Industrial Strength Joy

RantWoman continues her meditations upon the practice of asking Friends at the close of worship to share  "Joys and Concerns." Tonight's topic is "Joys, salted with Concerns."

RantWoman finds it interesting that people need to be invited to share their Joy. However, RantWoman has noted that the formal invitation has elicited joys from a number of usually diffident people. RantWoman apologizes for not remembering specific joys and only noting the fact of people who rarely or never speaking In worship offering something. RantWoman also notes appreciation for new grandchildren, for a new abode for an aging elder....

Maybe RantWoman should just ask Eye Roller Friend whether, whatever the concerns lurking in his ministry, does he also hear others' joys?

And then there is RantWoman.

--Much as RantWoman really does want to hear from new voices, sometimes new voices make RantWoman want to fidget and growl something like "Oh Come On! OUT WITH IT, oh and if you are called to speak could you please bleeping SPEAK UP for all the people with hearing loss in the room?"

But in RantWoman's experience  growling things like this tends to dampen the flow of joys. So, maybe, maybe, as long as Worship and Ministry still kind of reeks of a certain "we don't have to talk to..." could the people offering invitations to share Joys and Concerns please pretty please also try to remember to encourage people to speak up?

--RantWoman notes with joy that one newcomer just did not even register the latest public witness from Eye Roller Friend about the practice of invited Joys and Concerns!  RantWoman is delighted that the worship spoke to her.

--RantWoman also notes with joy that because of forgetting to get an announcement about midweek worship into the bulletin, RantWoman got divinely dragged to her feet to make a live announcement and thus to have real conversation with another newcomer who might be interested in coming to midweek worship.

As for RantWoman's joys:

--There was the week that beloved aunts and uncles came to town. They put up with the Rant Family's transit-only regimen. They all seemed to have a good time anyway despite some other event-planning oopses. RantWoman missed seeing spouses, because they all make sweet couples. Alas, having them come to town without spouses cut down dramatically on the combinations of people who cannot abide each other's presence for very long. Is there joy in this realism?

--Brother-in-Law is seeing MUCH better after long-needed cataract surgery. If RantWoman wants gentle soothing grateful joy, she might have stopped there. No such luck!

    --RantWoman is glad for fresh updates during a recent shared bus ride with Little Sister.

    --At Christmas dinner last year, RantWoman asked Brother In Law an innocent question and somehow got to ophtho triage: a big cloud in one eye? Oh. Any blood? No. Flashes of Light? No? Haloes around lights? No? Anything that seems to move. Yes a Little. How long have you noticed? Months. And has it gotten suddenly worse? No. Okay, you definitely need someone with more medical credentials than RantWoman but it's probably not a Go Straight to the ER Do Not Pass Go Do not Collect $200 situation. One of RantWoman's joys: See, See RantWoman called it correctly.

   --The next point of joy: Obamacare means Brother-in-Law has insurance. It does not mean it is easy to find a provider who takes that insurance. Nor does it fix some other language access and general nerve-wracking fussiness. So joy means joy in perseverance through a LOT of hassles

May everyone's life be filled with such direct and unmitigated experience of the Divine?