Friday Worship Sharing

 

Friday: 

220 - Love Grows One by One

Love grows one by one, 
Two by two and four by four 
Love grows round like a circle 
And comes back a knocking at your front door. 

 

 

What is your experience of loneliness? 

 

How do you remove barriers and make room for others in your Meeting/Worship Group? How do you practice spiritual hospitality, welcoming other people's experiences of God?

 

What roles do solitude and community play in your spiritual life?

 

These comments get indirectly to responses to the above queries. Please trust RantWoman on this.

RantWoman thinks Friday was the day RantWoman stumbled around campus to find the Campus Center and attempt to buy a new toothbrush. There was no toothbrush to be had at the market, but RantWoman wound up getting some more artificial tears which she wound up not needing before getting home to her full supply. RantWoman also wound up later finding her toothbrush; it had wandered to a corner of her suitcase. 

Apparently RantWoman also needed the cashew butter bar that she ate for breakfast after one too-short night. Food was plentiful in the cafeteria, but the cashew bar settled something that was just nervous.

IN any case, besides the walk and the visit to some kind of botanical garden near the campus center, RantWoman spent some time just sitting with all the reasons, which RantWoman has written about elsewhere, why going to Missoula is a little fraught for her personally. RantWoman writes of it here partly because probably speaking of it aloud at the length RantWoman would want to give it would be too much for the whole group and because sometimes words just do not make it out of RantWoman's mouth as easily as they do when a keyboard is involved.

RantWoman thinks Friday was also the time RantWoman devoted to a major vexation from the previous night's plenary worship sharing about people's fears and dreams. RantWoman missed two evening plenaries because of work related Zoom obligations. The third night, RantWoman got to one plenary late because of her own eccentric lack of precise attention to the schedule.

At the fears and dreams plenary, one Friend's comments stuck hard in RantWoman's soul, in a way that RantWoman really did not know what to do with, to sit on or to go talk to one of the listeners. The comment which sent RantWoman spinning was about feeling like the work of Annual Session seemed like a hospice attention. Apparently there was a diversity of views that night about whether Yerly Meeting is dying or thriving, and the hospice comment leaned in the direction of dying. 

RantWoman's first reaction was "Owwww! NO! WHAT are you talking about?" RantWoman had a really fun roommate who like RantWoman was well into the age range that some might write off as no longer thriving and it was such joy to discover someone new just bursting with energy and questions. 

Even though the hospice comment fried RantWoman's brain, RantWoman wound up NOT speaking to a member of the Care committee. RantWoman decided the evening was Worship SHARING and it was RantWoman's job just to sit with the ministry and tend to the themes she was already tending to anyway. But the "What ARE you talking about?" still lingers along with the hope that the Friend who made the comment realizes that all the work she does of planning REALLY does pay off for others.