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I feel just fine right now, Greycie Loo sprawled across my lap, reading away the morning. But last night i was fairly certain i should not attend Meeting for Worship (save my energy for Meeting for Business). My boss is sick and i can't help but suspect i gave off germs. I keep saying the cold is over and it's just asthma causing the coughing now. But by afternoon i have a productive cough.
Time to write the doctor, time to continue resting, time to not expose everyone in meeting. On the other hand, i missed December's Meeting for Business (also not well then), and i would like to attend. Some hours before i have to make that decision. I can't tell if i'm mollycoddling myself or being responsible. Considering the news of my mother's second round of antibiotics to treat her pneumonia,
Regarding Meeting for Worship, it's on my mind for a number of reasons. This month's queries are about Meeting for Worship and i find myself thinking back to my last year's responses to those queries, which i cannot find*. (And i should be irked at myself that my last journal entry tagged with Quaker queries is a whole year ago.) I have again picked up Voices from the Silence, have made more progress in the text, and had a conversation about the book on Friday by someone who finds it a horrible book. I think of my wishes yesterday: i remain where i was over a year ago, wondering whether i should be giving ministry in meeting or if my discernment has been right that my experience in worship has been for myself.
If anything, this year has been a "dry" year for me in Worship. The meditation i've had on the transformation -- visualizing a earthen oven (like a New Mexican horno), the consumption of wood in the fire, the baking of bread, the slow process of stew -- has not opened any insights for me except that resting is just as important a part of transformation as the more "dynamic" or "visible" forms. And that has been just as much a lesson from actual bread baking as from the meditation.
Why has it been a dry year? I wonder at my outward engagement in Meeting, feeling more led to be vocal about the importance of practicing collective discernment, becoming part of Oversight. Is that it? I know i also questioned how self-centered my worship had been: it had been a time when i focused on *my* connection to That Which Is, and i was hard pressed to describe how my community was part of that. Others describe their awareness of the community in their settling in and prayers and reflections. I trusted that being in the community worship was a good thing: i know i settled more deeply with others than by myself. But SJ's occasional ministry about worship, his questioning, made me wonder whether i was truly *joining* Friends in worship.
Or perhaps is it that offering oneself to be transformed is hard to do? Did i "overthink" the meditation: coming to it in a conscious desire to explore transformation as opposed to being open to the creation of a meditation in worship?
A dry year doesn't disturb me, exactly; i still find the lessons i was learning in the rich years to be seeping into my being, into my practice. I remain with that question: are those lessons just for me?
Over the past couple of days i've been in correspondence with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
angelfish1021, stemming from a post of hers to the partners_of_tg group. I've thought a great deal about the responses to her post, to some of the reading i've been doing in other areas of the privilege dynamics, particularly around the effect of a person of privilege putting the onus on the marginalized person for educating the person of privilege. Searching this morning i find this post.
I wonder: am i a TG ally? Or am i bisexual minority? Or am i in some diffuse area of a multidimensional definition of identity that rejects gender binaries and linear scales of sexuality? When Christine came out, we came out. I learned that our story is not just her story but also my story. Were there no Christine in my life, i'd have to struggle to articulate my needs and desires because there is not a clear label: with her in my life, i don't need to articulate them in anything but our own language.
So, i have explicitly offered myself up as someone to educate another, which is new and different and somewhat stretching. It is a practice of ministry, which is why it is coming to mind as i reflect on Meeting for Worship. It's more pastoral ministry than the prophetic ministry or witness that makes up the spoken word in Meeting for Worship.
***
This musing seems like many fragmentary responses to my current relationship to Meeting for Worship and to ministry. There is a link between ministry and worship for Friends and i suspect i'll continue to examine the link and the issues for some time.
Time to write the doctor, time to continue resting, time to not expose everyone in meeting. On the other hand, i missed December's Meeting for Business (also not well then), and i would like to attend. Some hours before i have to make that decision. I can't tell if i'm mollycoddling myself or being responsible. Considering the news of my mother's second round of antibiotics to treat her pneumonia,
Regarding Meeting for Worship, it's on my mind for a number of reasons. This month's queries are about Meeting for Worship and i find myself thinking back to my last year's responses to those queries, which i cannot find*. (And i should be irked at myself that my last journal entry tagged with Quaker queries is a whole year ago.) I have again picked up Voices from the Silence, have made more progress in the text, and had a conversation about the book on Friday by someone who finds it a horrible book. I think of my wishes yesterday: i remain where i was over a year ago, wondering whether i should be giving ministry in meeting or if my discernment has been right that my experience in worship has been for myself.
If anything, this year has been a "dry" year for me in Worship. The meditation i've had on the transformation -- visualizing a earthen oven (like a New Mexican horno), the consumption of wood in the fire, the baking of bread, the slow process of stew -- has not opened any insights for me except that resting is just as important a part of transformation as the more "dynamic" or "visible" forms. And that has been just as much a lesson from actual bread baking as from the meditation.
Why has it been a dry year? I wonder at my outward engagement in Meeting, feeling more led to be vocal about the importance of practicing collective discernment, becoming part of Oversight. Is that it? I know i also questioned how self-centered my worship had been: it had been a time when i focused on *my* connection to That Which Is, and i was hard pressed to describe how my community was part of that. Others describe their awareness of the community in their settling in and prayers and reflections. I trusted that being in the community worship was a good thing: i know i settled more deeply with others than by myself. But SJ's occasional ministry about worship, his questioning, made me wonder whether i was truly *joining* Friends in worship.
Or perhaps is it that offering oneself to be transformed is hard to do? Did i "overthink" the meditation: coming to it in a conscious desire to explore transformation as opposed to being open to the creation of a meditation in worship?
A dry year doesn't disturb me, exactly; i still find the lessons i was learning in the rich years to be seeping into my being, into my practice. I remain with that question: are those lessons just for me?
Over the past couple of days i've been in correspondence with
angelfish1021, stemming from a post of hers to the partners_of_tg group. I've thought a great deal about the responses to her post, to some of the reading i've been doing in other areas of the privilege dynamics, particularly around the effect of a person of privilege putting the onus on the marginalized person for educating the person of privilege. Searching this morning i find this post. I wonder: am i a TG ally? Or am i bisexual minority? Or am i in some diffuse area of a multidimensional definition of identity that rejects gender binaries and linear scales of sexuality? When Christine came out, we came out. I learned that our story is not just her story but also my story. Were there no Christine in my life, i'd have to struggle to articulate my needs and desires because there is not a clear label: with her in my life, i don't need to articulate them in anything but our own language.
So, i have explicitly offered myself up as someone to educate another, which is new and different and somewhat stretching. It is a practice of ministry, which is why it is coming to mind as i reflect on Meeting for Worship. It's more pastoral ministry than the prophetic ministry or witness that makes up the spoken word in Meeting for Worship.
***
This musing seems like many fragmentary responses to my current relationship to Meeting for Worship and to ministry. There is a link between ministry and worship for Friends and i suspect i'll continue to examine the link and the issues for some time.
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