A Place in the Choir

Last evening hundreds of community members gathered for the Board of Selectmen meeting here in Littleton in response to comments made by a Select Board member expressing concerns about three new community murals.

I woke this morning with a few reflections and words I shared with the Board of Selectmen this morning.

Dear Littleton Selectmen, Roger Emerson, Carrie Gendreau, and Linda MacNeil,

Thank you for the opportunity you provided last night in changing your regular meeting place so that you could hear your constituents concerns and we as a community could hear each other.

Last night I witnessed something that was far bigger than responses to any individual’s particular comments.  I saw an outpouring from a rich array of townspeople who had come to name and celebrate the gifts we find in the diversity and inclusion here that makes Littleton the special place it is for so many of us to call home.

I witnessed a community coming together to share that our community is better and stronger by being such a community of welcome, inclusion, belonging and beauty.  Better for being a town which depends on and celebrates our diversity.  Better, for in our diversity, we are able to see and experience more of our human experience than we can ever see alone.  

Diversity says we need each other and we do. There are real threats facing our world but these threats are not each other.  When we turn towards each other we are better and stronger. We can meet with hope and courage the real challenges and realities we need to face.  

I also witnessed last evening what happens when we feel under threat. We get angry. Sometimes in our anger we turn against each other, we say hurtful words and get defensive. None of us acts better, are better, when we feel under threat. When we feel safe, connections and possibilities we never imagined can happen.  

Last Saturday, I witnessed our community coming together in another powerful way. At the Butterfly Release in Remich Park, North Country Home Health and Hospice made a generous space for us to gather in all of our diversity and united in grief.  They made a beautiful space where we could name, mark and share our pain and know that we are not alone.  

At this event and at Monday’s Selectmen Meeting, I witnessed a community that is invested and committed in making our community a vibrant place of life for all.  

As you, our civic leaders, help us find ways to turn towards each other and to continue to invest and work for the good of all life, we are all better and stronger for it.  

I remember the song we sing in preschool,

All God’s critters got a place in the choir

Some sing low, some sing higher

Some sing out loud on the telephone wire 

Some just clap their hands or paws or anything they got now.

Thank you for helping us sing together.