Red and Blue Members of Congress once worked together to pass a law that blocked Big Oil from sending its supertankers into the pristine waters of Puget Sound.
It took Congress just 48 hours to pass it.
This lawmaking miracle took place back in 1977. I witnessed it. To me, though, it merely proved what neighbors, working together, can accomplish.
To lawmakers back then, our nation’s capital was simply their neighborhood, the place they all lived. Red and Blue argued by day, then broke bread together on weekends. Friendships formed. And America’s work got done.
Things changed when lawmakers began bolting for their districts at the end of each week. Weekend mingling ceased. Friendships faded. Contempt for the other side crept in. And America’s work stopped getting done.
Friendship is the key to doing America’s work. And neighborhoods remain the place where friendships are formed.
I have recently come to believe that neighbors who volunteer to serve on the boards of their neighborhood associations are the stewards of these precious bonds between neighbors.
Boards take this responsibility seriously. I have witnessed one board whose motto for the past twenty years has been that “This, too, shall strengthen our union.” While this board has never once uttered those words, its response to conflict between neighbors has consistently given voice to its core belief.
Early on, some early adopters of a new product pushed the board to change community standards to conform to the product that these owners had already begun using, but neighbors who bore the brunt of that use pushed back. So the board responded by creating a process by which early adopters could build the community support needed to truly justify a change in community standards.
Later, three pit bulls escaped from a fenced back yard, scaring neighbors and cornering the cop who had been called in to help. So the board responded by holding a hearing at which neighbors and the pets’ family each had their say. Outrage fueled what each side said. But in the days that followed, what the other had said finally sank in. As each side gradually began to grasp what was really at stake for the other, hardline positions softened, and the conflict finally ended with the pets becoming members of a family somewhere else.
More recently, national events created a heightened need to express one’s support for an end to the suffering of others. So the board responded by temporarily easing its restrictions on political signage, and signs pledging allegiance to this viewpoint or that began to spread across lawns like dandelions. When the exemption ran out, the board then paused before deciding what to do next. It asked owners what they thought it should do.
Half thought it was time to restore order.
Half felt their beliefs still needed to be expressed to their neighbors.
Order and compassion. Head and Heart. Red and Blue. America’s civil war had finally infected their neighborhood.
Of course, our heads and hearts are designed to function as one. Sever them in two and each will cease working. And yet a crisis risks doing just that. Our heads seek order while our hearts are stirred by compassion, and the two begin pulling apart.
So as the need for order and compassion began pulling their neighborhood apart, what the board chose to focus on was the word “and.” Order and compassion are not mutually exclusive. These two core values co-exist. Jonathan Haidt, in “The Righteous Mind,” explains that Red and Blue both value order and compassion. It is just that each has its thumb on a different side of the scale.
The board’s history of responding to conflict had taught it that, as stewards of the bonds between neighbors, it should amplify the “and,” then give “and” the time to win out.
The art of crafting laws and rules is, after all, the art of finding that sweet spot, where order and compassion can join hands. To Congress, it is a lost art. To neighborhood boards, it is the art that circumstances compel them to master. In undertaking to amplify the “and” between these two opposing forces, these volunteer boards now shoulder the burden of doing America’s work.
America’s work is – and has always been – that of forming “a more perfect union.” That in-between “and” is where this union exists, embodied in the bonds of friendship between neighbors.
And because volunteer boards are now making it their mission to safeguard these bonds, America’s work still gets done.