What It Feels Like to Be Here, Now

Last Thursday morning at the Chamber Coffee I heard the news that our Superintendent of Schools is leaving.  I also heard that Mercy Hospital is on an “unsustainable” course and will need to restructure how health care is delivered.  And this uncertainty for some of our city’s core institutions lays on top of other changes in one of our community banks and ongoing discussions about the future of our community college. 

 

The “new normal” of the post-recession economy is challenging for everyone.  It’s especially anxiety producing for smaller cities like Fort Scott and the surrounding region.  I encourage each of us to identify the forms this anxiousness takes in our own hearts.  If we can name and own how all this change makes us feel, it will be possible to channel the energy it produces into productive pathways.  Otherwise, it will come out as anger, negativity, blame, despair, and paralysis.

As I write this, I’m sitting in LaGuardia Airport for a flight back from NYC to Kansas City.  I’ve spent a weekend plus a day or two in CT and NYC (to officiate the wedding of a friend).  Being here reminds me what an amazing, wonderful, creative, energetic place this is.  My cabbie, who came to NYC from Hyderabad, India 28 years ago, said it well, “There’s no place like New York City; so many great people; so many opportunities for my daughters.”  Of course it has its problems too.

He asked me if people from the Midwest spend all their time dodging tornadoes.  He wanted to know what it’s like where I live.  I told him that people in Fort Scott are loyal, hard working, scrappy and resourceful.  They are full of simplicity, goodness and kindness.  They know how to get by with little fanfare.  They keep their heads down and work.  They are painfully aware of what it’s like to live in a place that many choose to leave.  They know in their gut that the community has plenty of challenges.

While Fort Scott and Bourbon County have a few boosters, in general I think we are too self-effacing, too reticent or unwilling to talk enthusiastically about the great people who live here and opportunities to participate in community life.  More often than not, we glamorize life in more populous places where there are “better” jobs and internalize the negative picture of small cities and their economic struggles.

I know that Midwestern folks don’t like therapy - (I’ll solve my own problems without anyone else’s help, dammit).  But the psychological reality of internalizing other people’s negative views of smaller, culturally insignificant places is an enormous block to our collective happiness.  What we need in our community is more spunk and pluck.  More grit and resilience and cantankerous pride.  My goal is to be a little bit more like the cabbie when I’m talking about life in Fort Scott – an enthusiastic, involved resident, proud to be a part of a unique place.

Here’s the truth.  No one from the wider world – not your family or friends, not the news or social media, and certainly not any magazines devoted to “best places to live” – is going to affirm your choice to live in a place like Fort Scott.  Rather, they will demean the place and the people.  They will make false generalizations about you and your relationships, your dreams and your work.  They will convey that you should be ashamed for not belonging to a thronging, job-filled city (which you will be very tempted to internalize and believe yourself).  As a spiritual leader and a man of prayer, I say, “*%#! them” (where “*%#!” = “I robustly disagree, yet wish God’s blessings upon them.)”

If you’re here, then be here.  Really be here.  Be here as a person involved in making this a great place to live.  Get involved.  Do stuff.  Create something.  Form relationships with others trying to make a difference.  Care.  Plant flowers.  Shop at Gene’s and Wood’s.  Shop at Mayco Ace.  Eat at places owned by local people.  Share your ideas for how to make your workplace better with your boss.  Give your own native curiosity room to flourish – read, explore, discover, and share all this with others in conversation (this will likely require that you sit in front of the TV less).

God loves and blesses this place and its people, inviting us all to pathways of flourishing and delight, kindness and creativity.  The news last week that our School Superintendent is leaving, joined with news from Mercy Hospital that some kind of large restructuring is coming is enough to make a person anxious.  My heart is anxious.  I can’t control such things and my mind bends towards worst-case scenarios.

But perhaps there is a path through all this anxiety that will be good for us in the long run.  Perhaps this is finally the time when we admit to ourselves that no one is coming to save us.  No big employer will save us.  Corporations not organically connected to a place are designed to siphon revenue to shareholders who don’t live here, then leave when there’s nothing left to siphon.  The future well-being of Fort Scott doesn’t depend on the revenue projections of Mercy’s accountants in St. Louis.  It depends on the energy and good ideas that emerge from all of us who bring our very best to the table.  In the words of mystic Julian of Norwich, all will be well. 

Our school board will find another Superintendent who wants the best for our kids and teachers.  Our FSCC board will see to it that the college refashions and repositions itself for another hundred years of effective education.  Our hospital – who knows? – we hope and pray for Mercy’s continued commitment to this place.  And if not, we’ll find the next best solution.  We’ve been through tough times before.  We’ll not only make it.  We’ll do it with the kind of hard won joy that comes only to those who learn to fight together for the life they want.

If you’re wondering what God has to do with all this . . . God is the energy within, between, and amongst us, enabling us to summon our best courage for the path ahead.  I’m glad we’re here together.