In these times when anger / is turned into anxiety / and someone has stolen / the horizons and mountains, / our small emperors on parade / never expect our indifference / to disturb their nakedness. …
The media wraps everything / in a cellophane of sound, / and the ghost surface of the virtual / overlays the breathing earth. The industry of distraction makes us forget / that we live in a universe.
We have become converts / to the religion of stress / and its deity of progress; / may we have courage to turn aside from it all / and come to kneel down before the poor, / to discover what we must do,
How to turn anxiety / back into anger,
How to find our way home.
The late Irish poet John O’Donohue published To Bless the Space Between Us in 2008, long before the Trump afflictions, but for most of us the emotional landscape he describes above in his blessing “For Citizenship” feels very familiar.
Closer to home, the upcoming election has revealed a rift in Oak Park’s body politic. There is tension, disgruntlement, suspicion, charges of misinformation, charges of indifference to voter concerns, and, yes, anxiety. Oak Park is once again deciding who it wants to be in an uncertain world. Those of us who bother to vote (less than 20% of those eligible typically) will choose a village president and give an indication of who we’ve decided to be — just as Americans nationwide did in the presidential election, when the majority decided to live in a dysfunctional country and destroy their government. Predictably, chaos ensued.
That’s not where Oak Park is, at least not yet, but we are finding out how divided we are. One side wants more economic development to boost the tax base, combined with less government spending (that will surely cure everything!). The other side wants us to do a better job of living our values of diversity, equity, inclusion and sustainability.
Are we a true community — or a sack of fractured “sides”?
Most want a new police station and a full complement of officers. But village hall needs a rehab. How much will it cost? People are pissed off about having to bag their leaves last fall — or at least how that change was implemented. Some want new leadership. Some want to stay the course. We differ on how much, if anything, we are willing to do to achieve equity in our schools, in our institutions, on our streets — and how to keep those streets free of leaf mash.
We disagree on the kind of leader we need: An incumbent president who is a collaborator and facilitator … or a critic who is a loner on the village board of trustees? The critic wants to move in a different direction, but isn’t a team player, some voters say. The incumbent knows how to work with people, but isn’t pragmatic enough, others say.
We are approaching a crossroads. On the national level, as well as the local, back-and-forth is our modus operandi because we can’t figure out who we are. There is a long-running quarrel here between development and preservation. Is it either/or? Can we find our way to both/and? How do we honor the legacy of Percy Julian and save his house in a way that also attracts visitors who spend and support our businesses? What, if anything, should government do to make that happen?
We want a strong economy and a strong ecology. We want to be safe and secure and live our values. If we focus entirely on taxes and spending and ignore the values that got us where we are, we run the risk of losing everything we have been. Can we have it all? Is that too much to ask of our next leader?
Here’s the kind of person John O’Donohue blessed in his book:
For a Leader
May you have the grace and wisdom / to act kindly, learning to distinguish between / what is personal and what is not. / May you be hospitable to criticism. / May you never put yourself at the center of things. / May you act not from arrogance but out of service. …
May you learn to cultivate the art of presence in order to engage with those who meet you. … / May you treasure the gifts of the mind through reading and creative thinking / so that you continue as a servant of the frontier / where the new will draw its enrichment from the old, / and you never become a functionary.
May you know the wisdom of deep listening, / the healing of wholesome words, / the encouragement of the appreciative gaze, / the decorum of held dignity, … / May you have good friends / to mirror your blind spots.
May leadership be for you a true adventure of growth.
And may the best persons win.
Not for themselves, but for Oak Park and everything we stand for.