Practicing Scales

In the music teacher world of RantWoman's childhood, even the most accomplished artists warmed up, loosened up, centered for bigger projects by practicing scales. RantWoman is thinking of that, trying to center in preparation for Business Meeting. RantWoman is not sure what she would consider the Quaker equivalent of scales, but email over the last month has bits and pieces from several directions that are suggestive. If RantWoman is feeling especially attentive to documentation, collecting these bits might be an interesting exercise.

RantWoman has been rereading some of her and Dear Friend's emails from the past month along with the interventions mainly of the clerk and Nom Comm. One topical comment: RantWoman has been clear for quite some time that matters between her and Dear Friend needed the Light of others. As questions and queries have gone back and forth, it also has become clear to RantWoman at least that Nom Comm also wants community Light even to interact with some points about the conflict between RantWoman and Dear Friend. RantWoman is especially trying to center about this point, not only because of her own twitches while process is in progress, but also on Dear Friend's behalf. This is an area where Dear Friend, while vehemently opinionated and certain of his own views, seems not to grasp that our community needs to do the work of getting to a collective opinion. RantWoman can only practice her own scales for now; tuning the whole orchestra is, to quote our President, "above my pay grade."

RantWoman is VERY carefully seasoning whether to redact and include excerpts of her own email writings in the blog. RantWoman thinks the arc of the conversation is interesting in its own right. However, RantWoman has to be careful because too much rereading can just get her back really easily to anger and stuck places. These would be the sort of stuck places where RantWoman is not automatically able to dialogue about anything and really does not even care about Quaker process or anyone else's PTSD or whether others around her even get what is exercising her. RantWoman actually thinks recognizing the dynamics of the anger and stuck places is important for herself and might also be a valuable part of community learning, but RantWoman is still thinking about the suitability of the info and the blogosphere for each other. Enough said on that topic for now.

It is SO clear to RantWoman at least that having other voices in the conversation has helped both RantWoman and Dear Friend. RantWoman is better able to sort and organize many threads of issues on her mind along with how to tackle them and who might need to be involved. RantWoman is also terribly grateful to share the task of seasoning Dear Friend's concerns, very obviously with community perspective, not just RantWoman alone and most assuredly beyond RantWoman's light or leading to tackle on her own.

Dear Friend is perhaps understandably put out that people perceive him as the heavy even though RantWoman has been very very clear that she too is being obstinate. In fact the whole problem could in fact be defined partly as two language geeks trying to get our terms straight. To make matters worse we are also trying to ask a body of people at least some of whom are clueless about what we are asking for to help. The task of framing what we are trying to practice and figuring out what to ask larger bodies for, RantWoman at least has delegated to God and others. RantWoman is quite certain she could muster opinions quickly, but what is the point of seeking Light if one is just going to get in the way of what Light might be available?

Dear Friend is Dear Friend. At some point RantWoman hit or more accurately slammed into some personal, somewhat obscured reasons she sometimes finds it difficult to hear Dear Friend in particular. RantWoman THINKS she told Dear Friend several times several ways that she was having trouble hearing him in particular. Anyway for the time being RantWoman hopes a Clearness Committee can help us sort our specifically personal twitches out better.

RantWoman seldom talks about the full emotional content of these matters so Dear Friend has no way of knowing the emotional landmines are there. Of course, the POINT of emotional landmines is that one does not always have a way of finding them in advance. At this point in life, for a few different reasons, RantWoman herself goes for long spells not thinking about her emotional minefields either, but perhaps one of the points of middle age is being able to pick up, revisit, and re-evaluate old twitches one might previously have had the emotional resources only to blunder through, not to analyze or to address. Yuuuuck. Yet another reason to like the Compost tag.

Dear Friend's emotional landscape also includes a number of features that may make it difficult for him to hear RantWoman. RantWoman realized this while scratching her head over one of Dear Friend's emails, particularly nonresponsive to RantWoman and full of personal points RantWoman at first felt anger even to have in the conversation and then came unexpectedly to see as unmistakable indications of tender points for Dear Friend. Sorry world, you do NOT get details about this with respect to Dear Friend, though RantWoman is weighing what she wants to share about herself.

But for now, the main thing RantWoman needs to share is a need to bathe and catch a bus.

In the Light