Bad Committee: too much clearness, not Quakerese

RantWoman has lately been asking herself whether certain recent experiences mean she is uniquely overachieving in several areas of dysfunction or whether she is just gifted about walking into other's dysfunctions--or both.

RantWoman is amused by the following item about dysfunctional Clearness Committees

http://www.friendsjournal.org/bad-committee-no-clearness-you



RantWoman has written elsewhere of a previous clearness committee experience, but RantWoman feels she must identify some dysfunctions along with query as to whether the problems are unique to RantWoman:



--Clearness Committee as the wrong venue for developing job descriptions for key committee.

--Clearness Committee as wrong training venue for would-be practitioners of conflict resolution.


--Clearness Committee as process check about the degree to which the concept of Clearness Committees is alive in one's Meeting.


--Clearness Committee as language laboratory: RantWoman became even clearer as a result of her previous committiee than she already was that Compost is appropriate Quakerese. RantWoman will leave to her readers' imagination terminology management about what Compost would be in more or less standard English, with one exception, the question of Register.

Register is a language geek term for the concept that people of different station sometimes use different words to mean the same thing. Sometimes interpreting wildly different phrases all to one term in a target language means the interpreter is oversimplifying, failing to convey nuance. RantWoman here cites the testimony on equality, in addition to her struggles about Quakerese: Compost refers to several different phrases in standard English, all of which are left to readers' imagination.

(Speaking of Compost, RantWoman apologizes: she still has not gotten around to interacting with the Composting Quakerism podcasts.)

--Clearness Committee as vessel to generate more material for one's spiritual compost heap. RantWoman finds herself meditating about the words condescending, patronizing and dismissive. RantWoman could also find cause to meditate about appropriate Quakerese for "insensitive" and "clueless." RantWoman wishes any Friend had a monopoly on the behaviors that evoke these adjectives. At the moment RantWoman is composting a good bit of raw data in the context of another discussion in her Meeting. RantWoman MEANS to post about the other discussion, but is pointedly NOT clear yet what to post, especially while things are getting worked out in her Meeting's seasoning process.


Meanwhile, RantWoman has finally gotten around to asking for a clearness committee to help her adjust her presence in Meeting life after midlife vision meltdown. True to RantWoman form, RantWoman has become clear that she has plowed into problems bigger than her own issues alone; RantWoman is VERY grateful for sounding board while she figures out more about her own issues and bigger problems.


RantWoman is also VERY excited to have recently attended a workshop about clearness and support committees and RantWoman is very excited about the possibility of inviting Marge to her Meeting at some point in the future.