This meditation is mainly about conversations about welcoming people of all genders, but it a little bit spills over into other dramas. RantWoman would highlight two moments of shifting opinion, one Oh Wow about a child's experiences, and a moment to hold in the Light because words still need to be found for the right conversation.
RantWoman today read a tweet from someone who was told they were supposed to be grieving because their partner was transitioning. The Tweet's author complained about how, yes there are things to grieve, but the opinion that the conversation is about the situation's inconvenience TO THE PARTNER not the person transitioning de-centers the person transitioning and makes the the story about the partner. The person transitioning is becoming her true self.
At risk of stretching the metaphor completely out of shape, RantWoman is going to borrow the metaphor to talk about adjustment to disability: RantWoman's inclination is to focus as much as possible on what she has, not what she has not. RantWoman's emotional pooper scooper keeps goind AWOL about others' interaction with her midlife vision loss. Lately sometimes RantWoman has stumbled over gratitude and compassion noting some Friends' struggles with advancing age. For Rantwoman there is a new different self. There is a new "true self." The process is NOT grief-free but in the best case there is a whole lot of forced inventiveness and opportunity to be grateful for...(Um, Rantwoman maybe focus on the emotional pooper scooper issue and work on gratitude in another post)
NPYM Minute on welcoming people of all genders
(No, RantWoman, do not try to tackle "welcome" and disability tonight. Just do NOT.)When NPYM was considering its minute about welcoming people of all genders, there was extended worship during a plenary. Three comments stuck out:
One doctor spoke of regret: early in their career, they had refused to write a refill prescription for someone experiencing gender dysphoria, transitioning.
One friend spoke with great drama of having changed their own mind fairly recently. rhe friend did not speak of the path toward continuing revelation but RantWoman distinctly remembers the drama of the announcement. RantWoman has also observed: this Friend does dramatic presentation well in many situations.
One Friend spoke of travels as a child around NPYM being spokeskid for same-gender parenting. RantWoman kind of sat up straight listening to the message. RantWoman weirdly has not talked a lot directly about being queer, questioning and growing up in NPYM country. Quaker Honorary Auntie was not a part of the local SMALL Quaker meeting and only started sometimes attending Meeting when visiting the RantFamily long after RantWoman ran away from home to go to college. RantWoman has also realized that several other Significant Quaker Figures in RantWoman's life are people RantWoman knew not because of participating in Quaker meeting but because of some other connection.
But the Fruiend's spokeskid message kind of made RantWoman go "Oh WOW." See, RantDad was quite overweight, wore the same weird glasses as RantWoman, and sometimes came to school to play his bassoon. All of that was more than enough outlier among RantWoman's public school classmates before the question f being queer even came up. And RantWoman will not even talk about protection from bullying, only the safety of being in worship, even worship in a pretty imperfect community. But being quaker spokeskid for same gender marriage seems to RantWoman like it would be another whole degree of out of the ordinary.
RantWoman acquired a lot of worship habits from worship at the church where RantDad directed the choir Rantwoman did not experience sensitivity about teenage life issues.. RantWoman did not acquire conflict resolution skills there but over time and visits to many faith communities, ONE RantWoman take on the testimony on Equality: ALL faith communities have their soap operas. That is part of the faith community gig. Soap operas are part of the process of weaving communities together. RantWoman can do FURIOUS about many things easily, but lately RantWoman has been tripping over other threads too.
Tonight RantWoman is stuck on a moment in Business Meeting when something she said sent another Friend screaming from the room crying and shouting about "Lies, Lies, Lies." RantWoman has no memory of what she said. The moment came up in a conversation with someone else who witnessed it and also had no idea what had set off the moment of drama. RantWoman remembers thinking "Friend, can we start with how experiences look to RantWoman?" RantWoman remembers a family member of the offended Friend growling at RantWoman to APOLOGIZE. RantWoman remembers flickering back and forth between "gets so upset she cannot talk" and "Friend, if you make me speak right now, NOTHING good is going to come out of my mouth." RantWoman THINKS there is a piece of some conversation about sound system but is unsure.
Digression: "RantWoman, you have a therapist. You know there are more pieces than here. Why you gotta splatter all this all over the internet and even worse refer to prayer?"
Uhhh, for one thing RantWoman is the sort of therapy client who can dance around something for nearly an entire appointment and then MAYBE have something stumble out of her mouth just in time to pay the therapist who, thank you very much, is not in RantWoman's provider network But if RantWoman writes it down.... At the most recent appointment, RantWoman's therapist asked some how is this going for you questions to think about. RantWoman realized that frightening as the "just please pray before you go there" zone her blogs are, probably asking her therapist to poke through some of the entries would be entirely reasonable.
Entirely reasonable.
In the meantime, dear universe, please hold this soap opera in the Light while RantWoman conducts vocabulary lessons.
In Light and faithfulness.
RantWoman.
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