Freight Train: One for Elijah

The Safest Sex Offender craves clarity, so a recent Business Meeting featured a 15-minute discussion about whether he gets to use the new restroom in the cloakroom or gets to traipse even further among possible opportunities to restimulate survivors using the same other restroom he has been using for years.

Bear in mind, RantWoman hears all kinds of different things from people who identify as abuse survivors: some are happy Meeting has the ministry but feel no need to participate. Others express really clear easily actionable preferences that people are not even tuned in to listen to. Still others are seriously into "everyone has issues / survivors in their lives..." RantWoman's are not the only ears in the picture but RantWoman hears not a single one expressing any need to micromanage with chaperone in tow where the Safest Sex Offender... uses the restroom.

After the same Business Meeting, RantWoman had a discussion that boiled down to an argument about whether one person with one set of survivor issues knows what's best for a committee that has clearly reported feedback in a different direction from others who also identify as survivors. Who the heck is Business Meeting, let alone one specific individual to say what others' experience has to be, to be unprepared to listen to what matters most for different individuals???


RantWoman to clerk of Oversight Committee: "You are not hearing from identified survivors about increasing participation in Meeting life by the Safest Sex Offender on the Planet but you should not assume you are not hearing from survivors about other things."

Frankly, RantWoman, speaking for herself and worse yet presuming to speak for others based on what she does hear, actually does not necessarily particularly WANT to hear every piece of survivor issues she hears, let alone think about language and spiritual practice to live with it all. In fact, RantWoman SOMETIMES would really love to handle the possibility of undiscovered survivor issues by some symbolic equivalent of leaving a chair for Elijah at Passover. The question is, can our Meeting, now today, in its current state of ongoing evolution agree on some symbols and conventions with any less trouble than it takes just to deal with...?