Quaker Brinksmanship?

This week has included several momentous openings and RantWoman is grateful for a number of gifts today. RantWoman is going to start slowly and definitely suspects the first pass may bounce around a bit including contradictions and still present confusion.

RantWoman has withdrawn her nomination in parallel with our very wise clerk postponing it indefinitely. There two reasons, a short-term commitment outside Meeting well within the window of the next nomination cycle AND Dear Friend has FINALLY done something RantWoman suggested he do EIGHT MONTHS AGO: put his concern in email. But let us try to handle things in some kind of sequence.

First the bus schedule kinks RantWoman has complained about since September result, when RantWoman catches the earlier of her bus options in RantWoman being able to spend almost an hour in worship before Meeting for Worship for Business. RantWoman attends 11:00 worship; for a good while, RantWoman's Meeting has on second First days, been starting Meeting for Business out of worship at 11:30. This unquestionably results in better centered Meeting for Business; it kinks other matters, but we feel clear to stick with it for now.

One kink for RantWoman is that RantWoman REALLY needs a full hour of worship every Sunday. Thus RantWoman has come to see at least the part of her bus realities that gets her to Meeting early as a gift. The other gift from Worship was a message. One Friend had given a message about some kind of memorial with a "regular pastor." Another Friend then had a message about Quakers all being "irregular pastors." This Friend spoke about how, in contrast to worship where the room focuses on a designated leader such as a synagogue, in worship at Friends Meeting she focuses on everyone present as distinct individuals. RantWoman heard this message in conjunction with reading of a couple other accounts of people experiencing Meeting for Worship for the first time to similar effect.


Second, RantWoman thinks our Meeting has a very wise clerk. Our very wise clerk thinks the Compost matter has already taken up too much time in Meeting for Business. Part of the reason for that is multiple hideous communications screwups but that is exactly why to be cautious. Further, our wise clerk asked RantWoman for clear signs. RantWoman IS very clear about a number of points, about which more shortly. However, despite some astounding brinksmanship, RantWoman really is not clear that the Compost matter belongs in Business Meeting. Our wise clerk gets the point that, even though RantWoman has emotional and process red flags going off all over the place, RantWoman is also more willing than many in our Meeting to engage with Dear Friend. Our wise clerk gets that RantWoman values the friendship, and enough people get both the red flags and the fact that RantWoman is a grownup about what risks she decides to deal with. Our wise clerk listened to RantWoman's comments about an outside commitment and to a desire to get ongoing announcements out of Business Meeting and indefinitely postponed the matter which saved RantWoman having to withdraw her nomination, a point she sort of did anyway at the end in Concerns when she also thanked Dear Friend about the specific email.


Third, RantWoman just agreed to take on a commitment that is both highly topical to said pastoral committee and related to openings still connected to our Year of Discernment, coincidentally openings that will unquestionably involve many Friends besides Dear Friend and an area where RantWoman has specific and topical expertise, expertise and topics Dear Friend was quite dismissive about in our clearness committee, in private conversation, and in multiple emails.

RantWoman is already clear that Nominating Committee gets a few points on her mind from the whole ordeal. RantWoman thinks there were communications, process, and committee member handoff screwups--in addition to RantWoman's screwups in how Nominating Committee handled the whole situation. RantWoman has a VERY clear aha message in an email from someone on Nominating Committee and RantWoman is VERY clear that that aha moment alone is worth what has already occurred.

The aha moment: Nominating Committee until now has invited Friends with concerns about a nomination either to speak to the Friend with whom they have a concern or to speak to Nominating Committee. UNTIL NOW, it has never occurred to Nominating Committee that the person being talked to might have a problem specifically with the person doing the talking to.

Despite the fact that RantWoman and Dear Friend are good friends, RantWoman was having ferocious problems, both on Quaker grounds and on personal grounds being articulate with Dear Friend. RantWoman having trouble talking to Dear Friend did not of course translate into RantWoman finding it easy to talk to anyone else either. As Dear Friend pointed out tonight, in addition to multiple other miscommunications, no one so far has put RantWoman, Dear Friend and members of Nominating Committee in the same room to talk. The closest anyone came to that was points where Nominating Committee memebers met first with Dear Friend and then RantWoman. RantWoman was blunt about her feelings and could not even dialogue in person. HOWEVER, that got Dear Friend and RantWoman back to communicating, at least by group email. After the October Business Meeting, a Friend suggested a Clearness Committee, about which RantWoman has posted elsewhere. RantWoman thinks she COULD have been more insistent about needing someone from Nom Comm to come to the clearness committee meeting.

RantWoman has evidence from multiple conversations similar to ones others must have had, that other people find it not easy to talk about hard stuff. RantWoman has on multiple occasions had the experience or observed Friends who do not know how to handle some kind of emotionally intense information they are given. RantWoman notes that doing Quaker forms right requires real grounding, something that must be different from the work of trained therapists or people with pastoral care training. RantWoman also notes that a few people seem to think that lifelong experience with Quakers automatically mean they know how to do different forms such as threshing or clearness or, as Dear Friend notes simple conversation.

Ordinarily, RantWoman would think that attending to this sort of concern would quite obviously fall under the part of said committee's charge about deepening the spiritual community of the Meeting. These again are not ordinary circumstances so let's just sit further with the circumstances we have.

RantWoman is VERY clear that she is going on strike about seasoning the matter with only herself and Dear Friend. RantWoman is clear that the clearness committee is the wrong venue and that others are expecting too much of the clearness committee. The POINT of RantWoman's perspective is that HUGE swaths of everything that have gone on between Dear Friend and RantWoman is matters that should properly be seasoned by more people than Dear Friend and RantWoman. RantWoman is also blisteringly clear that all that is needed to decide on a nomination is inclination and willingness to discern how to go forward about such concerns, not resolution of them. What was said in the Clearness process and subsequent conversations only confirmed these points. At this point there are no clear questions for further meeting of a clearness committee nor a conflict that can be resolved between Rantwoman and Dear Friend without the voices of our community.

RantWoman was ferociously clear to do something NOW.

RantWoman is not sure whether the quaking and tremulousness leading up to today's events means some personal quirks definitely qualify her as a Quaker, just a devious bitch, or a ferociously seeking human still evolving.

On the quaking and tremulousness front, two data points:

RantWoman sometimes gets so upset she cannot talk but can write email. Email alone of course is NOT sufficient, but perhaps RantWoman's task is just to start from this point. For the time being, RantWoman will just stop laboring the point and put it on her Quaker behaviors shelf.

Over the week, the question of what if anything should come to Business Meeting came up. RantWoman was fairly insistent that SOMETHING needs to go forward though shifting the conversation from Dear Friend and RantWoman to community matters would be highly topical.

RantWoman had conversations with the clerk; RantWoman wrote email to the list of Friends who have been reading so far. RantWoman sent fairly blunt comments to our clerk. RantWoman also posed a question:

Dear Friend keeps speaking of his issue in terms of a leading. RantWoman finds quite a bit of the way Dear Friend formulates his leading as personally insulting and disrespectful of herself and others. Dear Friend is clear of his leading and no one besides RantWoman has asked him whether he gets that RantWoman might find his phrasing insulting. That thought did not compute for Dear Friend in conversation with RantWoman. Nor has anyone addressed questions that might arise such as how the points Dear Friend is speaking of relate to qualifications for the job, let alone whether others might have different perspectives. RantWoman heard all this, concluded that her leading would be that God and the community need to weigh in; listening appears not always to be Dear Friend's strong suit.

Of course none of that matters yet because, the first question in true Quaker bureaucrat mode would be what would we do with this leading? In our Meeting this leading would be referred for further seasoning to the very committee that is the subject of the Compost thread. RantWoman's fairly blunt comments to our clerk about her perspectives, together with the point that RantWoman is having a massive stupid attack (well, a stupid attack as conversational device at least) created an opening where, RantWoman is guessing the Clerk asked Dear Friend to talk about his leading.

This, together with the firm point that as of the date of that exchange, the matter was still headed for Business Meeting, resulted in a brief but BRILLIANT illustration of exactly all the issues and allowed RantWoman to repose some questions to the to list. RantWoman has no freaking idea what should happen now that her nomination has been withdrawn, but RantWoman does sort of think SOMETHING should still happen. So we must again sit with next steps.

RantWoman several times seasoned the question of whether she might be too uncentered still to talk about this in Business Meeting. However, every time RantWoman addressed the question and tried to pick up the phone or send email about this point, she was stopped even though she also was ultimately stopped about a clear signal to go forward.

RantWoman hereby presents a list of people she thinks COULD have done better on multiple Quaker grounds:

--Dear Friend on seasoning his leading with more than just RantWoman at the very beginning and when RantWoman repeatedly told him she needed other voices.

--RantWoman

--current and past members of Nominating Committee

--the clerk

--other people who did not ask either Dear Friend or RantWoman very much.

So hold us all in the Light.

And forget whatever we ultimately need to solve global warming; we are struggling to talk to each other. Perhaps we need to start there.