Meeting for Business: Jaws, the movie, not the screen reader. Just add Contrabassoon?

This is the BEFORE Business Meeting Blog Post, with post date cleverly adjusted. After Business Meeting, for the time being, RantWoman received another missive from her Meeting's bedbugs. Hold that problem in the Light.

RantWoman, since WHEN is the theme from JAWS appropriate aid for centering as one prepares for Meeting for Worship with Attention to Business?




Uhhh, every Business Meeting needs a good contrabassoon part?

Bless us Oh Lord for our headaches are abundant, possibly more abundant than can be handled with just a good bass line.

RantWoman notes a ferociously disharmonious convergence of calendar cycles, agenda items, people and  themes associated with said agenda items,

Among the themes on RantWoman's mind:

--Children of various ages and "Mentoring." da-da. Da-da. Da-da. Will RantWoman be called somehow to ...mention Sudoku?

--Thanks but No Thanks.

--What do we mean by "spiritual?"

--Silence and silencing

Possibly useful metaphors:
--a labyrinth for alternations of walking around in circles and walking back and forth

--Fractals where one can stand or press on one point and suddenly have the same pattern repeat on a different scale.


Random additional popcorn kernels:
RantWoman already had a pre-Business Meeting out of integrity email snit-fit.
 We have spiffy signs implying that our amplification supports hearing aid T coils. In fact right now and for many months, our amplification system has not been working at all because a key cable got stolen. Now fixing awaits some bigger scale worship room improvements RantWoman was previously unaware of. RantWoman thinks we should definitely take down the misleading T-coil signs and that now would be a prime time to ask someone who knows what they are doing for recommendations and look at multiple layers of listening, hearing  and technology.

RantWoman also wandered again by mix of email and phone into a question about parking lot at night. Duhhh. Yeah probably since parking in our lot is free and parking in our part of town is at a premium, probably it is not unreasonable to expect that sometimes people try to leave cars and go elsewhere. Probably it is reasonable to understand that our on-site staff would have the best data about the problem. That solves only half of a communications challenge. What? messages getting mangled and wires crossed around RantWoman? Say it isn't so...  Or maybe NOT please because RantWoman has too much of the saying it isn't so thing going on in a literal sense anyway.

RantWoman is grateful one laying down of membership is not on the agenda. Said Friend has the same first name as RantWoman but spells it "wrong."  The problem is not the laying down of that membership after more than a decade of no contact.. The problem is that thinking of that membership heightens RantWoman's need to hold forth about a different family in the fractal world of her Quaker experiences. RantWoman is happy to acknowledge  a call to channel the figure she calls her Quaker Auntie about the second family. RantWoman has WAY more than that to say; the question is, will RantWoman's Light about marginalization make it out of RantWoman's mouth and / or onto RantWoman's blog?

RantWoman's labyrinthine mind wandered past a Friend, at one time one of two in RantWoman's meeting willing to speak of belonging to the daughters of The Confederacy. Daughters of the Confederacy Friend is a mental health professional used to say "You can't swing a dead chicken around here without running into a mandated reporter." Daughters of the Confederacy Friend and her husband resigned their memberships a few years ago. RantWoman thinks Meeting did something gauche like ask them for money without thinking to get in touch for a good while to see how they were doing. RantWoman is sorry. She counts herself among the number who could have kept better in touch. RantWoman is unclear whether this point will somehow wander into thoughts of how we all take care of ourselves spiritually and emotionally and what we ask of each other in community terms.


RantWoman needed THREE tries before the search engine of her choice stopped asking her whether she meant a different spelling of workshop leaders to be announced. Boo search engine for thinking it knows more than RantWoman does about what she is searching for. And Bother: Rantwoman is half-tempted to ask whether it would do us all just as much good to hold a session of the "How to Talk to Difficult People training that crossed RantWoman's inbox the other day, RantWoman of course being exhibit A on the difficult people front, though definitely not the only one.

RantWoman is again wrestling with a translation from excessively plain English to respectable Quakeres about one Friend. RantWoman has previously written that when this Friend offers vocal ministry, RantWoman hears really a lot of that Friend but has trouble hearing God. Upon reflection RantWoman realized that, like a number of guys RantWoman knows, this Friend has become MUCH better able to see past the edge of his own navel as a result of becoming a father.

RantWoman notes a concern with respect to "It's Not Good For the Community" Friend.

RantWoman notes that 2016 is another leap year and RantWoman foresees great likelihood that the bedbugs may again hack up another Leap Day missive. Pray...