Quaker Relation to Christianity: Best Jesus Jokes?

All are invited to the South Seattle Adult Religious Education hour this coming Sunday, January 2, 2022! * See Zoom link below.*

While Christmas cheer still lingers in the air (and some of us have yet to pack up our stockings and trees), this ARE will focus on our relationship, as individuals, to the Christian tradition. A weighty Friend, will facilitate using the Spiritual Sharing format. You are invited to ponder ahead of time, these focus queries:

What is your personal experience with/connection to Christianity?

What, if anything, has pushed you away, felt hurtful or toxic? 

What, if anything, has drawn you in, deepened or enriched your faith life?

This sharing time will be nice preparation for a later ARE addressing Quakers' historical relationship with Christianity. Hope you can join us for both.

🎉 HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 🎉

RantWoman is a very bad Friend or a Friend terribly reliant on the Grace of God.

Why?

This video is part of RantWoman's spiritual preparation to participate in the above Adult Religious Education

Hayy

Christmas Eve in time of Omicron

 RantWoman opted virtually to attend THREE Christmas Eve Services. RantWoman acknowledges that it is very reductionist to present data as below. RantWoman has a versatile God who gets things done all kinds of ways.

New Creation Church, Glenwood Springs CO, newcreationchurch.org as part of RantWoman's #CivicsForLauren project.

Music: contemporary arrangements and medleys of many favorite Christmas carols.

COVID awareness: not a mask to be seen but communion with the elements packed together in individual packages.

Performers: guitars, drums, a violin; dress clothes but not robes. One choir member has pink hair.

Congregation present: RantWoman has no idea! Enough of a superspreader event risk just with all the unmasked singers. Or maybe God and the virus somehow don't work the same way in CO that they do in WA.

Readings from various places in the Gospels

Themes: Love of God for everyone, Fear not: 

Altar call: check.

Request for donations: not that RantWoman remembers

University Presbyterian Church, Seattle, www.upc.org

Christmas Eve 2021 Then End of Fear. Rev George hinman

Music: choir in robes, pipe organs, sometimes pastor or reader on mic during hymns. Program included a couple numbers less frequently performed.

COVID awareness: EVERYONE except pastor and children's program director on embedded video masks. No communion.

Congregation present: Yes, including everyone in the Seattle wing of the RantFamily except RantWoman, also others as panned with view of backs of heads and after candles lit. Probably not as large as other years but pastor expressed joy to be in person. 

Readings from various places in the Gospels

Themes: Love of God for everyone, Fear not: 

Altar call: check

Request for donations: oh yes, and several ways to donate!

Rainer Beach Presbyterian Church

Music and worship team: the pastor, her family, and one or two other people visible Bravely reading, singing, playing music with prayers that the message will reach... in spite of the fact that people are not gathering in person.

COVID awareness: worship team is a pod. RantWoman does not remember about masking but service was all virtual because of exposure in person at most recent Sunday service.

Altar call: not that RantWoman remembers

Request for donations: not that RantWoman remembers

Pentatonix "I Saw Three Ships"

Merry Whatever you Celebrate; No Fourth Saturday Worship for December

One of several vicariously appreciated
Christmas trees in real life
and social media streams

The short version of this post: 

--Please enjoy your own experience of the Divine however you are led on Christmas Day 2021

--Fourth Saturday Worship will continue virtually and presently plans to resume January 22, 2022

--Stay tuned for invitation a festive UnChristmas UnBirthday Holiday Procrastination Virtual Open House. Date still tbd: either Sunday December 26 or Friday December 31 from 2pm to 6pm or so Pacific time.

Next some Gratitudes:

RantWoman has been very much appreciating Christmas trees in various public spaces. RantWoman also thanks Friends who delivered a delightful natural tree to RantWoman's abode along with perfect incentive to make space for it. RantWoman may even provide a photo.

RantWoman thanks her Saturday night Zoom meetup for a thoughtful multi-faith discussion of the meaning and observances of Christmas. RantWoman is still digesting and may or may not elaborate.

 RantWoman expects that Friends who might sometimes attend Fourth Saturday Worship will be doing what they usually do on Christmas Day, whether that is navigating the tangles of family celebrations or doing some non-faith tradition-specific alternative celebration. RantWoman is very grateful for Christmas spirit in spite of #Pandemic uncertainties. 

Little Sister extends wishes for peace and good will between RantWoman and "the Quackery." Bless autocorrect. Bless sonic near-resonance about Quakers in another language.

Bless Friend whose current title shall not be mentioned for sharing with RantWoman the information that one Friend whose life got peculiarly tangled with RantWoman's has now entered hospice and opted for palliative care. RantWoman wants to offer words of appreciation for all this Friend has put up with. RantWoman would also like some sensible Quaker process for getting around to solving more of the problems about getting along with the currently living, not just the near death. RantWoman is poorly disposed toward becoming ecstatic over BABY STEPS but does want to recognize them.

Now some holiday conniptions.

--To everyone of any flavor who thinks there is a "War on Christmas" because we need to say Happy holidays in many places in civic life, Get Over Yourselves. The First amendment guarantees both separation of Church and State and the freedom for people to celebrate as we wish. The message of Christmas is about God touching humanity, all of it, not just the Christian parts. Come to worship. Go to Church. Do absolutely nothing. Celebrate a country where God / the Holy Spirit can be recognized in many forms.

And another thing: Help take care of all of us! Get Vaxxed. And wear masks. Observe all the same precautions people have been observing all along.

--There is NOTHING #Prolife about child poverty. Elected officials need to hear this. All of them.

--To all of the chattering classes eager to tell the voters of Seattle City Council district 3 who we want to represent us, GET OVER YOURSELVES, please! Councilmember Kshama Sawant has now been elected THREE times AND survived a recall effort. Just imagine how many badly needed direct services could be funded with the money spent on ads and glossy leaflets trying to defeat her. She is now the longest-serving member of the Seattle Council. Work with it!

Flashes of Light piercing darkness from the Chattering Classes!

Once again: RantWoman has a versatile God who gets things done all kinds of ways.

1. RantWoman has been tweeting for a few days several variations of:

There is NOTHING #ProLife about child poverty. So much of #BuildBackBetter is about helping kids get a good start in life. Vote for it NOW!

2. RantWoman's Twitter streams bring news of 20 Republican Senators up for re-election 

3. Manchin SPANKED by stock market. Beau of the Fifth Column: Let's talk about BBB, the GDP, and Manchin....

Happy Christmas

Advent, waiting, Tom Petty, Transformation

From Mike Morrell

What I learned about Advent from Tom Petty

This post speaks to RantWoman's condition. RantWoman has good intentions about adding Speakeasy to RantWoman's blog roll. In case that does not happen, readers may want to sign up themselves.

Read the whole post first. Then listen to the song.

St Lucy?

A friend is baking lussekatter, St. Lucy's cats, the perfect #adventCalendar topic. The yeasted buns are called Lucy's cats because they resemble cats curled up by the fire.

RantWoman is amused that this video of modern Lucy Day diverges in such a cheerful way from grotesque images findable elsewhere on this blog.

Swedish Lucia For Dummies from Sweden on Vimeo.

 And for people who celebrate by baking, use yer search engines. RantWoman is not patient enough to slog through all the ad goop on some recipe sites to find the perfect recipe.

Where in the Bible are we advised to honor Christ's birth brandishing semi-automatic weapons?

RantWoman's #AdventCalendar posts may or may not get around to collecting all the #LaurenBoebert news clips in RantWoman's drafts into one big festive #CivicsForLauren holiday package but in terms of naughty / nice listing... . Let's just say around RantWoman, "holding in the Light" can be a pretty fierce concept in the first place. In the second place, if ever political figures need the purifying power of prayer, the illustrious Ms. B pops right to the top of the list.

1. Never mind Rep. Boebert's galling fundraising Islamophobic quips about riding in elevators with Rep. Ilhan Omar when she's not "wearing a vest" and the CO representative's tone-deaf inability to recognize harm to a colleague. Considering Rep. Boebert's flouting of Capitol rules about gun detectors, RantWoman would always assume Ms. Boebert is packing heat and avoid getting into elevators with her. Or perhaps, even if Rep. Boebert were to ditch the Islamophobic smears against a specific colleague, someone should go all in on whether the second amendment also covers ...

2. Please enjoy this clip about an exchange of Christmas tidings between Rep. Ocasio Cortez and Rep Boebert.  RantWoman has more to say "on the other side" as the modern lexicon likes to put it.

3. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse's mom drove him across state lines with a rifle and sensible people are still appalled by the unpunished carnage that resulted. Ethan Crumbley and his parents are all warming jail cells in MI because the parents were willing to enable their underage son's gun fascination instead of getting him the mental health care the note he wrote seems to have been asking for. And now Rep. Boebert is getting her sons semi-automatic weapons for Christmas? If it's illegal for minors to have guns, why don't parents who give their kids guns for Christmas get charged with child abuse? Child Neglect? Child endangerment???

4. While RantWoman is at it about fierce opinions, as disgusting as RantWoman finds Rep. Boebert's behavior, RantWoman is torn. On one hand, Rep. Boebert is on a list of several representatives connected to the January 6 insurrectionist who should probably all be expelled from Congress. On the other hand, RantWoman does not want, for example, to strip Rep. Boebert of committee assignments if that is just going to give her more time for fundraising and xenophobic bilge on Twitter. How about, send her to parenting class for handing out firearms to her kids and then send her to detention to learn about her responsibilities and the needs of her district. RantWoman has no idea how to accomplish the "send Rep. Boebert to detention" concept, but maybe someone out there has suggestions!

From Caricature to Character: anti-racism and The Nutcracker

 Today's #AdventCalendar nugget is this very thought-provoking piece from the Pacific NW Ballet blog called Leaping from Caricature to Chqaracter

The blog post is about reworking very stereotyped imagery in the Nutcracker ballet. RantWoman is always in favor of challenging old favorites with new eyes.

Full disclosure: the piquancy of the symbolism as described in the piece also vividly illustrates the value of audio description to give visually impaired members of the audience a more complete interaction with the content of the production.

Witness Wednesday with Rilke and questions

Welcome, everyone! Here's the quote and prompt for those of you that just arrived:

“I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

From Emma Hulbert (she/her) ehulbert@fcnl.org to Everyone 02:23 PM

What would it look like for us to "live our way into the answer?"

(Oh Dear. Might we summon too much of the truth? Where is RantWoman faltering?)

A Friend spoke of his husband working in a group on performances of African American music of the 19th century, of the diversity of musical traditions, and of his sense over time of the performance coming together as his partner practiced.

RantWoman is faltering all over the place but right now Witness Wednesday is an anchor in weekly schedule, a way to hold all that is Washington DC in the Light, and, as other Friends in different parts of the country and on different faith walks variously put it, beacons of support for each other from all our little Zoom boxes. 

The rest of this is a bit of a digression, but in the Planet RantWoman world of blog as Quaker journal, there are bits of story about cherry tomato plants, the trust of assigned and accepted writing tasks, a very striking QOTD, several paths that do not lead to "God will hunt you down in worship" explosions. RantWoman for now DUCKED explaining why the quote speaks to her except again to appreciate Witness Wednesday and the prompts offered.

Advent calendar Sunflower

Dare to chase sunflowers
in the fog and gloom

How many people remember advent calendars? Those little cardboard scenes with numbered doors usually 1 to 25, one of which is to be opened every day until Christmas.

This year, RantWoman is chasing multiple metaphors. RantWoman may or may not achieve daily binge blog spiritual practice but she is going to wander around in some of these memes. 

--open all the doors and exclaim about the contents even if it's mediocre chocolate.

--eat a chocolate a day and free associate about whatever wacky emotional entanglements RantWoman drags out of the Christmas ornament box

--compile this year's naughty and nice lists

--grab whatever nuggets get seeded in different meetings for worship and see where they go.

Tonight RantWoman is appreciating a message about how sunflowers can grow in all kinds of places including toxic waste dumps. 

Eighth NIght: Rest in Power Stephen Sondheim

Like every other "celebrate something or other for a specified period," Hanukkah comes to an end and RantWoman will return to a quakerly "no respecter of days / observe all year" mindset.

For the eighth night, RantWoman has been deeply touched this week listening to NPR's 3 part series honoring Stephen Sondheim.

Remembering Stephen Sondheim parts I-III

Fresh Air Remembers Stephen Sondheim

RantWoman feels no call to rewrite anyone else's words. RantWoman is just going to say, there is MUCH to Sondheim's life and work and creative process. RantWoman is not quite sure why she is stuck on Sweeney Todd.. There is more than enough awfulness in the world without the Demon barber of Fleet Street. And it's good both to hold the need and to remember all the rest of Sondheim's career.

Video: the worst pies in London

.

Seventh Night SATIRE: Dozens Of New Hanukkah Movies To Stream This Holiday Season

Sixth Night" Jewish prayer with oldest biblical wind instrument, shofar - Yamma Ens...

Charmed by the phrase "oldest wind instrument mentioned in the Bible"

Fifth night: MIQEDEM - Psalm 23 (Live in Studio) תהילים כ״ג

Rantwoman is paying absolutely no attention to what is tradition for Hanukkah. RantWoman thanks YouTube for following yesterday's song with this setting of Psalm 23.



Watch it with the subtitles on. RantWoman did not do that with last night's post. RantWoman does not regretthe omission but will probably do things differently going forward.

LIght: the tribal music of Sephardic Jews - Kondja mia (official video)

Tonight's light is this fascinating song from the Sephardic tradition



RantWoman has no idea what's with the fire imagery in the video.

RantWoman can say very little that is intelligent about the expulsion of Jews from different countries in Europe and appreciates the Youtube comments about musical motifs from different places.    

RantWoman also considers the music a way to celebrate the miracle of 8 days of oil and miracle of oil and persistence across cultures.

Also, RantWoman has never encountered a request to translate ladino Spanish. That is definitely something RantWoman would demu  about.

John Woolman anti-vaxxer

Sunflower bold and yellow against royal blue sky

(RantWoman is keeping to her #AdventCalendar intentions and exploiting the illusion of time travel created by Blogger date manipulation options.)

Dear (Overweight) Friend RantWoman, how is a good Quaker supposed to receive this news?

Signed, Faltering ? Quaker

Dear Faltering,

Schadenfreude much? Yes, well, there's that science stuff and all. Ignore the science at your peril. 

But did you know that John Woolman was an antivaxer? RantWoman heard this in a Zoom meeting for worship so it has to be true, RIGHT?

Apparently Woolman refused the smallpox vacccine of the day. Granted the vaccine of the day sounds gross and scary albeit also insightful: scratch the sore of someone with cowpox and rub the pus from the sore into another person's arm. hence the word vaccination. It was definitely a different era than today's fears of alien manmade entities injected into people's bodies.

Woolman sailed off to England and soon after declining to be vaccinated, bearing a travel letter from someone in his Meeting. RantWoman paraphrases: "this beloved wearer of undyed clothes is a little touched in the head but please treat him kindly." During the trip, Woolman  fell ill with smallpox and died. Whether or not Woolman succeeded in spreading the Gospel, history does not record whether he was also a disease superspreader.

The message that arose in today's worship: maybe Woolman knew it was time to go.

As for Trumpling acolytes killing themselves off refusing vaccination, decency requires RantWoman to hold them in the Light. RantWoman also tartly notes that for all the Trump counties where Trump supporters are dying like flies, there are plenty of young not fully formed Trumplings. Whether or not the plague puts the Fear of God into the hearts of the young ones, some of them are probably going to need to be held in the Light for a long time.

RantWoman remembers going a different direction with the prompt but since RantWoman's direction has not so far made it into electrons, let us just leave this hanging.

Larissa Gil Sanhueza (offered) the following poem to guide our shared reflection!

Prompt for Reflection:

being the loudest on earth’s playground
doesn’t make us any more important than
the dirt we crush beneath our feet
we are nothing except air
and fire and water and soil
we are a people
who forget what we are made of
a people who talk about the weather
as if it’s mundane and not magic
as if the oceans
are not holy water
as if the sky
is not a vision
as if the animals
are not our siblings
as if nature is not god
and rain is not god’s tears
and we are not god’s children
as if god is not the earth itself

• Rupi Kaur