Throughout Vermont this week, people gathered at schools and town halls and in churches and granges for their Town Meetings. It was a glorious sunny day and the ski slopes beckoned, but the gathering places were surprisingly full this year.
They came to vote. They came for lunch. They came to see their neighbors and they came to discuss the issues before their towns. They brought their town re-ports, their knitting, their reading glasses, their ques-tions and they brought their opinions.
But they also brought their respect. They brought the ability to listen to each other and their elected officials and beyond just listening they brought the ability and desire to hear and understand other view-points. And that’s all we really need, right? We don’t have to agree with each other all the time, but we do need to hear and understand each other.
At the north end of our watershed, in the town of Mid-dlesex, Pat Allen, a member of the Middlesex Select Board (and the first woman to serve on that board), opened her town’s meeting with this invocation:
“Welcome to the Middlesex Town Meeting. We have come together in civil assembly as a community in a tradition that is as old as our state itself. We come to-gether to make decisions about our community. As we deliberate, let us advocate for our positions, but not at the expense of others.
“Let us remember that there is an immense gap be-tween saying ‘I am right’ and saying ‘I believe I am right,’ and that our neighbors with whom we disagree are good people with hopes and dreams as true and as high as ours. And let us always remember that in the end, caring for each other in this community is of far greater importance than any difference we may have. Welcome.
”That pretty much sums it up.
All opinions are welcome and will be respectfully heard. We’ve got town business to do, so let’s get on with it And let’s never forget we always have more in common than we don’t.
Kudos to select woman Allen in Middlesex, Ver-mont.–LAL
