And what a gift to have the next few weeks of meetings be less dread inducing! I can imagine what a weight that must lift to feel that. And I am curious to see how it plays out with Bill!

*mean that I have it.

Interestingly, I think one of the things that is happening is that turning in posture ‘toward’ Bill is helping me to allow him to be… nuanced. I am realizing I’ve been flattening him out into a binary of good or bad, but I’m better able to see that he’s good at some things and bad at others.

At the community meeting for the RV lot on Thursday night, he came up and sat next to me with the presenters, wearing his clergy collar, and I was annoyed- he was NOT asked to present or ‘lend his credibility’ to this event. But then in the Q and A from the community, there was a particular older white man that was coming up with somewhat agressive questions, and Bill walked over to Josh (facilitating the answers mic) and took the mic and very strategically answered the man, with kindness but also certainty and calling to his better nature- in a way that this particular man would only hear from another old white man. Bill used his old-white-man-ness very deftly in that moment, and again when the same man came up and played to the news cameras again.

so, my narrative about Bill was challenged, and I’m glad I happened to be open enough to catch that and adjust my heart about it.