Cornucopia with street crossing

Below is an actual email from RantWoman's archive with time stamps preserved. RantWoman retrieved it while factchecking who actually was present at a long ago Nominating Committee meeting where everything to do with disability was declared off topic. Who? Not one person RantWoman mentioned, but a different former Clerk of many things.

 

From: Friend whose current title implies one MIGHT wish to be able to expect more of her, aka "It's not Good for the Community Friend" before RantWoman managed to speak when she desparately needed to speak to someone of the Grab the Blind Person and bless them issue presented here.

Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 19:08:32 -0700 (PDT)

Subject: Re: It's about crossing the street

To: (RantWoman)

 

(emphasis added)

too much to read, RantWoman (with RantWoman's first name misspelled).

I do catch a desire to go slow and breathe, though

 

________________________________

From: RantWoman

To: Friend whose title ...as above

Cc: Previous holder of said title

Sent: Tue, June 14, 2011 5:37:46 AM

Subject: It's about crossing the street

 

Hi Friend

 

Thank you for the phone conversation last night.

 

Thank you for the thought about everyone having pain and suffering

being a choice. I think there is a difference between letting pain

show and suffering. More than one person has said I have seemed more

frustrated recently than in the past. Well, duh! On the other hand, I

decided about the time I turned 40 that I was going to stop pretending

that some lifelong problems didn't cause difficulty. If it has taken

this long and 2 detached retinas and a whole bunch of other stuff for

other people to notice, maybe I have been doing too good a job of

pretending for a long time.

 

There is a difference though between letting pain show and suffering.

If I let pain show it's because I do not have energy to keep hiding it

or because there are really good practical reasons I need to live in

physical reality. People should not assume that because I am letting

pain show that I am suffering. I am not letting pain show to cause

other people suffering. If others suffer on my account, God bless them

but it's not something I mean to cause. …

 

On the other hand, I am not exempt from responsibility for causing

pain if the cause is within my control and part of the whole said committee thing

really IS a sincere effort to figure out whether I am causing other

pain in a way I can control and need to fix OR whether I just need to

take up space for my reality the same way everyone else does about

children and travel plans and concert schedules. At this point I think

there is both but I am not getting good signals because of people not

dealing with what looks different because of vision loss. And then a

bunch of supposed elders need to consider whether we can TRY to

address conflicts like grownups. I am sorry the answer with the

current lot seems to be NO and people basically stopped talking and

being willing to interact.

 

So that's one issue with my continuing proviso regarding people

talking ABOUT me, not TO ME.

 

But back to Drama in Meeting for Business. Thank you for mentioning my

nomination. Again, I expect that was considerably more talking ABOUT

me than talking TO me. Very few people realize half the issue has to do with crossing the street and the other half has to do with my repeated ccrack about Hospitality Committee being pastoral care plus knives and hot liquids. Whatever do I mean?

 

I actually LIKE going walking with a certain Friend. (For the record, Conflict Is a Gift of God Friend)  I have lots of people in my life with mobility challenges. That Friend has bad knees but he sets a better pace than lots of other people I frequently travel with. He has ONE problem though: he is a lousy sighted guide in the first place but in the second he thinks I should be willing just to expect that multiple lanes of traffic will see my white cane at numbers of times when it looks to me like he is just unwilling to walk to the stop light. In split second decisions, I don't need to argue

with that Friend. I don't need other people to season things for a few millenia. I just need not to get run over.

 

The knives and hot liquids issue has to do partly I guess with me still needing space for some feelings about vision loss and with an incident involving that Friend and another Friend I have also had occasion to observe over time in Meeting and out of Meeting. Both have

hidden disabilities and it actually took ME many MONTHS of reflection to get a couple really important points about what was under anyone's control and what was not. There are BIG hold tenderly points on both sides of that incident AND big issues of ME needing to come to a

better centered place about issues on both sides. I am of two minds about whether any of that should have played out in more detail in Meeting for Business. Like I say, there are BIG hold tenderly points which are not "Get out of jail free." I don't think it's necessarily terrible for a community to know each other's sore places. In general I think the choice to bring it up belongs to the person involved BUT I think there is room for Friends to observe and then decisions about

how to handle tenderly, a point where I know there is various history in Meeting.

 

These points are tangled with some other bad boundaries on my part and with some other basic respect for my time issues and some other vulnerability because for instance of new barriers for me about reading. Then there are some other Quaker world according to that

Friend not being world according to others points. Only the latter really made it to Meeting for Business. When I find ways to take responsibility for my own needs and see past my personal rage and irritation, I think some of what happened was a valuable exercise in

Quaker process and in seeing what Friends get or don't get. I do not

think my nomination was the best vehicle for that. In fact, if I wanted to be in suffering mode, I could have a really big tirade about a number of isms and why (RantWoman) instead of other vehicles but sometimes we go with what we have. Business Meeting is on the minds of

multiple people in our community and I expect more will work itself

out in the fullness of time.

 

But why IN THIS CASE let things go to Business Meeting?

 

One reason is the talking ABOUT vs talking TO.

 

Another issue is that I have FULL STOPS about people not even trying with a clearness committee and about the decision being made not involving a conversation among all committee members and no interaction with my question about how is Spirit moving among us. I think this is a particularly big problem because I frequently experience the incoming clerk as very disrespectful and dismissive and

insensitive about others' reactions and because I do not see the other

people wanting to throw me off the committee as being able to model conflict resolution.

 

Still another reason is how little respect Nominating Committee showed for my time and discernment. Because no one on W&M talked to me directly, I ONLY got secondhand mush when ( 2 Friends) talked to me.


At that point, I took IMMEDIATE action to try to get direct

information and made LOTS of efforts to hear people.

 

[In the conversation referenced here, members of Nominating Committee including a VERY Weighty Friend declared everything to do with disability and reasonable accommodations off-topic]

Conversations with Nom Comm were all about why won't I resign. When I

tried to explain interactions between(a certain committee) experience and

accommodations, I heard NO willingness by Nom Comm to reconsider. I

stand by the point that came up multiple times that I was called to

ask whether Nom Comm was seasoning the wrong questions.

 

I had told Nom Comm multiple times multiple ways that I was unclear

but that knowing what roster they intended to propose might have made

a difference in my discernment. I finally sent (members of Nominating Committee) a "cut

the crap" email on Saturday night and when I saw there were no new

names, I became VERY clear that I needed to be heard. IF there had

been new names, I am not sure how I would have been led differently

but I definitely would have been led differently. At this point I am

clear about some "we are all ministers of God" points and that is

enough said for now.

 

(paragraph omitted)

 

In the Light

 

RantWoman