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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday September 2, 2002 Volume IV Number 35 |
FOCUS - Miss Congenialty
I sometimes wonder if the old tradition of civil dialogue between opposing parties exists any more.
Whatever happened to Roberts Rules of Order?
I’m old enough to remember a time when, in a democratic society, everyone had “a say.” The meeting was designed to give each individual, no matter what his or her station or point of view, an opportunity to express an opinion. The theory was that better decisions come from greater input and broader perspectives. If we fail to hear from everyone, particularly those who are most affected by a community decision, we’ll miss something important.
But in the realm of public dialogue, it seems to be a lost art.
As a card carrying Boomer, I live with the hard realization that it is my generation that dismantled the idea of Roberts Rules. Parliamentary Procedure has gone the way of the British Royalty – an old fashioned ornament with little relevance. We are the generation that boycotted class in our college days because we believed that the government was hopelessly corrupt, that institutions existed for the sole purpose of exploitation of the oppressed, that tradition was irrelevant, and that time honored notions of good manners were something to be scorned. Ours is the generation that confused insult and outbursts of righteous rage and public profanity and offence and rudeness and insolence and vulgarities and obscenities with free speech. We believed, I guess, that the atrocities were so blatant (and frankly, many of them were) that we were justified in jettisoning the “system,” as we called it, and starting over with a new paradigm. Now there’s a new Darwinian principle at play, the loudest bully wins. Survival of the fittest is now survival of the most annoying. The most irksome. We replaced Roberts Rules of Order with the World Wide Wrestling Federation. The biggest baddest Intimidator wins.
It seems like much of the world as we know it is a Jerry Springer Show. In the quest for ratings, we’ve elevated point/counter-point to a daily exasperating art form. We don’t really resolve our problems or reconcile our differences, we just shout about them, making sure that both sides have an equally obnoxious representative. And then we believe somehow that this “catharsis” is a healthy thing.
Effective leaders don’t have time for this kind of nonsense. We’ve got to see it for what it is, and then excuse ourselves and go find something better to do.
My religious tradition goes back to a polity we call “Congregational.” It isn’t, frankly, a biblical concept (though if you work really hard, you’ll find examples of co-operative decision-making in the New Testament where it appears as though leadership found a general consensus before taking a specific action). The Congregationalism in my tradition is rooted more in the American notion of Representative Democracy (which values the participation of every member in electing leadership) than in the dictates of the Holy Writ. It was primarily a reaction to Mainline Hierarchies. The rank and file who are my ecclesiastical forefathers did not intend to bend the knee and kiss the ring of some Cleric in a robe. There is only One Mediator, as the Scripture says. We don’t need any earthly substitutes for the Real Thing. So in our churches, at least a few decades back, Congregational Meetings enabled each member to stand up in boldness and be counted; to approach an open microphone and express themselves as they felt led.
But now, Congregational Meetings seem to be dying out; mainly because most of us would rather not attend. This free speech thing had given license to an often inarticulate group of whiners and complainers who have found something or another intolerable and are quite pleased to have the opportunity to say so in public.
Those meetings dominated by “free speech” can be a real downer.
I think that’s why so many Congregationalists have moved in the direction of Elder Rule.
Open meetings, whether they be neighborhood gatherings, political rallies, school board open sessions, or community action summits, too easily fall prey to the Springer Syndrome.
I attended such a community meeting this week.
* * * * * * * *
My brother brought it up during our golf game.
The first nine holes, just the two of us on a foggy morning, we couldn’t see more than thirty yards. When we finally got some visibility, Roger noticed that I could not see the ball at any kind of distance, even in the clear air, and suggested that perhaps my prescription was a little dated.
“How long since you had your eyes checked?” he asked, as only a brother can.
“Oh, I don’t know… coupla years maybe.”
“Ken, it’s not that expensive,” he informed me as I squinted and strained to see if my ball really was somewhere on that green out there.
I didn’t admit it then, but that was the moment I decided to make my appointment.
“What d’ya think Doc?” I asked as I plopped into the eye exam chair, “Am I a candidate for contacts?”
“Well,” she said, knowing full well I am, “that’s what we’re going to find out.”
And she had me looking into that lens, staring at a strange light in the dark tube, a light that would go fuzzy then sharpen up as she turned a dial on the other side of the machine. Then she flashed those letters up on the wall, and maybe it’s my age, but I had no problem admitting that those block Arial letters projected in the darkness were blurry and indiscernible, more than ever. “It’s either a P or an F,” I explained, “but Doc, for the life of me, I can’t tell the difference.”
“We’re gunna fix that,” she smiled, with a high degree of confidence.
After trying this and that setting, she finally settled in on a reading. Then she reached over for the last test result (over two years old) and she said, “Whoa.”
She scratched her head, looked back at her notes and then again at the record in her file and she said, “Wow, you really have changed in a couple years… this one’s a doozy.”
“A doozy?” I thought. Was that a category of diagnosis taught back there in optometry school?
“So Doc,” I said sheepishly, “like you think maybe I’m aging… or is it something terminal?”
“Oh no, no,” she slipped into her reassurance mode, “Ken, well, this just kinda happens. To just about everybody. Sooner or later.”
“So… I’m not gunna die or anything?”
“Nope.”
And I guess I felt better.
“But I must admit,” she went on. “I rarely see this big a change. No wonder you’ve been having trouble.”
I nodded pensively.
“Let’s try those contacts.”
“You mean NOW?”
It startled me because I thought I’d have some kind of waiting period while the good doctor ordered the precise prescription and in a week or ten days I might come in for my initiation. I was counting on some time to prepare myself.
That fear was rooted in an experience I had as a touring choir member, somewhere about age nineteen or twenty, when, with little else to do with about forty-five guys on a bus, I told my good friend John on a long stretch of our interstate journey that I would like to see what it’s like to wear contacts. He had a new pair, and for some reason known only to a twenty year old, I had this need to give it a try.
So the whole gang gathered around our seats at the back to watch as John removed one of those hard lenses from his eye, put it carefully in the palm of his hand as the bus bounced over the highway, and handed it to me with the warning, “don’t drop it, Ken.”
I asked for some direction and following John’s instruction, placed the tiny lens on my pointer finger, stretched open my eye with the other hand, and the guys watched in eager anticipation, wide-eyed themselves. I remember the clear realization of a thing called involuntary response. My eye wanted to shut. All on its own. It knew instinctively that this was not a good idea. But my hand over-ruled as I brought the pointer finger and lens slowly closer and closer to my naked, exposed eye. Then, just before the moment of contact, I stopped, looked up and declared, “I can’t do it.” And the guys groaned in disappointment and said things like, “C’mon… you can do it!” “Get some guts!” “Ya big chicken!” Things like this.
The little ritual went on three or four times, more laughing, more taunting, by now every passenger save the driver crowded around the back of the bus, everyone stretching for a clear line of sight, when just as my finger, loaded with a contact lens, a foreign object, poised in position, got within an inch of my eye, the bus hit a bump, causing the bowl shaped plastic disk to hit squarely on the cornea, and it stuck.
The crowd roared. Fists went skyward. “YES!” they shouted as one, as though someone had just scored a touchdown.
I had never felt such pain in my life.
Then they started laughing at me. Belly laughs. Heads back, screaming in some kind of perverted delight, elbowing each other and high-fiving, long, breathless hysteria, cackling and chortling as I hit the floor, tears streaming down my face as though someone had sandpapered my eyeball.
“John… HOW TO YOU GET THIS THING OUT?” I asked, a minor detail that hadn’t occurred to me until this terrifying moment.
It took several minutes to extract the lens made for someone else out of my eye. In the interim, a busload of college guys got the laugh of a lifetime, many of them, tears in their eyes from the hooting, as John hovered over me, thinking maybe I’d inflicted some kind of permanent damage on myself, and somehow, in what felt like an eternity, we got it out.
My eye was bright red and soaking wet.
“I’ll never do THAT again,” I said, sniffing back the juices. My entire head had turned on like a spigot.
That old memory flashed back, lingering as the good Doctor popped open a plastic container, revealing a fresh new contact lens.
For me.
* * * * * * *
Clyde is a Marine. I always put that in present tense because the old adage is true, there is no such thing as a “former Marine.” It’s a non sequitur. Once a Marine, always a Marine as the saying goes. Clyde flew helicopters in Vietnam, so fear of a fight is something he dealt with a long time ago.
Clyde built a beautiful garden on his six acres. Poured his life savings into it. But some of his neighbors just don’t like the fact that people come to see it. It’s an intrusion. Clyde likes to throw parties, and that also stirs up some resentment in the quiet neighborhood out in the country.
So they called a meeting. A select group of neighbors got the invitation, targeted at those who would be sympathetic with the meeting’s stated agenda – to save our neighborhood from Clyde and his garden. They would whip up support to file a complaint with the powers that be and get the authorities to shut Clyde down.
Clyde the Marine helicopter pilot understands the power of surprise. He later told me that he secured the loyal and clandestine services of a “mole” who has infiltrated the enemy camp and keeps him informed. Clyde planned his entrance carefully. He refers to his greatest neighborhood nemesis as “Miss Congeniality.” As she started the meeting this week, she clearly was unprepared for the untimely arrival of the subject of her rage. The target of all the animosities of this strategy session.
Attendance was greater than she anticipated. Several of Clyde’s supporters, including Carolyn and me, showed up. At the appointed time, she stood up in the public meeting hall and addressed the neighborhood assembly, “I guess it’s time we begin. As you all know, we are gathered here tonight because…”
Clyde, who waited in the wings, on cue, appeared at the doorway and completed a startled Miss Congeniality’s sentence…
“… because of ME,” he announced.
There was an audible gasp.
It took nearly two hours. At several points, it was near pandemonium.
There were no Roberts Rules in the room.
And yet, in time, the foolishness of it all floated up to the top like the boiling up of microscopic bugs out of your drinking water.
Afterwards, Clyde shook hands with some of his enemies, invited them over to the house to talk about their concerns.
I think they will.
Maybe, just maybe, most all the folks in the neighborhood will embrace the beauty and wonder of the garden next door.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader with a little time to yourself today.
On this long weekend take that time for reflection and celebration.
This is the first LeaderFOCUS of my fourth year. For three full years, I haven’t missed a Monday. I’ve reached a place in my life where I cannot imagine a weekend without writing to you; sharing some of my reflections.
Thanks to the many who take time to relay your thoughts.
The contact lenses fit fine. I wonder why I waited. I see better. I’m liberated from glasses. I have a real pair of sunglasses for the first time in many years.
“You are a miracle worker,” I told the good doctor. She seemed to like that. It made her smile. I think she knows. She is.
I’m not sure Clyde considers this week's confrontation over there at Camp Caroline a victory. Some of his neighbors were cruel and abusive; but he doesn’t seem deterred in his mission to offer us all a taste of the Original Garden where the First Man and the First Woman discovered one another, unashamed, in the fragrance of innocence back at the beginning of time. Similar dynamics reign whenever a couple, young or old, takes a walk, hand in hand, around the pathways and over the water-bridges and through the branches and under the shade trees and noticing the blooms and the color up and around the waterfalls of Clyde’s backyard work of art.
Whatever good thing you are working on, your lifetime masterpiece, know this: Someone will take offence. Someone will try to take it away. Someone will spend an inordinate amount of time frustrating your plans. Someone will misunderstand.
Take it from Clyde. It’s worth fighting for.
I can see clearly now.
Take time to clip a rose.
Give it away.
Posted in Valley Center, California - Thanks to my IT Assistant James Kemp for his able assistance this week..
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
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