community work intersecting with people of many different faiths, so last year one of the roles RantWoman felt a leading to consider is denominational representative to the local church council. RantWoman supposes she should write / read more of what this means and RantWoman's experiences walking boundaries among faith traditions, among faith / social action. at some point. RantWoman is going to concentrate here on a few short moments with strong leadings.

RantWoman spoke with both our Clerk and with the Friend from another Meeting who had been filling this role. Both of them are clear that for the time being, it is fine for Friends not to interact with this specific body. One reason was a proposal to picket another faith's houses of worship in connection with that faith's opposition to same-sex marriage and support for ballot measures enshrining that view in law.

When RantWoman heard of this specific issue, she immediately had two ferocious and contradictory leadings.

First, our Meeting has been taking same-sex marriages under our care for probably as long as almost any congregation in Seattle, BUT there is NO WAY RantWoman would even bring that proposal back to her Meeting for feedback. RantWoman so ferociously respects freedom of religion that there is no way she would be signing up to picket another faith's house of worship.

2. RantWoman knows from observing her Meeting and other Quakers engage this way that the obvious thing to do would be to engage in dialogue. Read up at least a bit on that faith's teachings and practices about family life. Set up dialogue that includes families from that faith and families of different characteristics from other faiths. RantWoman has even heard in the news of something like this and better dialogue specifically in Salt Lake city with greatly admirable legal results.

RantWoman alas at the moment of the conversation about picketing the houses of worship also felt neither leading nor capacity to take up this approach herself so for the time being, she just gets to wonder whether her points above would have landed with others if she had been in the room. RantWoman does not have to wonder too long, but will add paying attention to faith community mentions to her list of things applicable to her other community-building work.