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Thursday afternoon i met in person with someone not-family for the first time since the pandemic began.
I am aware how privileged i am at this time -- my contentment at sharing a home with another introvert, neither of us feeling any sort of cabin fever. I have become less resistant to Christine's downs, and i fear my downs pull her down too. This is different: for so many years, we could lean on the other, an odd flow of energy that allowed one of us to be in a good place while the other was not.
I'm fortunate too that my sister's family is also disciplined about isolation to keep my mother safe. I admit that i fear for myself: not mortality from the virus, but of yet another chronic diminishment to layer on others. So we are strict with our isolation, but it hasn't been a burden.
So, Thursday i met in person with C-- and discussed my clerking meeting. We may have healed the discord she felt, and she's likely to be a little more supportive of some things that -- well, she had proposed and had led me to feel like accepting the clerk role. But, gah, she really isn't interested in mediated gatherings, and as i lightly debriefed with Christine -- the blindness to privilege was really apparent.
I've dealt with the tensions of in person and remote staff inclusion for years, and the privilege of being with the in-person group and the challenges of being the remote person. Everyone being remote levels the playing field. I try to be compassionate and look for a frame for the people who find the mediated interaction insufficient: thus meeting in person with C -- .
I also have such a hard time with C-- being so attached to a worship space -- as a Quaker. Not that i don't think there are spaces and places that can profoundly affect or connect humans to beyond human experience, and the Meetinghouse, with the springs on the grounds -- the springs! -- does have an energy i feel, too.
I think i am beginning to feel some clarity that the Meeting is not right for me in the long run. I've had a sudden perception of the Meetinghouse grounds as captivating and encouraging an attachment, not sinister, but some sort of dysfunction. And the dysfunction and trauma to Quaker communities in the south during the Civil War is not to be underestimated. I imagine the experience of the families that had struggled during the war with being treated as traitors and who were resented afterwards. And many DID leave to go west, but those who remained -- i can see a particular and peculiar energy of allegiance building.
The growing clarity is reassuring.
I am aware how privileged i am at this time -- my contentment at sharing a home with another introvert, neither of us feeling any sort of cabin fever. I have become less resistant to Christine's downs, and i fear my downs pull her down too. This is different: for so many years, we could lean on the other, an odd flow of energy that allowed one of us to be in a good place while the other was not.
I'm fortunate too that my sister's family is also disciplined about isolation to keep my mother safe. I admit that i fear for myself: not mortality from the virus, but of yet another chronic diminishment to layer on others. So we are strict with our isolation, but it hasn't been a burden.
So, Thursday i met in person with C-- and discussed my clerking meeting. We may have healed the discord she felt, and she's likely to be a little more supportive of some things that -- well, she had proposed and had led me to feel like accepting the clerk role. But, gah, she really isn't interested in mediated gatherings, and as i lightly debriefed with Christine -- the blindness to privilege was really apparent.
I've dealt with the tensions of in person and remote staff inclusion for years, and the privilege of being with the in-person group and the challenges of being the remote person. Everyone being remote levels the playing field. I try to be compassionate and look for a frame for the people who find the mediated interaction insufficient: thus meeting in person with C -- .
I also have such a hard time with C-- being so attached to a worship space -- as a Quaker. Not that i don't think there are spaces and places that can profoundly affect or connect humans to beyond human experience, and the Meetinghouse, with the springs on the grounds -- the springs! -- does have an energy i feel, too.
I think i am beginning to feel some clarity that the Meeting is not right for me in the long run. I've had a sudden perception of the Meetinghouse grounds as captivating and encouraging an attachment, not sinister, but some sort of dysfunction. And the dysfunction and trauma to Quaker communities in the south during the Civil War is not to be underestimated. I imagine the experience of the families that had struggled during the war with being treated as traitors and who were resented afterwards. And many DID leave to go west, but those who remained -- i can see a particular and peculiar energy of allegiance building.
The growing clarity is reassuring.
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