Bus Eldering 1,2,3

RantWoman's readers, considering the RantWoman slightly less interpersonal finesse than a Brillo pad demeanor, may be surprised that RantWoman manages to have friends. Perhaps it will come as no surprise that RantWoman, challenged as she is by many standards of humanness, also has friends who are challenged by some or another standard of civilization.


RantWoman's life is also filled with realities such as the city bus, a realm which might as well be another universe for many Friends. These Friends when presented with data from this universe may thus not even be equipped to detect exactly what about the data suggests need for eldering. Below are several items that finally crystalized in connection with the intersection of RantWoman's and another Friend's spiritual paths in the realm of public transit. This Friend being a particularly tough study, RantWoman tried several approaches.


RantWoman is humble about the limitations of her methods even for herself and the fragile tremulousness accompanying striving for gestures of faith in this environment. RantWoman is humble about the possibility that the RantWoman efforts at spiritual path are not going to work for Other Friend. RantWoman is meditating about the possibility that speaking too plainly of the issue is just recreating and re-energizing all the the downside points motivating RantWoman's massive spell of eldering. With all those disclaimers, RantWoman is going to plunge in anyway.


Rantwoman apologizes that the phrasing falls considerably short of a very gentle "keeping low" she has observed among many very centered Friends. RantWoman is TRYING for better Quakerese but definitely does not have it down yet. RantWoman also freely acknowledges that some of her amusement categories may be telling rather too much of the truth about people and circumstances where That of God may be difficult to detect and RantWoman strives to maintain strict spiritual discipline about holding all such in the Light. Frankly, sometimes one just has to work with the material one has.


Dear Friend of RantWoman

In an effort to deal with some of RantWoman's own psychic sludge, you and others in RantWoman's orbit have been selected to receive slight variations of the following comments and requests.


Every time RantWoman talks to you by phone or in person, you have bus grumbles. RantWoman urgently requires either less input, better narrative, or more blessings. By less input, RantWoman means only the most piquant, poignant, humorous, or earthshatteringly vexatious and with narrative to document your impressions. RantWoman knows you CAN do narrative and may or may not even demand a two-way narrative exchange.


RantWoman fears that a certain level ofaggravation may be necessary to remind one of one's spiritual path and calling. RantWoman can perfectly well understand why you might think you are overfulfilling plan in this area. RantWoman's spiritual path seems littered with such overfulfillment. But then who is RantWoman even to pretend to understand your path, let alone to evaluate your pathbased on her own experience?


Perhaps in offering less input and focussing on better narrative there might be openings to cover the various categories here. Other blessing that may be fair game:


--weirdest or most outrageous driver lapse


--best overheard cellphone call.


--top rated little known fact of politics, demography, medicine or all of the above.


--most entertaining example of spectacular familial or interpersonal dysfunction.

--most intriguing or inscrutable clash of cultures.

--In honor of the Dona S the Interpreting teacher school oflinguistic research, the best samples of new argot in any language one knows enough to catalog terms in.

--Best Rolling Anthropology Project moment, unspecified category.

Why pay the cable bill when you can get all this entertainment live for free?

If you have made it this far and not managed to think of some blessings of your own, maybe you can borrow thoughts from one of those earnest African American folks in RantWoman's 'hood who always says, when asked how they are, "blessed." Or maybe there is no hope, but perhaps you could still sit with the question of what this is teaching you.

In the Light.

RantWoman

=========
Dear Friend of RantWoman


In an effort to deal with some of RantWoman's own psychic sludge, several people in RantWoman's orbit are receiving slight variations of the following comments and requests.


Every time RantWoman talks to you, you have bus grumbles. RantWoman can faintly entertain the hypothesis that you are some kind of intergalactic nexus of bad bus karma or a malevolent global conspiracy against you specifically. RantWoman can entertain that hypothesis for maybe a nanosecond or two, but the Occam's razor thought would beg for a simpler explanation, say a vast wave of generalized vexation calling you to some as yet unspecified service: drivers not doing their jobs, shrubbery that needs to be trimmed, bad lines of sight for drivers at certain shelters....


In this universe, rather than a personal nexus of bad bus karma, perhaps the operative concept is calling to specific service. Metro like all bureaucracies is NOT going to figure these problems out telepathically out of thin air and it REALLY is RantWoman's experience that sometimes honest complaints get results, results that not only improve life for the complainer but SOMETIMES accidentally, willy nilly, unintentionally wind up benefitting other people too. RantWoman has previously encouraged you to report at least the highest highpoints of your disasters.


Perhaps you will draw encouragement from a heartwarming tale of RantWoman's big mouth working to positive effect:


http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/08/heartwarming-tale-of-successful.html



Please consider whether you also are being called to public service in the form of sharing your observations with Metro.

In the Light

RantWoman


==========

Dear Friend of RantWoman


Do YOU want to drive the bus?RantWoman is guessing that driving a bus is not really consonant with (...) , but if by chance you do want to drive the bus, RantWoman expects Metro is hiring drivers, part-time, two-year probationary, bottom of the route pick priority, (intemperate ranting deleted). Oops sorry. not helpful digression, but you get the idea.


See, aside from the fact that no one would letRantWoman drive the bus, RantWoman has NO desire to drive the bus. First there are the physical demands. Then there all the delightful but clueless, pickled, addled, sour, hostile attitudinal bus-riding masses, excepting of course thee and me, both of whom are perfect delights to deal with at all times (Not!)

RantWoman is extremely, extremely grateful that buses get driven and she can get around. Some of the bus drivers are kind wonderful helpful souls plugged into the zeitgeist and able always to evoke a sense of community. Some of the drivers are works in progress, overwhelmed, stressed out,struggling in the face of humanity. Some of them are real jerks. RantWoman HAS to hold all of them in the Light. It's not really that RantWoman is wonder Quaker. It's more like RantWoman is not a Quaker because of being any good at this peace and love stuff, RantWoman is a Quaker because she needs all the help she can get and holding things in the Light seems to help. Have you considered trying it?


OR you could

--Filter the vast Metro conspiracy in comparison with your wackiest public transit experiences beyond our borders.


OR

--Try reading the public transit items in Peggy Parsons' So there Iwas in Africa book.


OR

--Meet (another Bus Grumbler in Rantwoman's life). Pick a route where the smaller browner people have mastered the practice of occupying three seats as a survival skill among the larger and paler they ride with. Mix in some mobility aids and shopping carts, a few mysteriously overstffed garbage bags, miscellaneous questionable animals and small children in the disabled area of the bus and hang out and have a peevish white people resentment contest all the way downtown. If you say your prayers and floss regularly MAYBE you will be permitted to get on a stop or two before a couple spots almost guaranteed to have extra vexations (including voardings by RantWoman and her many colorful neighbors). Or you could return to one of RantWoman's other items and try something from there.

In the Light.

RantWoman

========

Dear Friend of RantWoman


A couple more items:


--Thank you for invitation to Quaker accompaniment for your moments of bus karma. Honestly the RantWoman reserves of Quaker accompaniment are a little thin due for example to a couple underpublicized bouts of hanging with a family member in ICU over past few years. Also, it keeps occurring to RantWoman that your bus karma moments may somehow be intended for your particular path to spiritual perfection, that you have been gifted with capacity to cope, and that in any case maybe you just get to be grateful to be basically ambulatory and as far as RantWoman knows so far to have evaded personal experience as patient in ICU. In any case, RantWoman has to pass on personal presence, but will try to think some kind of well-humored thoughts in your direction and again ask you to consider whether you are called for the good of ourselves and others to speak as plainly and hopefully incisively as led to Metro.

--RantWoman's individual bus karma theme is the route with the most service hours, the most passenger miles, the most security incidents, the most cultural diversity. Because this route leads in so many happiness indicators, this route is likely also at the bottom of the lists of routes any driver with the seniority to avoid the route will pick during their thrice yearly bus route shakeups. Thus it tends to be staffed by the newest least experienced bus drivers in the entire organization. RantWoman's reward for holding each of them resolutely in the Light HAS to be some pool of pardons and peaceable atonement for personal screwups while learning RantWoman's way around something new.

RantWoman needs to apologize for several inappropriate elements of recent emails. Just about the minute RantWoman sent email about messages finding right messenger RantWoman received EXTREMELY topical and helpful phone call. RantWoman tries to expect better of herself on several grounds and needs to apologize on that basis.

In the Light.
RantWoman

Three Offerings

RantWoman has her usual multi-layered stewpot of contentious and challenging issues on her mind. She proposes maybe to get to some of them slant, by writing more of Three Offerings in the Baptist church of her youth. For those challenged by RantWoman's style, this item likely will have three elements, the simple story of RantWoman's experience interspersed with some of the nebulous and all-encompassing ranting RantWoman excels at, and some links to current reading about money.

The Three Offerings were:

--the usual weekly offering
Quakers do that too, though as RantWoman has previously written, at RantWoman's meeting, we are coy about it.

--A special offering to support retired ministers
RantWoman could relate to this since RantGrandfather was in fact a retired Presbyterian minister and also because there were a couple powerful and colorful retired female missionaries in the congregation . Contemporary Quakers, having done away with hireling ministers would likely skip this collection and thus leave some Friends with lifelong and not heavily remunerated service to fend for themselves or to struggle with the overload of multiple part-time or intermittent jobs along with a lot of other people in our individualistic current economy. RantWoman notes further the problem of a great deal of worthwhile work needing to get done with no money to fund it and radio commentators wringing their hands about the need for jobs, jobs, jobs no matter how stultifying and dehumanized but this still does not add up to any kind of fund for retirees.

--The annual Church World Service offering near Halloween for UNICEF.
RantWoman thinks there might be some Friends Meetings who participate in this, but hers does not. As long as RantWoman is horrifying Friends in her Meeting with her tolerance for being asked for money even though she herself frequently feels pinched, RantWoman notes that she always really, really liked this offering because it made her feel so connected to children all over the world. Well, RantWoman did not care for the little assemble-yourself boxes children were supposed to take home and fill with contributions but RantWoman really, really liked this offering. Maybe RantWoman's affection for the symbolic connection to children all over the world was another of RantWoman's Quaker-in-Training moments.

RantWoman feels a parallel rant about use of time and sharing work and gifts among our whole community. RantWoman feels this rant coming on hard and strong and loud enough that it needs its own posting and it's hot enough out that for now maybe RantWoman should chill out and season it longer.

Meanwhile, other recent blog posts that speak to themes monetary.

About the work of sitting with what comes when Friends must ask our communities for different kinds of presence and accompaniment. Well RantWoman is paraphrasing but the entry is definitely topical to several conversations RantWoman is having.
http://gemjourneytopeace.blogspot.com/2010/08/fiscal-equality.html

RantWoman especially notes the section of this entry talking about how adoptive parents of different classes respond when their adopted children turn out to be less than the bundles of joy they hoped for:
http://tapeflags.blogspot.com/2010/08/there-oughta-be-lemon-law-more-about.html

Sensible Auntie shows up at Business Meeting

Let's face it: parenting is hard work. The kids mysteriously show up whether or not the parents are equipped for duty. Many many parents manage to get equipped as they go along. A lot of the ones who struggle in this area need Sensible Auntie.



Sensible Auntie is the sort of vigilant and occasionally forceful presence who can grit her teeth, swallow her tongue as parents repeatedly blunder impervious to alternative worldviews. Sensible Auntie is there for children. She is also there for the rest of civilization.


Sensible Auntie showed up in several forms in RantWoman's childhood. RantWoman had pretty uptight controlling Presbyterian parents and Sensible Auntie would many times in various ways say to RantWoman's parents, "Relax, they're just children. It will be okay." Sensible Auntie used to show up at the Baptist church of RantWoman's youth. Sensible Auntie understood with perfect clarity why a young RantWoman might see her age group peers as dreadful little snots or other unQuakerly terms. More to the point, even if the dreadful little snots had had any redeeming qualities detectable at the time to RantWoman, Sensible Auntie would still have been more interesting to talk to.


Sensible Auntie showed up at a RantFamily event a few years ago. RantNephew was having a really spectuclar fit because his grandma had moved to town and started telling him "No." RantWoman exaggerates about the dysfunction, but RantNephew was throwing a fit, throwing chairs. He picked up his kid rocker and his mother caught it before it got airborne. Then the tyke tried for one of the dining room chairs. RantWomans arm came down, boom. on the back of the chair: "all four legs of the chair have to stay on the floor." "Mommy," the tyke wailed, "make her give it to me." Um, NO!

Yesterday Sensible Auntie showed up in Business Meeting in connection with some "spirited children." RantWoman has no idea what if anything will get written in the minutes. Sensible Auntie was thinking but did not say, "look, I am legally blind and built like a linebacker. Your "spirited children" and I could do each other serious damage without even meaning to and we both need help from our community to cut the odds of that happening way down! We will either interact on that basis from the outset or I WILL act as necessary in specific moments. RantWoman is, however, humbled to be Sensible Auntie in such different terms than she needed as a child.

Did Someone say SEXISM?

RantWoman is thrilled and blessed (!?!?!) While the Epistle of the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference makes vague reference to sexism among Friends, RantWoman was having trouble coming up with instances that would be fit for public conversation. By fit for public conversation, RantWoman means public and not laden with content that might tread hard on very personalized nerves.

RantWoman finally has in mind a concrete item of sexism she can foam at the mouth about: a few years ago, the Nominating committee in RantWoman's meeting created a Worship and Ministry committee comprised of six men and NO women. RantWoman remembers seeing the proposed roster and wondering about discernment connected with this.

RantWoman does not remember whether that was one of the years she herself expressed interest in service on said committee or whether that was one of the years when a great deal of RantWoman's physical and mental energy was devoted to activities such as deciding which of several possible eye problems, allergies, and general conniptions was responsible for different kinds of pain in her face. The point is that RantWoman did not at the time voice any objections even though doing so would have been entirely appropriate. This week in connection with again turning over rocks related to a certain compost melodrama, RantWoman slammed into the anoying realization that no one else objected either!

RantWoman remembers having a conversation about gender imbalance on this committee with one of the members of the committee, (Guess which one!) to the effect that the members of the committee thought this gender imbalance was JUST FINE. RantWoman vehemently objected: RantWoman thought it might be fine for, say, one year, but that men and women just communicate too differently and approach problems too differently for this to be reasonable longer than that. The next year, perhaps one woman got added and there have been other increments since so that gender balance is now much better.

RantWoman has not attempted systematic onversation with those on the committee at the time. Part of the reason RantWoman has not attempted systematic conversation is the short snippets of conversation touching on the topic suggest it has never occurred to several of the committee members that they might be missing something, what they might be missing, or that what they are missing might be important.

In fact RantWoman had the kinds of conversations with more than one Friend that made her feel elbowed aside, dismissed as unimportant. RantWoman at the time was in great need of spiritual communion of the educational sort she was having trouble providing herself because of all the changes in her vision. RantWoman was also feeling profoundly grateful for community, imperfect as it was, but as as RantWoman has written elsewhere , RantWoman was not feeling very well-nourished spiritually . To make matters worse, even though the act of being present with difficulties and spiritual needs can bring gifts to whole communities, people in such moments of travail sometimes are too overwhelmed to articulate requests for help.

(To RantWoman's great relief, in the course of conversations over the last year, Nominating Committee got the point of RantWoman's concern and gender balance is now specifically mentioned as desirable in the composition of Worship and Ministry!)

RantWoman is going to spare her readers some foaming about the mouth about what in retrospect seems like misogynist bilge related to communications style during some conversations over the past year with one Friend (Guess which one.) RantWoman is also doing the best she can simply to note that said Friend appears much better able to have two-way conversations with some categories of people (guess which) than others. RantWoman would REALLY like not to have to filter a lot with all this in mind; RantWoman is still a work in progress on the "spirit of love and Truth" front.

God, are you out of your mind?

RantWoman reminds her readers of her past as a literature major. RantWoman was actually not that great a scholar of literary forms and literary criticism tends to make her snore or sometimes snort, but this past often seems to affect how RantWoman tells stories.


Then there is the matter of Russian literature in particular where all the characters get called by multiple names and pseudonyms and variants of same. RantWoman also seems to live in an interesting mental muddle where she attends to different aspects of many events in small bites over time with Spirit overseeing gaps of unpredictable length between. Plus RantWoman has read a lot of Latin American works where the timelines jump around unpredictably. Perhaps these points will help readers orient themselves.


This week RantWoman's conversations with God have been going something like this:

"We are called to be faithful, not necessarily successful...."


"God does not call the equipped; he equips the called."

God, are you sure? Really? Is that what you mean?

"...walk with me, mentor elder, friend...."

God, are you out of your ever-loving mind?

"You may only elder someone if you like them?" Uhhhhh, can I please just start about answering that of God within. If we're really, really lucky, maybe RantWoman the really, really bad Buddhist will come up with a spell of Buddhism, sit with the problem and probe what the situation is trying to teach us.

"God accepts us....already good enough for God."

RantWoman is going to be a sort of "show your work" Quaker here. RantWoman is doing this to spell out movements of Spirit in surprising lurches and muddling. Please bear with some details and excursions. Also, this item is part of the reason RantWoman's brain is still not back from NPYM Annual Session in Missoula. RantWoman's body has been back for several weeks, but her mind is still somewhere in transit.

RantWoman was not being a well-adjusted blind person at Annual Session. Despite a lifetime of visual ups and downs, every new phase is one dang trial and error experiment after another and predictably not always a happy one. RantWoman does not always know what help she needs until she tries or fails to try something and has to try something else. RantWoman also was not faking it nearly as well as in the past.

RantWoman was having particular problems planning ahead enough to ask someone the location of things like the interest groups she signed up for or wanted to attend. This meant the first day of interest groups, RantWoman held ad-hoc interest group for sitting on couches and upholding the work of people in important Yearly Meeting roles such as Annual Session Recording Clerk, Clerk of NPYM IT committee, and member of NPYM Ministry and Oversight.

In this form of service, RantWoman starts by not doing anything beyond seating herself on a couch or bench and being available to whoever comes by. This can be a dangerous ministry in that it has a time or two in the past attracted opportunities and offers of responsibility. RantWoman really cannot see out of the fog well enough to initiate any contact herself RantWoman will say Hi to whoever speaks to her while RantWoman appears to be staring trying to pick enough features out of the visual fog to identify people she might indeed want to initiate contact with.

RantWoman was blessed by the people who found her. RantWoman does not in the least regret missing Interest Groups the first day and actually was grateful to be able to fill this role. However, the second day of Interest Groups, RantWoman was determined to actually go to an Interest Group but RantWoman was still being obtuse about needing to be proactive to get the info she needed. RantWoman was debating between Broken and Tender with Marge Abbott, Integrity with the committee revising Faith and Practice, and Conflict and Eldering with a certain problematic mentor figure.


Looking back, RantWoman is considering whether she just wnet straight to Broken and Tender without even reading the book. Before RantWoman gets to that point, she should at least indulge in a good rant about all the reasons reading is hard, there are not enough of the new books people she knows are publishing available in accessible formats, and related whines. One thing at a time.


RantWoman had already had two different conversations with Friends about conflict in their Meetings. RantWoman had conversation with two someones else interested in seeing how things went. Off we all trooped to the location of guess what topic, unencumbered by information about where the other two interest groups RantWoman was considering would be taking place.

By the time this gets published, RantWoman will have survived one last gosh-dang round of minutes related to a certain nomination. Honestly, nerves are still kind of raw and some threads of conversation either very taut or not connected at all about RantWoman's leading that she needed permission from NO ONE, including the workshop leader, to have leadings about service on a certain committee in her home Meeting.



In light of this, RantWoman freely admits that attending this workshop COULD be considered kind of stalkerish. RantWoman was also vexed when one of the Friends she came with wound up not being able to stay because of an ADA issue. Seating was such and Friends had arrived such that it was going to be difficult both for RantWoman to get out of the room and to go find another interest group without being late and really obtrusive in arriving. RantWoman took a deep breath, decided to uphold the people she had already talked with, decided to center on ways for things to be okay, and opted to stay where she was.

Problematic Mentor Figure is in fact frequently a good teacher about the topic and the intro go-around revealed many Friends with conflicts on their minds. RantWoman is the sort of presumptious student who might expect, despite no topical teaching experience, to express at least curiosity about combining two topics, both of which seem large in one short Interest Group. The Interest Group was proceeding; RantWoman mostly was fine with review from her March orgy of conflict resolution trainings and she was thinking about problems in her life outside Meeting. Then there were various instructional and conversational hiccups which RantWoman has since tried with limited success to probe with the Interest Group Leader.

But never mind. Here is where the mental hiccups led. RantWoman had also been thinking about matters on her blog, including the challenge of how to write of Friend Who Brings Odd Teas and Likes to Help in the Kitchen. The conversational hiccup at the Interest Group prodded RantWoman into a whole bunch of observations.

First, RantWoman wrote a blog entry but to date has never actually talked to any humans about how badly it freaks RantWoman out on safety grounds to try to work with people in her Meeting's kitchen. RantWoman had already made the decision, despite a certain affection for the Ministry of Moving Large Muscles and Banging Things, that RantWoman would limit her presence in her Meeting's kitchen on safety grounds. RantWoman is unclear why the conflict resolution workshop led RantWoman to the firm thought that she at least might have complained about this issue when Nominating Committee tried haltingly once again to sell RantWoman on this sphere of activity but did grab hold of the reminder that, really, RantWoman SHOULD try to speak more freely of all her evolving experiments with her new realities.

One of the events which caused RantWoman to realize she needed a different ministry involved two different Friends, hot liquids, performance anxiety due to the presence of Relatives of a Deceased, and a loud, stress-inducing and confrontation between said two Friends. RantWoman has since learned that the phrase hidden disability was applicable on both sides; RantWoman was also unsettled during the Conflict Resolution Interest group to realized that, half-blind fog and all, at the moment of the kitchen events, she was the closest thing available to a functioning adult.

RantWoman is pretty sure this excursion was not really where Interest Group Leader thought he was going, likely partly for tender reasons of his own. In fact, he dismissively used the word "tangent" in an email exchange about the conversational hiccup and RantWoman's key takeaways from the Interest Group. RantWoman for her part also felt the conversational hiccup was getting near territory too tender to be scraped over in public and is going to have to file that theme on her "be tender and proactive in the future" list.

Back to RantWoman's self-inflicted orgy of conflict resolution classes in March. RantWoman hereby offers an account of all the irritations she got fed. http://rantwoman.blogspot.com/2010/03/conflict-and-irritation-without.html . Both series presentations did well about ways to Irritate RantWoman, but the evening the class covered de-escalation was especially bumpy. RantWoman's point: although she has had technical customer service jobs where she has had to de-escalate all kinds of things, a whole bunch of circumstances got in the way of absorbing the de-escalation material in March,

Add the kitchen episode starring two Friends, neither of whom could de-escalate the situation at the moment of the incident. There were hot liquids. There was screaming. RantWoman has no idea what happened, and the fact that one party stomped out of the room in a fit was actually fine, way better than any words at that point and one really direct way to reduce conflictive behavior and increase safety.

Again, RantWoman in retrospect is not ecstatic to realize that, freaked out as she already was on safety grounds, she was also the closest thing available at that moment to a responsible adult. RantWoman had subsequent conversations with half of the screaming encounter. RantWoman learned that this Friend's reaction was probably not voluntary, was in fact out of this Friend's immediate control. RantWoman also learned that said Friend has had previous unpleasant encounters with Friend Who Brings Odd Teas and expects Friend Who Brings Odd Teas to remember and to be able to avoid future difficulties.

RantWoman knows Friend Who Brings Odd Teas in a context outside Meeting. This means for instance that RantWoman knows some of Friend who Brings Teas' immediate neighbors and knows that these people can be even more of a challenge than Friend who Brings Odd Teas. The conversational hiccup in the workshop at Annual Session led RantWoman to an awkward realization: Friend who Brings Odd Teas cannot even avoid unpleasant encounters with some of her difficult neighbors who are difficult all the time. It is completely unrealistic to expect her to be able to remember to avoid unpleasant encounters with someone such as the other Friend who is only, to be frank, unhinged very intermittently. Here we get to the "equips the called..." piece: Presto, RantWoman is equipped with experience and words that do not need more specificity in a blog. RantWoman would so like it if all this equipment would just go call on someone else.

Friend Who Brings Odd Teas attended the same series of conflict resolution workshops as RantWoman, the ones written about in the link above. RantWoman knows from speaking to Friend who brings Teas that she absorbed about the same percentage of the conflict resolution class as she does of educational events at Meeting, which is to say not a lot and she has a really good excuse. Unfortunately, the really good excuse is not really a lot of fun for anyone.

In the Annual Session interest group, RantWoman realized that if she waited until she really liked Friend Who Brings Odd Teas to talk again about things causing Friend Who Brings Odd Teas difficulties, nothing was going to happen. RantWoman also realized that the other half of the difficult encounter probably can be relied on fitfully. To make matters worse, RantWoman has no confidence that she will be able to impart any more information to Friend who Brings Odd Teas than ever, but the "God, are you out of your ever-loving mind" part of the workshop is that RantWoman has to try. Not only does RantWoman have to try, RantWoman in general is going to have to put out her own needs and issuess more unrelentingly. This sounds TIRESOME to RantWoman, but there appears to be no choice.

Along comes a certain theme, "walk with me...." ALL RantWoman can do is walk with Friend Who Brings Odd teas and see whether more helpful words or review of the exercises we attended together will suggest themselves.

RantWoman is also assembling some other data she is not only not happy about but praying ardently to have Held tenderly, Walk with Me, and not just glossed over but that is another whole topic, one for more seasoning.

Silent Vigil for Disarmament

Monday night RantWoman attended something at her Meeting. Those arriving were greeted by a substantial pile of dirt suggesting some kind of pipe had needed to be dug up. One mother of a 2 1/2-year-old looked at the pile and said "What happened and how come no one invited my son?"

Today, the pile of dirt had been replaced by two small barrels with an A-board between them and no humans in attendance. Painted on the A-board: "Silent Vigil for Disarmament."

RantWoman learned that a pipe had indeed needed to be dug up and that a section of the sidewalk had gotten damaged in the process of restoring the dirt to the point of being a trip and fall hazard. RantWoman wishes all barriers over trip and fall hazards were this eloquent.

Money on My Mind

RantWoman recently promised her readers a good rant about asking for money on a larger scale than individual ministries , specifically money to support the ministries of the average Quaker Meeting. RantWoman reminds readers that the views here are RantWoman's alone and are subject to all the buffering of shared discernment, movements of Spirit, sunspots,...


RantWoman proposes to open discussion with a query thrown out to the Quaker universe: RantWoman assumes most Meetings have financial needs, as well as leadings about stewardship of resources and desires for activities that deepen the spiritual life of the community as well as keep the lights on, the floors clean, the plumbing and roof in good repair: How does your Meeting ask for Money?

Do you ask out loud every week at the end of worship?

Do you place periodic announcements in your bulletin?

Do you send out extremely humble letters full of very, very earnest solicitations written by Finance Committee?

Do you ask Friends to remember you in their wills? It's not that one wants to imply any hurry to be done with anyone, but well, Quakers can't take it with either and those remaining might be glad to assist in disposition. RantWoman includes this query because of an offhand accidental conversation this summer, not because the issue is currently alive in discussion at her Meeting.

Do needed resources just spontaneously flow your direction with orders of magnitude more magical coherence and obvious guidance by Spirit than, say, a typical popcorn Meeting for Worship? (If your Meeting is afflicted with this problem, RantWoman can easily forgive your reticense in sharing the news lest you be beset by Friends beating down your door to learn your secret.)

Do you have a sense of the range of attitudes about and experiences with money or with movements of the Spirit about money among Friends in your Meeting?

Are you satisfied with your Meeting's financial stewardship both in terms of vibrant community in current terms and in terms of concepts like reserves, maintenance, and capital projects?

RantWoman must speak first of her own twitches:

--RantWoman tends to think that cultivating a healthy vibrant community rich in spiritual life is a good way to cultivate financial health as well. However, in RantWoman's experience, financial health does not just occur automatically; it also must be cultivated.

--Rantwoman contributes to her Meeting out of a great sense that her contributions come back to her many times over in terms of fellowship, community and many, many other movements of the Spirit.

--RantWoman was raised with the thought that money or other resources are not entirely ours in the first place, that at the core they belong to God and that shares regularly should be returned to God's work. Absent parallel thought to good stewardship, RantWoman thinks on some level this thought can lead to peculiar ways of interacting with financial realities. For example, RantWoman has at many points in her life not made the wisest financial decisions. RantWoman has also been through some scary financial moments, but RantWoman has never wanted for many, many basic needs that others struggle a great deal more for. Part of RantWoman's thoughts about giving are motivated by this experience of being so deeply held in spite of many, many blunderings and failings in this realm on her part--and RantWoman here will not even go near venality, greed, and other moral chasms on the part of others.

--In RantWoman's youthful life as a Baptist, there were a couple occasions a year where there were THREE different offerings taken in a single service, and usually at the beginning of every month, there would be a second offering with communion. RantWoman thinks shared offerings could be no less a form of Quaker commuion than silent worship, but RantWoman gets looks of horror that even she can detect when she recounts her Baptist experience to Friends in our Meeting. RantWoman points out that every other house of worship in the city pleads for money so what is wrong with us doing so? Other Friends immediately respond along the lines of "but we're not every other house of worship!" Tell that to the gas company and the electrical utility and the people who take care of the roof.

--RantWoman finds herself continually called to frank dialogue both about dysfunctional financial decisionmaking on a personal level and grander systemic questions about how resources get allocated and how they embody one's beliefs. Unfortunately even in RantWoman's own head some of these dialogues are too contentious for sensible presentation in blog entries and RantWoman is a work in progress in this area.

--RantWoman recognizes that there are many opportunities for Friends to feel guilty for not doing "more" for Meeting. RantWoman sincerely hopes that thoughts of giving as one is able are joy, not a burden and wants a spiritual community where that is the case. RantWoman also humbly and happily reminds Friends that money can enable one's community to do something that one Friend might not be able to get done by him or herself.

--In recent years, RantWoman's income has dropped by a bigger percentage than her reduction in the amount donated. Rantwoman remembers an exercise long ago where Finance committee was asked to tabulate the amounts contributed annually by household. This turned out to be one of those tasks that is easy to specify but took thinking to accomplish. RantWoman at that point had a good job but she had age peers who she expected might have greater incomes. When Finance committee produced a nice chart with annual totals in a nice bar graph based on otals in percentile bars, RantWoman was surprised to discover that her annual contribution amount put her in the second quintile from the top. To say the least, all of this causes RantWoman to think Friends could ask more of ourselves.

--Even RantWoman does not tithe. More to the point, whatever percentage of her income RantWoman allocates to the work of God as she understands it, not all of her donations by a long shot go to Quakers. Why? Because there are huge matters of inclusion and social transformation where Quakers are some among many, because there are many issues needing attention where Quakers have never even shown up to go AWOL from.

Turning, now to Meeting:
In RantWoman's Meeting, current practice is two letters a year from Finance Committee and weekly requests by whoever closes Meeting. People sign up or are recruited to close Meeting and the request for contributions / announcement about how to accomplish them is part of the checklist / script given to the person who closes Meeting.


There seem to be a number of problems about this approach:

--There is some sense that people do not care about too many announcements, introductions, or exhortations to sign the guest book after worship; they just want to get out of worship and go have fellowship, coffee, and refreshments.

--We do not know how much money comes in on Sundays, how much comes in by mail and some other details it might be helpful to use to measure the impact of changes in current practices. These questions would also be a tabulation task for Finance Committee to answer.

--Results as far as message delivered are uneven and to RantWoman's great irritation far too frequently include the phrase "we don't pass the hat," as if passing the hat to support something one believes in ardently were some kind of shameful activity.

--Possibly because of the wording of the script we offer people closing Meeting, sometimes the impression is conveyed either that the only way Friends contribute to the life and community of Meeting is by making a contribution or that one must contribute to be a part of the community. RantWoman always tries for an announcement along one of these lines:

Everyone here contributes to the life and spiritual depth of our community. If you also feel led to contribute to our financial needs, we enthusiastically welcome / gratefully receive contributions....

We gratefully receive financial contributions to the life and maintenance needs of our community.
However, we are a little coy about opportunities to contribute; we accept... through a slot in our office door...

Others' efforts are a lot more uneven and the thought has arisen that requests could simply be made in the weekly bulletin with wording seasoned to convey our desired points.


RantWoman simply advises, give for the Joy of it and don't be ashamed to ask others to do so as well.

RantWoman is aware of the "Give until it hurts" school of hectoring about financial matters. RantWoman would probably still be glad to accept money offered under such circumstances but might be called to inquire, in the event that doing anything until it hurts brings you joy, whether you need more than a house of worship can provide, perhaps, say,something from some of those funky ads in the back of the alternative newsweekly of your choice.

Now if RantWoman's Meeting can figure out how exactly we DO want to ask people to give.