Large Children and an Electron Microscope



Christmas Cactus in snowy window

A meditation for large children confronted with He Whom We  SO Wish Were Not Elected.

From George Fox's journal, "...walk cheerfully on the earth answering that of God in everyone...."

Colossians 4:6 “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know HOW to answer (that of God in) everyone.”

God, are you EFFing KIDDING? That of God in ...?

Get out your electron microscope. It has to be in there SOMEWHERE....!

Starving widows, original sin, holiday rat pups

RantWoman's Biblical preparation for worship: Library instead of Adult Ed. Meditation overdue about library but not today. Find the new large print KJV which has not found its way to a shelf yet. Read the rest of Habakkuk. Dig the strong language and symbolism. Let mind leak like a sieve about exact wording: any message will just have not to quote Habbakuk.

Then read of Anna, the widow who spent her days fasting at the temple shortly after the time of Jesus' birth. Fasting? Yea right! RantWoman is thinking widows said to be fasting were probably making a virtue of near starvation standard of living. Here God told RantWoman just to go to the end of early worship and not hyperventilate about widow prophets and their diets.

in RantWoman's Building lobby

There were two, count them two messages in the last 10 minutes of worship, not nearly as much message train wreck as 11:00 worship but still, RantWoman thinks, out of the ordinary. RantWoman meant to just creep in. But there was a long message about our society busily purging itself of public figures connected to any whiff of sexual misconduct. Also celebrate lots of unfamiliar faces in early worship:

Speaking of out of the ordinary, original sin showed up in 11:00  Meeting for Worship, an unusual occurrence among liberal Quakers, though not a concept unknown on Planet RantWoman, especially RantWoman's mental soundtrack at this time of year.

Oh Holy Night "...long lay the world in sin and error ..."

Random works by Jewish musicians trying to make a living, nothing to do with sin necessarily but also in the soundtrack along with Hanukkah greetings as appropriate..

Tom Lehrer: "...try and prove your sin is original..."

A message arising after Adult Religious Education. RantWoman missed ARE because she was called to Bible reading Friend heard of original sin in his childhood church but had not thought about it in decades among Friends until this week's Adult Ed.

A lovely message about school children: even on good days, one little boy throws his pencils across the room a lot. The other kids just pick up the pencils and hand them back. Some school children dread holidays because school is one of their Safe places. The holiday collage making went well and the teacher is relieved to be on vacation.

A message from Friend who, the Friend says, Ardently Believes in Original Sin mentioning community in a way that made RantWoman season a leading about interrupting based on what RantWoman experiences as SEVERE disconnects in the realm of community. Then something about traumatized rat pups having trouble caring for their own offspring. RantWoman definitely had trouble getting from biology to original sin, but at least that trouble kept Rantwoman's brain from short-circuiting further about matters of community.
http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2017/12/remove-person-1.html

Oh, and RantWoman offered a prayer for the kids who dread vacation because school is their safe place (or unsafe in a different way than home).

Then RantWoman told the Christmas Chair story.

Readers who want the Christmas Chair story get to beg and plead in the comments, or ask someone who was in Meeting for Worship.

Meditations with Hanukkah--but no bunelos--woven in

Happy Hanukkah to those around RantWOman who celebrate

RantWoman is weaving Hanukkah thoughts among her holiday rambles. RantWoman also promised a binge blog effort of gifts and resources. Here are a couple itemsfrom the Facebook Friends Spiritaul Accountabilty page, listed here for possible ease of locating them again and also as a plug for the Facebook group.




A green tree menorah with red candles.
How Christmasy is that?

"This (thinking of the woes of the year) led us to wonder: how can we stay resilient enough to make it through the next year? Through the next three years?
If you’re rallying yourself and your spirit for 2018, here are 7 questions to help you build resilience:

1. What gift or contribution do I bring to the spaces I impact and the work ahead of me?
2. What are 1-3 things I want to let go of to help me stay resilient?
3. What places within me or in my life are asking for growth?
4. What have I let go of that I want to bring back into my life?
5. What am I not being honest with myself about?
6. What helps me bounce back when my spirit feels drained?
7. What boundaries do I need to set for myself or with others for my self-care and resilience?

7 Questions to help you build resilience in 2018


And furthermore:
As if from The Lord of the Rings

Alan Rabinowitz memorial January 7, 2018, 3pm, Centilia Cultural Arts Center

RantWoman is posting this memorial announcement as is without editorialzing except for one technological note from today's blindness tourism itinerary: the text in this graphical image hebaved very well when RantWoman saved the image from the original email and then used her screen reader's OCR function.

RantWoman has not tested steps for downloading the image from a blog post. RantWoman mostly wants her readers to recognize that she sometimes has to do and know how to do a whole lot of extra steps for things others take for granted.

That announcement: good intentions data

Offered without comment from our Weekly Bulletin:

 For many years we have been openly holding, at once, the community and worship needs of survivors of sexual abuse and past sexual offenders. While we are a safer place for children because of the awareness and education that this ministry has produced, we recognize that this ministry requires ongoing dialogue and engagement. If you have questions or concerns, we encourage you to talk to a member of the Care and Counsel Committee***. If you are a survivor of sexual abuse and would like to speak to someone in Meeting, please call (...). She can arrange times when she, or possibly others, can meet with you in a spirit of worship to hear concerns, share experience, or help discern what meeting resources might be appropriate to your needs. For more information, please see the yellow informational flyer on the bulletin board outside of the office.

The above is the good intentions.

RantWoman collects data about her Meeting and herself.

https://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2017/12/more-great-moments-in.html

https://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2017/11/many-shitty-first-draft-moments-sex.html

https://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2017/10/how-large-is-large-large-print-bibles.html

https://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2017/10/happy-birthday-rant-brother.html

https://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2016/09/reprise-of-rant-past-and-blessings.html

Before a previous year's workshop,  Friend whose Title RantWoman omits told RantWoman "GO talk to your Counselor" when RantWoman was expressing something about kids who cannot talk to their parents. Turns out, three other people in the workshop asked questions relevant to exactly that topic.

***Previously another committee, one RantWoman served on was also listed in this announcement. The name of the committee was removed from the announcement after RantWoman spent a whole year on the committee trying to get the clerk of that committee to do worship sharing about what it means when people tell you stuff. Okay, so that kind of worship-sharing is not, Not, NOT that particular Friend's gift

Remove? Person 1

It would be enough for today to work at RantWoman's current meditations about really what a BIZARRE sequence of events are tied up in the Christ story.

It would be enough for RantWoman to meditate about expectations in the realm of the God as Personal Butler model of Divine Presence or even the what is one reasonably to expect of an elder, at least in title?

The tree before the lights go on

It would be enough for RantWoman to meditate upon the phrase "Walk gently upon the earth answering that of God in Everyone." This week, at least around RantWoman, a more realistic model of Divine presence might be the lost cellphone  in a crowded space problem. Signals are coming in. There is clear evidence that the phone is somewhere, but danged if one can actually locate the phone. Consider the following moments

From RantWoman's inbox this morning:

"Please remove my name from this discussion."

WTF Friend?????

RantWoman included you in this discussion with appreciation because you WROTE the draft minutes under discussion. But RantWoman ALSO includes you because of your role on Care and Counsel. RantWoman somehow has the peculiar, peculiar but apparently not necessarily realistic  expectation that care of a whole community sometimes involves interacting with email, prayerful participation not only in Meeting for Worship but also in the life of the rest of the Meeting.

RantWoman THANKED you for some serious "show your work" minutes, expressed appreciation for the thought of someone not at Meeting for Worship for Business being able to figure out from the minutes what happened, and asked Friends to reflect on thoughts from RantWoman's many different experiences with the Quaker practice of hours and hours devoted to something called minutes.

RantWoman further made the same request she frequently makes these days: read as you are able and hold in the Light. Plus, RantWoman knows the Delete key exists and thinks people absolutely have the option of using it and not advertising the fact to RantWoman.

So WTF, Friend????

(And please excuse RantWoman if this morning's email also makes it hard to take another related effort seriously.)

Holding you in the Light and not necessarily promising to edit recipient lists.

In Light and Faithfulness

RantWoman.

Friends Journal Interview with Prof. Sa'ed Atshan

RantWoman REALLY needed this interview in FriendsJournal.org with Swarthmore Peace Studies professor Sa'ed Atshan:

Sa’ed Atshan is a graduate of Ramallah Friends School in Palestine and a professor of peace and conflict studies at Swarthmore College. In October 2015, we published “Realizing Wholeness: Reflections from a Gay Palestinian Quaker,” and saw it become one of our most widely read articles of the year. Since then he’s headlined a plenary at the Friends General Conference Gathering and written for publications such as American Friends Service Committee’s Acting in Faith blog.
In person, Atshan is soft-spoken and gentle; he chooses his words with care and precision. He is generous in giving thoughtful compliments in conversations, and he seems able to find that of God in even the most obstinate political conflicts. It thus came as a surprise when he became the center of a controversy played out in the pages of Philadelphia newspapers this February. We talked to him to find out how a peace and conflict studies professor deals with controversy and to understand the discernment of a public Friend in the era of social media and instant outrage.
Read the interview here



Christmas Cactus 12 11

RantWoman needed this article far more than one about "Why do we Tie up the Cat?" which also comes highly recommended.
Look world. RantWoman is busy. RantWoman is also a lazy slug. RantWoman is more likely to read the tying up the cat article if someone sends her a direct link so she does not have to poke her screen reader among search bar and search results.

However, RantWoman invites her public, adoring and otherwise to sit with the point that RantWoman may have gotten as much as she needs just from mention of the Typing up thecat article.

Equally important, RantWoman resides in the dominion of the Queen of Spades. The Queen of Spades may get scratchy and  extremely censorious about anything to do with typing up cats, even when asking about ceasing to tie up cats.