I've had the privilege for seven or eight years now of working with the Innovation Center, first as an adult partner in a youth-adult partnership in Maine, and since then as an occasional contributor to publications, like this newsletter, to tell the stories of the communities and individuals who are affected by this work all over the world.
I always feel, after one of those conversations, like I've experienced a moment in the presence of grace, something clearly, cleanly hopeful.
But I have a different story to tell this time. This time it’s about the place where I live -- a tiny, underemployed northern New England town. And it’s about the possibility of another story altogether.
I have a neighbor, I’ll call him Roger, who dug the cellar hole for my house, built the driveway and plows it in the winter. Roger loves to talk, so I wasn’t surprised one morning this fall when he pulled over to the side of our dirt road and rolled down his window.
But on that particular day, Roger’s face was clouded. He told me that he’d been driving down to the center of town a few evenings a week this fall to wait for his wife, Sandy, so he could drive her back up the hill after her daily run. The center of town is a war memorial set in a bit of grass along the river. Across the street is the old town church surrounded by a waist high stone wall.
"The wall" is where the young people gather. Roger knows this wall. He was one of those boys twenty some years ago. And he knows many of these young people -- he went to high school with their parents, they’re friends of his step-daughters, or they’re older siblings of his younger children’s friends. So on one particular evening, as Roger sat in his truck and watched them while he waited for Sandy, he smiled to himself, thinking about that time in his life.
Then a car pulled up, and two men Roger didn’t know stepped out. A lot of the young people hopped off the wall and gathered around the car, as if they’d been waiting for it. Roger watched as the two men exchanged small bags for cash. There was still plenty of daylight, and the young people knew Roger was there -- they’d nodded and waved at him just minutes earlier.
So it was hard for Roger to believe what he thought he saw, and he decided to drive down the next night. Again, the same car, the same men, a larger group of young people this time, and a third man, who Roger could see had a handgun tucked in his waist. Roger is a big man, well-liked and respected in town, and he’d thought he might step out of his truck, walk across the street, ignore the men and speak to the teenagers he knew from town. But once he saw the handgun, he drove instead up the hill to a pay phone to call the state police.
The state police could do little for this small town with no police department, in the midst of a whole state to patrol. For a while a small group of parents came to the wall every evening just to be a presence, but they couldn’t stay all night, and eventually their other responsibilities got the better of the early evening vigils.
So the center of this little town is free of obstacles to what everyone understands is a thriving drug trade at the wall. I drive by there every week day on my way home, and I often see the car with the three men, and I often see the group around it. And I never stop. I drive on, not knowing what to do.
But I’m missing a link; I write about the Innovation Center tool kits. I write about the people whose communities have changed as a result of the activities and ideas created and tested by thousands of younger and older people across the country and in other parts of the world. And here I am, on the edge of the possibility of grace.
I have copies of all of the Innovation Center tool kits on my bookshelf. So I pull down Building Community, just to see, and I’m reminded right away of what others have done, others who started with just a collection of caring young people and adults, people like Roger and me. They started, some of them, with the “charting youth involvement” activity on section 2. We could do that: even I know, living here with no children of my own, that there’s the church, a lot happening at the school, there’s even a tiny start up youth drop-in night. I wonder what other connections and relationships we’d find?
We could do the “history wall” exercise in my living room, or I bet the church would lend us a space. Roger certainly would have something to add, and so would his mother who’s lived here fifty years. My friends Leslie and Dave have two kids in college who graduated from the local high school. I bet they would tell us what it was like when they were younger, when they started hearing about the wall. It would give us a sense of how we got here, and a start on how to shape a future out of that.
I remember hearing a group from a Native community describe their experience of exploring the “gift of place” with the guidance of the tool kit. They discovered gathering places, and sacred places they hadn’t all understood. Gathering places, like the wall. What is the history of that wall? I bet it has seen more joyful, even sacred, times than what happens there now. I wonder if we could figure a way to reclaim those? I wonder if there are other spaces, just as attractive to younger people who want to be together and watch the town pass by?
I flip through the pages and remember the many stories of community change I’ve heard and written about, change that came out of a few people trying out these ideas. I keep turning the pages. I’m reminded of ways to identify resources, broaden the circle of involvement, ways to more excitement about a thriving community. I begin to imagine riding my bike downtown myself on a warm evening, greeting my neighbors, and feeing connected. I begin to feel hopeful.
I know what the first step is, at least: the next time Roger plows my driveway this winter, I’ll get my boots on and step outside, and motion for him to roll his window down. I’ll invite him in for a cup of coffee. Then I’ll get the tool kit off the shelf again, and start to dog-ear pages, make a few phone calls. I think Roger and I, along with our older and younger neighbors, might have a different story to tell.
