Adore this!

From this week’s bulletin filler used when there is space, for example because there are not enough announcements either about Meeting activities or about change / peacemaking in our community or even exhortations to SPEAK UP and directions about how to find the footstools.

 

Worship is the adoring response of the heart and mind to the influence of the Spirit of God. It stands in neither forms nor in the formal disuse of forms; it may be with or without words, but it must be in spirit and in truth (John 4:24). We recognize the value of silence, not as an end in itself, but as a means toward attainment of the end, which is communication with God and fellowship with one another.
Faith and Practice of NPYM

 Dear World,

Channeling Miss. Piggy: Adore THIS! RantWoman is NOT doing well about adoring, adorable, adoration this week.

 As another Friend says on Facebook, I do not enjoy daily barrages of simulated aerial attack. Thank you ever so much Blue Angels.

Rantwoman IS physics geek enough to think that flying IN one of those planes might be really, really fun—if all the extra G forces and dynamics did mot clobber what is left of RantWoman’s vision. But Adoring has NOTHING to do with what RantWoman is likely to be doing abut this during Meeting for Worship or Meeting for Worship for Business. Trying to transform fury. Trying to draw the poser of God into some kind of topical thunderbolts. Tryingto cover everyone in RantWoman’s vicinity with centering Light and insulated sanity. Sure. All of those. Adoing, not so much!

 Then there would be the usual churning of RantWoman’s spiritual compost heap in the Light of God and these our Friends, inventorying and attempting to purge the newest additions to the endless list of candidates for RantWoman’s multilingual multiconfessional flogging bureau. Still not a lot of just adoring though?

 How about adoring the opportunity to grumble about repetitive Faith and Practice excerpts and exhortations  and wishing someone would MAYBE possibly see whether there might be other inspiring passages to mix in.

 

Just sayin

 

RantWoman

How Quakers Make Decisions: Quaker Speak. God DOES care about the carpet.

A holy sacred.....



...where we get ugly with one another...?

Not tread on child

Dear parent,

 

RantWoman is really not in a position to evaluate your parenting one way or another. RantWoman simply does not want to walk on your child when he or she is seated in a path where more people than just RantWoman might also be trying to walk. When RantWoman suggests, maybe even in a really tired voice that moving out of the way would be very helpful, really appreciated…, RantWoman is expressing great trust and confidence that your child can and will do what is asked. RantWoman apologizes if that does not sound like what came out of her mouth.

 

RantWoman will try to remember next year to offer to the Children’s program to come talk about vision loss and generally being aware of other people on sidewalks. RantWoman will do the best she can to make this be positive and fun for everyone. But please note it has taken RantWoman a LONG time to be willing to speak.

 

Please hold continually needed speaking in the Light. Think of it as continuing revelation, and I will also hold all the other dimensions of parenting as well.

 

Sincerely,

RantWoman

 

 

 

The longer version, with thanks to a 5-year-old at an Annual session plenary insisting in a 5-year-old way that worship is IMPORTANT.

RantWoman is still getting this blind person thing down. And RantWoman is not a Quaker because she is any good at this peace and love stuff; RantWoman is a Quaker because she needs all the help she can get. Furthermore, RantWoman draws great spiritual nurture from people much older than she who also still do not have things figured out. RantWoman does not promise this automatically makes things any easier for everyone.

Here RantWoman must share a story from her own Meeting with a plea to hold one Friend in the Light because RantWoman herself can barely speak to this person. One week last fall, the number of exuberant children was particularly large and many of them new to the Meeting. RantWoman’s nerves were jangled by other things and RantWoman did not want to share the jangling about things that cannot be fixed, only held in the Light. As with the child mentioned above, RantWoman both figured the children involved can grow and did not want to walk on loose kids while they grow. So RantWoman duly emailed numerous topical people asking for help. One of the first replies, PLESE hold the sender in the Light,  was the ever so helpful and welcoming suggestion that RantWoman go find someplace to worship where there are not children. BLESSEDLY, a try-again email and others' voices emerged as well!

RantWoman and God have an understanding. RantWoman will ride one bus to Meeting for Worship. That standard gets RantWoman to any of the three unprogrammed Meetings in Seattle plus or minus a walk or a shorter two-bus routing in one case. Fortunately for the future of the Religious Society of Friends ALL of these Meetings have children! Plus, RantWoman really digs being Auntie and tends to assume that parents and children need a whole village anyway, though RantWoman supposes readers a little bit get to take their chances on which of the RantWoman Auntie personae show up at any given moment. Bottom line: Sensible Auntie really, really does not want to walk on small children and encourages everyone to be aware of the concern!

 

A gratitude and a grumble.

A very big gratitude:
RantWoman deeply appreciates a few different faces of people at NPYM Annual Session who tapped her on the shoulder at some point or another while RantWoman was being safe enough to cry but not verbal enough to talk about it.

RantWoman offers a teeny, tiny grumble to one Friend who offered 3 times  to carry RantWoman's purse before telling RantWoman her name. RantWoman has no idea whether her nametag was in the conventional name out position or in the un-nametag "Please tell me your name" position. Either way RantWoman means it about not being able to read people's nametags until she is indecently close. Sigh.

An Oops

An Oops:
In http://rantwomanrsof.blogspot.com/2014/07/who-are-we-all-called-to-become.html
RantWoman wrote:
"Some of the Friends in RantWoman’s Yearly Meeting doing the most credible witness about racism never come to Annual Session, partly because of cost, partly because of a sense that there is little there to feed them."

RantWoman's oops: RantWoman did in fact hear some young Friends from ID talk about a concern about racism. Considering that they are young Friends, RantWoman could darn well have probed further, reached out to ask more.

RantWoman did not.

So there will be upholding from a distance and in partial ignorance. Sigh.

A confession

Ya know how at many churches in the Sunday bulletin, if you cannot think of things to confess about on your own, there is a nice set of words to guide you. RantWoman deeply esteems the fact that

Quakers can and do think of new things to confess about all the time. Here are RantWoman's confessions du jour:

--The Blue Angels are back in town and RantWoman lives on the flight path. This is causing RantWoman to have a VERY unhealthy interest in surface to air missiles.

--Even worse, RantWoman's unwholesome interest... threshold is MUCH lower than the Blue Angels' flight path. Recently RantWoman and some visiting friends dined at a lakefront restaurant. The meal was interrupted several times by the roar of float planes taking off. Over a delicious meal, RantWoman had NO trouble admitting that the ambient noise was evoking in her roughly the same enthuusiasm for surface to air missiles. Sigh.

Eid Mubrarak

RantWoman had to ask too: what are some customary greetings during Ramadan and the Eid right after.

During Ramadan
Ramadan Mubarak  or   Ramadan Kareem


For the Eid (feast) at the end of the month:
Eid mubarak

RantWoman notes all of the above along with this item from a rarely-viewed email stream about history of celebrating Ramadan in the US:

"Many forget that the first Muslims to celebrate Ramadan in America
were African slaves."
Ramadan: A centuries-old American tradition - Opinion - Al Jazeera English


RantWoman would like to have something literate to say about the procession of Ramadan around the year. RantWoman would like this but God and the rest of us are going to have to live with who shows up today.