Placebo that!

Lately RantMom has tired of watching Alton Brown sauté onions; her current Food Channel fave is "Chopped," a competitive cooking exercise where four contestants vie for a top prize won by cooking 4 courses each using some bizarre basket of ingredients, ingredients that are difficult to work with alone never mind in combination..

There is a panel of judges. Sometimes the judges have WILDLY varying opinions:

"The slightly caramelized jalapeno syrup on the corn bread crust simply makes the dish."

"The syrup makes it watery and you might as well have just burned the glop."

RantWoman's Meeting has been experimenting with Joys and Concerns or with corralling  / explicitly inviting them at the end of worship for several months. Reviews about Joys and Concerns are running about as divergent as the Chopped Judges right now.

RantWoman,how can you POSSIBLY compare Meeting for Worship to a Chopped episode?

God is Bountiful!

"Oh I love Joys and Concerns." RantWoman promises to elaborate. Actually RantWoman feels fully entitled to inflict her approximately 17 strands of opinion on the blogosphere. Stay Tuned.

Slight paraphrase, Eye Roller Friend repeatedly being true to his Light: "My sorrow is that Worship and Ministry continues to perpetrate this stupid practice." "True to his Light" is probably not the phrasing some reviewers would use, but this is RantWoman,

Remember, as a recent speaker put it, that the Quaker tradition was founded by a guy so full of his understanding of God that he would visit churches and give them two-hour lectures about how they are doing this faith thing wrong.

This also was before professional football.

RantWoman herself has been known to proclaim "I know from Sermons. If you would like it longer, I would be happy to elaborate. In this case, RantWoman is happy to tell anyone who complains about Eye Roller Friend's utterances that, well yes, he could be channeling George Fox at even greater length.

Newcomers to RantWoman's meeting, of which there seem to be a steady and inspiring
flow are not going to realize

1. that Eye Roller Friend's ministry of audible eye rolling has subsided quite a bit over many years of worship with us, eldering, conversation, and from some corners condescension.

2. RantWoman considers audible eye rolling a splendid accessibility ministry. RantWoman knows that lots of people roll their eyes sometimes about what form of God shows up in worship. RantWoman appreciates that at least when Eye Roller Friend ministers through throat clearing and general audible rumbling,, RantWoman can bloody well tell he is rolling his eyes.

Occasionally God and  Eye Roller Friend line up actual words instead of just well-timed throat clearing. Eye Roller Friend's latest verbal ministry involved a position that RantWoman would characterize as grappling with the Divine; RantWoman suspects Eye Roller Friend might think RantWoman is just being deliberately obtuse and completely missing the point of the word "placebo." If it's a placebo, bring it on. Maybe it can save RantWoman from getting body and psyche entangled in some pharmaceutical company's patent and profit regime.

Oh wait, save the pharmaceutical matters for still another thread.

RantWoman has multiple strands of opinion about the Joys and Concerns. RantWoman feels fully entitled to inflict her opinions on the universe or at least the thickets of interwebs where people read what is written her. Furthermore, RantWoman feels NO CALL one way or another to filter her Light through Worship and Ministry Committee. Friends worship is about direct and unmitigated oops unmediated experience of the Divine, never mind conversations about when the Divine does or does not look Divine. RantWoman is pretty sure God can handle it. RantWoman is less sure about...

Please hold RantWoman and those around her in the Light.