Circulated dissent: “On Being Legible”

To the stewards of the houses —

We have become difficult to read from outside, and I do not think we noticed it happening.

Consider what a stranger must now learn in order to attend a Thursday: what an observance is, what a circle is, what separation means, why one chair is empty, what it means to be described as continuous. Each term was introduced for a good reason. Together they constitute a language, and a language is a wall with a door in it.

I am told this is the natural vocabulary of any long practice. It is. It is also the natural vocabulary of any body that has decided, without announcing it, that outsiders are a category rather than people.

I ask three things. That every term in ordinary use be defined publicly, in plain words, in the Journal. That the Record be described to members in a document they may keep. And that the phrase “no longer continuous” be retired, since it describes a person as a property of our administration.

— G. Idris

APPENDED REPLY, 4 March 1993: The stewardship thanks Steward Idris. The first request is accepted and the glossary will be published. The second is referred to continuity review. The third is declined; the phrase is descriptive and no better one has been proposed.