Fresh Popcorn from various Fora.

RantWoman is TRYING for Zen-like calm and unflappability. Really she is.

Since there is a lot of steam, MAYBE it's a good thing there are popcorn kernels about too.

(Please hold in the Light the point that right now the popcorn kernels seem especially prone to pop around one specific weighty and greatly esteemed Friend, a Friend RantWoman too holds very dear even though the popcorn popper is sort of overflowing.)

Popcorn Kernel Zone #1: the most recent Meeting for Business. "We're all volunteers!" The supply of popcorn kernels in Meeting for Business remains bountiful. Perhaps it is a blessing that there are way too many to pop all at once or that there are so many that RantWoman's Excessively plain English to Quakerese filter just shuts down completely.

In this case, the pterodactyl that might have come flying out of RantWoman's mouth would sound something like "What you think there is a different standard for God than if you are getting paid / relying on professional experience / walking in that zone where God and professional experience intertwine???"

MAYBE there also would have been a popcorn kernel about the difference between "We are all volunteers" and doing as much as humanly possible, doing as much as one can do cheerfully, and various other ways to color the gap between what one might WISH and what actually happens. Or maybe something about a gracious and versatile God able to work with....  Hold that point in the Light and hope that the RantWoman Message Manglement service also manages not yet to route a couple matters to Dial-a-Tirade.

Popcorn Kernel Zone #2, Adult Religious Education with the fact that RantWoman is frequently the youngest or in the case reported here RantWoman thinks the second -youngest person in the room:

In a flow of conversation about whether those present have any concept of Quaker missionaries, and especially missionaries from liberal, unprogrammed all over the theological map Quakers, one Friend reported a conversation with another Weighty Friend about whether everyone should be a Quaker. Weighty Friend is reported to have said well, everyone should know about Quakers but should not necessarily all BE Quakers and should certainly have some choice about it.

RantWoman's first popcorn kernel moment: Wait. Excuse me? Where does God / the Holy Spirit / the Goddess / SOME sense of something larger than ourselves fit into this conversation?

RantWoman's second popcorn kernel moment: if it is truly something larger than oneself moving, then how much say do individual Friends, even Weighty friends necessarily get about the whole matter?

The flow of conversational steam went a different direction and what did emerge from rantWoman's mouth was a repeated call to talk about Capital gains tax and how many people in WA are tragically undertaxed.

Go figure!

God, REALLY ?????