Let The Ripple Run

My dad once ran for school board in the small rural town where I grew up. There was some fuss about our superintendent-- best I remember-- though specific fuss about what I’m no longer sure. (If indeed I ever was.) I just remember people being wound up. Almost everyone in the 14 square miles of our oil-field community had pledged allegiance to an opinion and thus had chosen a side. Our tiny town was as fractured as an oil-and-gas pay zone after the drilling is done.

And my dad--of all people--was vying for a chance to enter the fray.

It was so out of character for him. Dad hated to be in the middle of anything.  Shy by nature, he much preferred to lean against a wall. Though he had staunch political opinions and almost always ran hot or cold, he was a man who mostly kept his druthers to himself. The spotlight made him break out in hives, so I couldn’t imagine what on earth had goaded him enough to throw his hat into this very public ring. 

But he did. And he wasn’t the one who won.

I don’t remember much about the campaign, except that my brother and I were charged with canvassing the neighborhood to knock on doors and hand out flyers (and that we spent most of our time praying no one would be home.) The rest of it is mush. Once the race was over, our life went right back to the way it had always been, almost as if the school board election never even happened. And the great divide in our splintered town somehow bridged itself. 

But I have always wondered what got into my dad.

I can only assume he did it because he felt strongly about whatever it was the fuss was all about. But his courageous attempt at difference-making sent a deeper message to me. And every time an election rolls around, I think about what he did. 

I’m not sure my dad ever really wanted to serve on the school board. As a matter of fact, I’m pretty sure his loss was a relief. I think he did what he did because it was what he felt like he needed to do. He needed to take a stand. He wasn’t a politician. He wasn’t a businessman. He wasn’t an orator or a strategist. But he knew what happened with our schools mattered. Our school was the hub of our community. And he knew that what the leadership of our school system stood for determined the future of our town. He most probably also understood that schools fuel communities and communities fuel states and states fuel the country we are proud to call our own. Not the other way around.

We get that upside down sometimes.

Retrieved from https://quotefancy.com/

Dad’s example said to me: Start close to home. Do what you can. Let the ripple run. 

I think of that sometimes when I’m inclined to act as if there’s nothing I can do. Whether it be a quandry or a stand-off or a fear I do not understand. The problems of our world are so massive. So intricately complex. So deeply rooted in blind generational commitment to hate or loyalty or some other form of glue that the committed can’t even name. It seems so outside my reach. And yet, the enormity doesn’t give me license to not do anything.

Change often starts out tiny. If I can draw a circle around my feet and shore up kindness there, I make a dent.  If a group of people can lean in to understanding, pop the cork on grace, and sit for a minute with a belief in their lap that doesn’t happen to be their own, then pretty much anything becomes possible.  It’s not about where we’re standing. Or the size of the thing, even, that we‘re holding in our hands. It’s about just doing something. The ripple does the rest.

When I was a kid, my dad would take me pond fishing on the outskirts of town. I fished with a minnow and bobber attached to a Zebco push-button and he with a spinning reel that tethered a plastic worm. My casts would go about five feet out from the bank—if I was lucky--scarcely clearing the algae. They’d plop in the murky water with a splashy, boisterous kerplunk. Dad’s toss would whiz out into the very middle of the pond, the hook and lure entering the water seamlessly with a whisper as if his entire get-up had been invited in. Both of our endgames were the same, but his size, experience, technical understanding—and thus his tackle—were different from mine. He could reach places I couldn’t no matter how hard I tried. We both caught fish though. And both our casts, regardless of presentation, wrinkled the water creating sweeping circles of their own. Every single time. The size and speed of the undulations set in motion weren’t the same, but the ripple always ran.

It's hard to know sometimes where to start when chaos reigns, especially when the knots that need unraveling are wrapped in camouflage or seem so far away. But wherever we are is the mark. A wise man once said, “Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean.” Such alarmingly simple advice that we struggle to believe it is true.

Start close to home. Do what you can. And let the ripple run.

P.S. The Great Divide