She acknowledges the problems rural America faces, from addiction and lack of health care to poverty. But consistently showing up to participate in the community is, she says, the hardest work we can do, something that requires humility and a level of commitment that's contrary to the me-first narrative of pop culture. She continues:
We can’t control the systemic barriers and disparities that hunt us and haunt us. We can’t control the forces of automation and globalization that have taken our livelihoods and our jobs. But we can control our response to these forces. And usually that means we just keep participating. We keep showing up. At funerals and potlucks. At PTA meetings and choir practice. At football games and city council meetings. We keep checking out library books and performing in community theater productions. We make our plans “for here and about here,” as writer Jo Carson says. And that regular practice of participation is what characterizes our relationships, and that gives us the ability to live and work and worship together in spite of disagreements. It helps us withstand the tangles of partisanship, too. It’s hard to dismiss someone when you expect to see them the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that.
Read the whole speech here, reprinted in The Daily Yonder.
from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2AziG0X Practicing the small-town art of participation - Entrepreneur Generations
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