The Mayor, the Pastor and the Handyman
Posted: Saturday, March 20, 2010
by Bing Limousin
DreamHill Farms
After Jimmy Lee Jorgen became mayor folks soon found out the difference between the way he really saw things, and the way he really thought things ought to be. It was not unlike the mice problem over at Jed's feed store as I remember.
Jimmy Lee Jorgen, the Mayor of Cloverton, had a perspective of the world that everyone thought they knew. They thought they knew it because he told them so. Prior to the elections the people expressed, in general terms, what they wanted him to do if he became the new mayor. They told him their concerns, their needs, and what they expected in solutions. Jimmy Lee spoke, and folks listened. They heard the same concerns and needs. They didn't hear the same solutions, but it was figured that first, the solutions' were fairly implied and not open to much interpretations and second, even two out of three was not so bad.
After he became mayor, it was not a question of the mayor focusing on only those things that needed to be changed for the better. They soon realized that the mayor didn't like anything about their town! The folks assumed that he was going to fix only those things that were broken, not fix everything! It is an easy thing that can happen to a person trying to do something big. Ask Jed.
Back to the mice problem over at Jed's feed store:
Everyone knew there was a big-time mice infestation problem. But it wasn't until Margie Flank got her bag of chicken feed home one day, poured it out, and a mouse plopped out of the bag staring back up at Margie as if introducing itself to a new friend. Then it became a problem for everyone. Margie was not amused, and she quickly sent that little rodent back to its Maker. She drove right back to Jed's, plopped its carcass next to the register, and told him that if she ever found another critter in her feed again, she would take her business over to Lucasville from then on. And, she would tell all of her friends to do the same. Margie had a lot of friends. So Jed spent the next month, and a considerable amount of money, to make sure Margie's threat never materialized.
Jed's job was to sell feed to his customers. Instead he was feeding the mice.
Mayor Jimmy Lee also forgot who he worked for and what exactly they wanted him to do. The folks knew the difference. To make matters worse, he made the mistake one day of telling someone his real vision of the town's future. He told it in the strictest confidence, hoping that the person would keep their mouth shut. They didn't. And when folks found out how he intended to transform their town into something they wouldn't recognize, all hell broke loose.
It wasn't that they didn't want change. It was that they didn't want that kind of change.
If you ask anyone, "do you want change?" they are bound to answer, "Sure." I mean, who doesn't want change. But if you ask anyone, "Do you want to change the things that you feel comfortable about?" they say they want to think for a bit before they get back to you. They probably will never get back to you.
It wasn't that the folks rejected the mayor's vision of a new tomorrow. It was that they were not comfortable going from known uncertainty, to unknown uncertainty. This was a distinction that the folk in Cloverton felt comfortably easy to make.
In a defensive posture the mayor forgot his political etiquette and called the town folks "ignorant", for unwilling to try something new." As Merty Jobick, who ran the bakery, said, "Heck, I don't mind something new. I just don't want something new that is going to have a bunch of new problems." Her voice well represented most of the town's thinking,
The folks in Cloverton should have known better. If they had just asked the folks over in the town of Randolft they might have seen it coming. Like the Mayor of Cloverton, Pastor Irwin, leader of his flock at the Fountain of Life Church, could be thought of as a similar situation.
Everyone in Pastor Irwin's church would admit that they had issues requiring spiritual guidance. But what they got instead was the call for spiritual rebirth. In and of itself rebirth' is good, especially the spiritual kind. But what the good pastor failed to consider was that many in the congregation had already been reborn. I mean, how many times can you be reborn? Most of the congregation was interested only in moving beyond that transformation, onto some higher plane of self discovery. Though the good pastor never stated it plainly, he disagreed. His view of the world was so much different than theirs.
Both the Mayor and Pastor Irwin were chosen to serve. Both forgot why. Both eventually had to move on.
At the Barber Shop the other day, the whole try something new' episode was summed up in a story I had not heard in awhile: It was about the time when Billy and Marlo went away for the summer and asked their cousin, Buddy, to fix the leak in their garage roof. Well, when they got back in September they found that he had totally redesigned their house. It was not to their liking, and certainly not to their budget!
The real rub was that the first time it rained there were more leaks throughout the newly remodeled house than the original one in the garage. Most of their furniture had to be covered in plastic, and the carpets were ruined throughout. It took almost two years to get everything comfortable again.
In all three cases, the Mayor, the Pastor and the Handyman, they needed to do a job for folks, but translated that job only the way they thought it should be. They forgot the responsibility of who was working for whom.
When Marlo asked her cousin why he didn't call to ask if they wanted him to remodel their whole house, he answered, that he was scared that they might say "no".
He was right.
Enough said, Bing Limousin
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