Clearness Committee

Oh BOY do RantWoman and Dear Friend need a Clearness Committee! We need a clearness committee to help us figure out what we want our clearness committee to do.


The list of topics and twitches on RantWoman's mind is so long that she is about to propose we go in with an open agenda, some thoughts about time blocks, and an eye to extracting points that might need further work by some combination of



RantWoman alone



Dear Friend alone



RantWoman and Dear Friend



Nominating Committee



others at our Meeting



Meeting for Business.

RantWoman is NOT going to post others' words without their permission; RantWoman is going to take the risks that her paraphrases distort intent. RantWoman is going to do that fully conscious that distortions may already be part of the problem.

NO! Not so much! RantWoman just moved a whole bunch of very specific gripes about Dear Friend, based on items in MM minutes and his emails to a draft item on this blog. The gist of the point: Dear Friend has said a whole bunch of things that RantWoman finds offensive, problematic, objectionable, patronizing...you get the idea. RantWoman in several conversations and emails has NO sense that Dear Friend gets big parts of why RantWoman is upset. In fact, the ONLY thing Dear Friend responds to is a RantWoman emotional minefield, a factor that is only a SMALL part of RantWoman's reactions. RantWoman promises to meditate further about how much she needs to articulate better and on what timelines.

Just because RantWoman cannot articulate a problem does not mean it does not exist. Likewise, Dear Friend not being able to respond as RantWoman might want does not mean RantWoman needs endlessly to endure direct effects of Dear Friend's non-response, particularly if Dear Friend's non-response is just recycling conflict and physical or emotional danger. This line of thinking almost exactly parallels one of Dear Friend's emails about the ill-fated October Meeting for Business, a point which raises another question about Dear Friend.

Dear Friend apparently has some hopes Meeting will address some longstanding thoughts of his about how meeting ought to address conflict. Maybe if RantWoman is feeling especially forward she will ask Dear Friend whether the way the current conflict has played out changes any of his previous thinking.

Thinking about what Dear Friend does or does not seem to get caused RantWoman to think of a different tack from the one in material redacted from a RantWoman email about the topic. The tack RantWoman just thought of:

Please describe why YOU think your counterpart in the conflict is upset.

Please describe the process you think is supposed to be followed.

Please describe how that process went awry from your perspective.

clarifying questions

Lather Rinse Repeat from other person.

What RantWoman actually wrote in email about her thoughts on the Clearness process:

To be honest, Rantwoman is running hot and cold on different issues on different days. RantWoman proposes we leave the exact topics to leadings of Spirit and to requests from the Clearness Committee about information it might be helpful for them to have to frame the problem. RantWoman thinks we. have issues about how to talk about things as well as what is off limits or out of order or off-topic throughout the conversation so far. RantWoman also thinks it is possible that if Dear Friend and RantWoman both offer some narrative about their perspectives so far and the Clearness Committee just asks clarifying questions that we might go a a long way as far as what is needed.

RantWoman needs to state clearly things that will help her prepare and make a couple suggestions. RantWoman is open to timely proposals as to alternatives, but thinks there might be good reasons we accept some choices even if they are not automatically someone's preferred one.: Rantwoman thinks for different reasons both Dear Friend and RantWoman need to have whatever guidelines we are going to use in advance but will say more about that in a minute. RantWoman would like not to overspecify the content or constraints of this conversation at this point but instead to agree on a set of guidelines and maybe some format points and to recognize that we may need to spell out areas where we need additional clarification from outside the Clearness Committee.

An additional note: RantWoman is legally blind. She can read small amounts of regular print with great difficulty and does most of her reading in other ways. This is the midlife phase of DNA lotto. Some days RantWoman is better adjusted about it than others. Some days RantWoman is definitely still figuring out strategies that work in different situations. Some days this point is one factor in a particular kind of exasperation: at times RantWoman gets to a point in arguments where if the other party says water is wet, she wants independent confirmation. In this case, RantWoman would suggest we choose some guidelines already available on the internet or in electronic format so that she can prepare in advance. RantWoman would also suggest that others aim to prepare in advance and that we perhaps have ONE copy of the agreed guidelines to pass around or remind people as we work.

(RantWoman is seasoning a growing leading to campaign against quite the degree of xerox excess she notices all about her, definitely not only among Friends. RantWoman is still seasoning this concern!)

RantWoman put Clearness Committee into search engine of her choice and came up with a number of useful but occasionally conflicting suggestions ... . RantWoman would not mind if someone else wants to make a suggestion but the following format comes to mind.

Intros

Worship

Time for RantWoman and Dear Friend each to speak and clarifying questions

Time for group discernment

Time to record things that need to go beyond this committee and thoughts about next steps if any.

Dear Friend and RantWoman are both VERY clear that we do not want to spend time fighting between ourselves about matters that we believe are the whole Meeting's responsibility.

... Our clearness process may at the very least have to outline where we would draw those lines or need to see additional clarification. Dear Friend has expressed a preference not to discuss RantWoman's nomination to the committee in question right away; RantWoman absolutely does not think we can have a productive discussion about other points if that is completely out of the conversation. However, it definitely occurs to RantWoman to want not to fixate on bad stuff and to instruct the clearness committee to herd us off that if we do.

Also even though RantWoman thinks some of Dear Friends' concerns are WAY out of scope for a nomination discussion, RantWoman thinks we might especially want to be open to exploration if discussion seens to be going fruitfully toward one of these topics. As long as this is a clearness committee anyway, we might as well entertain the option of careful hypotheticals.

The process of composing the next phase of our request to those who are available has caused RantWoman to be clear about a few interesting points:

--Actually talking about RantWoman's needs / wants as far as accessible content and reasonable accommodations feels like an important milestone. RantWoman gets tired of feeling like she has to be accessibility spokesbabe. RantWoman is please actually that two of the people who wound up being available are people in a position perhaps to hear some of RantWoman's specific technical gripes though RantWoman has no expectation one way or another about what might come of that.

--RantWoman finds herself wondering whether one thing it would be good to have come of this clearness process is concrete points about how she and Dear Friend might work together more effectively, better support each other's spiritual condition, help each other cope with our different struggles, and laugh more robustly.