Kids these days

This post from Nancy Thomas about Friends and Orthodox tradition in Russia beautifully illustrates the weight of spiritual elders:

http://nancyjthomas.blogspot.com/2012/06/quakers-in-context-russia.html




On the other hand, RantWoman never tires of good youthful tantrums:

Manifesto of the Mennonite Anti-Mission Association
http://young.anabaptistradicals.org/2012/07/07/manifesto-of-the-mennonite-anti-mission-association/

Extra credit for:

--Using the word "manifesto"

--Vigorously and to RantWoman's ear incisively eldering elders

--Sounding suspiciously like universalist Friends what with all that multifaith radical listening


More Micah Bales bomb-throwing, er excuse me summons to prophetic witness: Burn Down the Meetnghouse
http://lambswar.blogspot.com/2012/07/burn-down-meeting-house.html

The RantWoman department of unsolicited Advices offers:

--a prescription to read John Woolman's Journal about eldering one's elders

----Channeling  Grace the Office Manager from RantWoman's long ago spell selling the nuclear freeze door to door, people who compile terrorist watch lists tend to be sort of metaphor-impaired. If you are going to get inscribed in such a list in reference to burning something down, should you maybe consider a bigger target than your Yearly Meeting?

--a prescription to read John Woolman's Journal about eldering one's elders, again! RantWoman does not know when to quit about many matters on her mind. RantWoman herself has been known to rail about the entire baby boom. And still, RantWoman persists in thinking that HOW one lives one's faith matters, and this includes sitting with the issue of possibly unnecessary intergenerational strife or how all generations suffer when our world is out of balance.


--admonitions to bear with matters of stewardshp of property. God has certainly granted us the capacity to figure out both matters of our own carpets and care of our planet. One should perhaps not rule out the possibility of learning about how to care for the latter by tending to the former.

--If the people lead, eventually the leaders will follow. One assumes Quaker youth have much to say, not only to their elders but to the wider world as well!

Gratifying

RantWoman is charmed by this post about the Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's Theology Conference, http://nancyjthomas.blogspot.com/2012/07/pnwqwtc-in-retrospect.html?showComment=1341524058638#c3092328298485483891

RantWoman concurs with the thought that the acronym PNWQWTC is enough to make one sneeze!


RantWoman also appreciates this item about prayer and place
http://johanpdx.blogspot.com/2012/07/prayer-and-place.html

and this iteration of Patriarchal pronouncements about a certain punk band:
http://www2.stetson.edu/~psteeves/relnews/1206g.html#27

Readers will note RantWoman's continued circumlocutions about a certain band's name. RantWoman is not saintly enough to feel guilty when the work of the language professional requires her to utter vulgarities. RantWoman's speech patterns even ocasionally include vulgarities of RantWoman's own. But RantWoman must honor the fact that she is having trouble uttering the bad's name in public, in mixed company, even when reminded that it is perfectly acceptable to honor the band's own choices about what to call themselves. Perhaps someone could tell the Patriachate that they also have the option of such circumlocution.

Sr. Joan Chittister at Stanford

RantWoman expects to want easily to find Sr. Joan Chittister's baccalaureate address at Stanford again:

http://sojo.net/blogs/2012/07/03/sister-joan-chittisters-stanford-baccalaureate-address?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sojourners%2Fgods-politics+%28Sojourners+God%27s+Politics+Blog%29

Reborn on the Fourth of July

Reflections on CO's, selective opposition to military actions, conversion.

By way of blog as filing cabinet

http://forusa.org/blogs/mark-johnson/reborn-fourth-july-challenge-faith-patriotism-conscience/10670

Tell them and Tell them and wait upon....

A blog post about the world gathering of Friends and different faces of Quaker theology coming alive

http://www.rachelernst.org/2012/07/tell-them/#comment-278

Comments too

Independence of a sort

RantWoman's Meeting has a practice of cycling through the queries in NPYM Faith and Practice on a more or less annual cycle. RantWoman basically likes the practice of intentionally revisiting all the associated life themes. However, RantWoman sometimes becomes annoyed that the particular cycling practice tends to put the same themes in the same months. RantWoman's experience is that people need to attend to these themes on individualized schedules.

For instance July, aside from being RantWoman's birth month is a time when RantWoman tends to need to attend to memories of lots of deaths.

Today, in addition to a shoutout for everyone working all or part of the holiday, a shoutout to some sibling urchins who spent a couple Fourths of July hawking helium balloons at longago Symphony concerts, it is time again to remember RantWoman's friend who declared his independence of this world 20 years ago on the Fourth of July

http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2009/10/varlam-robo-fag-and-doctors.html

The actual departure was, um, kind of an anticlimactic fizzle. On his way there, RantWoman's friend

--loved learning languages, birdwatching, and creating fantasy baseball teams based on his ratings of the players' physical attractiveness

--served enthusiastically as Seeing Eye Faggot to help a blind friend scope out suitable dates. RantWoman is perfectly well aware that, as a feminist and spiritually oriented person, she is supposed to object vigorously to all this abject objectification of people based only on appearance. Alas, most of the time, this blatant and shameless cruising was so hard to take seriously, so ineffectual as a relationship strategy for either the blind half or the sighted half of the game, that RantWoman really could not bring herself to do more than laugh, occasionally very hard.
Because this friend was about to receive a public service award for his AIDS education work when he decamped to other realms, RantWoman fielded a call from the newspaper. The newspaper wanted to know whether it was okay to print this friend's scathing opinion of the AIDS quilt. RantWoman, never one to sugarcoat or play very nuanced spin doctor, said that would be fine but also assured the reporter that her personal opinion is that the AIDS quilt is for the living and that people make all kinds of things of different memorials

RantWoman was determined that this friend have some Jewish pallbearers; it just happened that all his Jewish friends that RantWoman knew of were all women. RantWoman found 3 men and all three women were unfailingly honored to be asked.

RantWoman thanks this friend's father for teaching her the custom of sitting Shiva after a death. RantWoman apologizes to Jews everywhere who might be appalled that RantWoman once recently decided that sitting Shiva was exactly the ministry needed for two friends grieving a deceased German shepherd.

There! Now that RantWoman has gotten some needful memorial meanderings out of her system, here's wishing everyone a safe, festive Fourth of July!

Grace Comes around again

...if by grace one means

--Stasa over, self-identified non-theist Quaker Pagan shwoing up at an event called "All God's Critters Got a place in the Choir" just as RantWoman was thinking about  a teensy bit of grumbling that maybe just maybe a few more theological polyglots, buddhists, Pagans, ..., would have enhanced the richness of this year's Pacific Northwest Quaker Women's theology conference.
--the aura of blessedness presumed to accompany permitting homeless men and women to sleep in the worship room at our Meeting
http://aquakerwitch.blogspot.com/2010/07/all-god-quakers-got-place-on-committee.html

--RantWoman being given the Light to rhyme "discernment" with "ferment."

--No leading at all to apologize to Bill Staines for the parodic wording of "All God's creatures got a place on a committee" but  repeated acknowledgment and thanks for use of the tune.