Worship beyond words

RantWoman quite likes this item for its thoughts on silent worship and worship beyond words.

http://theredelectric.blogspot.com/2010/11/radical-inclusion.html

RantWoman quite likes the item and RantWoman thinkings worship beyond words is not necessarily automatically the best way to help people talk about things we really need to talk about. Rats!

Those Quaker Chocolate People

RantWoman is filing this book review about the Cadbury chocolate empire just so she can find it again.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2010/10/the-quaker-capitalist-and-the-chocolate-factory.html

RantWoman would not mind if this post also over time attracted other materials about economics as if everyone matters.

Reading is SUCH a pain for RantWoman and RantWoman's mean-to-read list is perpetually overflowing. What RantWoman REALLY hopes will happen is that one of her various Quaker book-digestion services and provide RantWoman the high points, perhaps in exchange for a meal chez RantWoman or some other gesture of appreciation.

Happy Veterans Day!

The readers Digest version: RantWoman HATES all those automated ways for one's social networking activities to generate messages about newborn baby animals needing to be fed and chunks of buried treasure needing tending. RantWoman HATES these things with a purple passion--EXCEPT when they come from Youngest Cousin. In Youngest Cousin's case such missives indicate that Youngest Cousin is alive and well enough to cause social networking applications to emit automated email. This would not automatically be assumed without these heartwarming and thoroughly aggravating reminders!

RantWoman apologizes for not getting her act together in time to post this on a more appropriate date. In any case, Youngest Cousin is not technically a veteran yet. She is presumably off in harm's way somewhere in parts likely not chatted of via social networking. Well, RantWoman might know more of what is going on if she actually interacted with social networking, but let us start with what we have.

RantWoman feels her heart skip a beat every time she visits Youngest Cousin's social networking page. Youngest Cousin's picture shows her in uniform, looking proud and erect. Her face looks so much like her father and our grandmother and a much younger RantMom that RantWoman's heart almost skips a beat every time she looks.

RantWoman wants both to express heartfelt best wishes for Youngest Cousin's safety, as well as that of Youngest Cousin's husband and stepdaughter, and to deal with RantWoman's own blistering views of whichever zone of harm's way Youngest Cousin has been deployed into. RantWoman really does not know any other way to do both than to celebrate electronic aggravation!

Advent

RantWoman heartily applauds this treatment of Advent. RantWoman particularly appreciates that a meditation about the peculiarities of Quaker traditions with respect to anything that might hint of a liturgical calendar appears now, before the red and green sugar and ktischy jingle bells supplant orange and brown sugar and the plastic witches and goblins on RantWomans rant prop list



http://born-to-eat-toast.blogspot.com/2010/10/advent-in-manner-of-friends-quakers.html


RantWoman dawdled about posting this and red and green sugar are all about. RantWoman is feeling she is supposed to be grateful for nearly unending caloric excess in this season. RantWoman thinks, in light of certain pickup events this year, that she is supposed to be especially RantMom's presence among us. RantWoman IS deeply grateful for both and would absolutely love to be grateful for RantMom even without caloric excess and without, at every familial round of caloric excess having to plan the next of the birthday / holiday / more birthdays / more holidays circuit. Right now RantWoman is praying for the right words about this!

Shameless Holiday Promo: Friends House Moscow

RantWoman is a Friend by convincement. Among other things that means that RantWoman definitely interacts with Christmas seasonal fluff more than some steeped longer in historical Quaker austerity. RantWoman for instance sincerely celebrates the fact that she has not observed any red and green sugar until after Halloween. RantWoman's holiday shopping plans are pretty spare. However, in case anyone RantWoman knows needs festive greeting cards to mark the season, RantWOman recommends a peek over to http://friendshousemoscow.org/ for their holiday card selection

Micah Bales on Ministers, Elders, Overseers

RantWoman is storing this partly for its links to statements from several Yearly Meetings and partly for the depth with which concepts are articulated.

http://lambswar.blogspot.com/2010/11/missional-quaker-faith-visionary.html

RantWoman is meditating about how to re-articulate the meat of these concepts in ways that speak both to their historical Biblical roots and to the spectrum of terms people in RantWoman's Monthly Meeting and Yearly Meeting use about movements of spirit and the work of ministry in their lives.

DEATH...well-planned?

Look world, RantWoman is definitely a Quaker in progress. RantWoman is already well peeved in advance, which may or may not be the first reaction one would expect to a workshop on Death and Dying. Originally this was billed as an event on grief. RantWoman does not have a negative opinion about the expansion. She DOES have an opinion about an omission:


"DEATH AND DYING", NOV 20
This special workshop on Death and Dying": Caring for Ourselves and our Loved Ones When They Die is an opportunity for in-depth consideration of the effect of others deaths on our lives. Held
November 20, 12 noon – 4pm.

Every few years University Friends have gathered for a work-shop on concerns about Death & Dying. Our Faith & Practice re-minds us: "Death often faces us with the most difficult of questions. Although life instinctively avoids death, death is not the opposite of life; it is essential to the ongoing, changing nature of life." Again this year we will gather, on Saturday 11/20, to worship and share as well as to look at several topics that arise when a family member or loved one ages or has a life-threatening disease. Please join us for a lunch at noon (brown-bag or potluck), leading into focus groups on Caring for Aging or Ill Loved Ones, Forming a Care Committee, Making End-of-Life Decisions [Wills & Health Directives], Caring for the Caregivers, Letting Go, Hospice, and Grief and Time for Mourning.

Adult Religious Education Committee request you sign up on the table outside the Office, or call xxxx to ask him to add your name.

RantWoman tried THREE TIMES (enough said?) in response to specific public invitation for input to have a conversation with the clerk of Adult Religious Education about anniversaries and unexpected circumstances and space in the workshop for such. RantWoman would characterize the best of these conversations as dismissive!

RantWoman has stumbled onto a recurring theme: a thought in passing as she writes: if this Friend had asked RantWoman her opinion, RantWoman MIGHT tell him to give himself space for still actively grieving what RantWoman thinks must have been a very difficult person and MAYBE supplying more than one name in case someone were uncomfortable with a specific name and a sensitive topic.

RantWoman has in fact had the unexpected circumstances conversations on topical timelines every year for several years running with the very same Friend though they seem not to have registered. That would be another reason to advocate better self-care in the form of MAYBE letting God and one's community carry part of the matter.

By unexpected circumstances RantWoman means things like

a bicycle accident

or

a bus accident

or another Seattle bus accident that RantWoman pretty much cannot avoid regular opportunities to think about

or a bus accident and another Seattle bus accident ... that both fall on the same late November date significant to RantWoman for another reason

or things like suicide, violent crime, stillbirth, miscarriage....

Based on the non-conversations and the omissions, RantWoman is meditating about who she might call to disabuse herself of not very high expectations about the workshop for any circumstance but the well-planned march of aging. RantWoman expects God will show up regardless. God is not the problem. RantWoman is debating whether she will be led to attend. RantWoman admits a certain morbid fascination about another topic but RantWoman needs to discern whether morbid and centered are going to be incompatible in this situation.

And speaking of not planning to die, RantWoman again calls to mind the accidental inquiry from the summer
Do we ask Friends to remember our Meeting in their wills?

Okay, RantWoman admits another morbid tinge to the inquiry right above. Recently RantWoman spent a couple days hanging with RantMom after a RantMom vs Pickup encounter. RantMom was singularly unamused by a distinctlhy ill-timed call the day after her accident from her college alumni association inquiring whether RantMom was interested in a legacy donation. Uh, NOT TODAY!