A Day in the Life
By Albert B. Kelly
I’m sure you’ve had a day
where you start out feeling really low about things only to have something give
you a kick in the pants to remind you that things are not as bleak as they
seem. I had just such a day recently.
It was 5:30am and the
first hints of daylight crawled in as I glanced toward the bedroom window.
Slowly, I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and tried to rub the sleep,
such as it was, from my eyes. As I sat there, I thought about the day ahead; it
was December 31st, the last day of 2014…the last day of my first term as mayor
for the City of Bridgeton.
The selfish part of me
started to feel a little sorry for myself in a way that only a mayor would try
and do. It had been one hell of a night; a fatal shooting involving our police
at the corner of Henry Street and one of
the first really cold Code Blue nights of the season with our homeless
shuffling in to get out of the cold- maybe get a meal before going to sleep.
My mind raced over the
previous evening; wondering about the details of the shooting incident,
worrying about the Reid family, worrying about our police officers, worrying
about our community; dreading tension like Ferguson or NYC. I was thinking
about the cold- worrying about the homeless- our armies of the night.
My mind raced ahead to the
next day, January 1st and the swearing-in ceremony to start the second term and
what I might say to set the tone. I thought about assorted themes;
unemployment, the homeless, crime, the budget, and of course the shooting as a
backdrop for launching a second term.
I did what I do most
mornings on the edge of the bed and I reached for the scriptures on the night
stand. Maybe it’s a habit, maybe I’m looking for strength, or a little wisdom
or perspective. Thumbing through the pages, my eyes landed on the following:
“For the mystery of lawlessness doth already work: only there is one that
restraineth now…”
The phrase stuck, “one
that restraineth”, it kept playing in my head like a lyric. But I pushed the
thought away; it was time to make my way to the kitchen and settle into a cup
of tea, time to start the day.
In our age of modern
technology, we’re never really untethered from the world, so trudging into the
kitchen I scrolled through my iPhone to get any updates and also thank the
volunteers who came out for Code Blue and our police chaplains coming out in
the middle of the storm.
As I started to type, a
thought occurred to me; namely they showed up. By “they” I mean the volunteers
and more than just show up, they were, in their own way, like the “one that
restraineth”.
Maybe it’s a little over
the top for some, but thinking about these volunteers; the different churches,
organizations, and volunteers providing meals, the churches hosting the
physical space, those providing staff and the police chaplains coming to a
crime scene, they all showed up.
I felt better, a little
stronger and a little more hopeful. They showed up and a hundred just like them
show in a thousand ways in this community and how could I ask for more.
The youth athletic
coaches, the mentors, the volunteers; all unpaid, who show up because they
care, “restrainers” one and all, who push back on the grief, the poverty, the lousy
stats that everyone likes to cite when they talk about our city.
Who knows all that they
“restrain”, no one can say for sure, but we can all imagine the “lawlessness
and I’m fairly confident things would be a lot worse without them.
There’s still a lot of
work to do, goodness knows we need more jobs, more development, more tax base,
more investment and that’s what our energies will be focused in the next four
years.
Looking back on the last
four, I’m not sure I’ll claim anything for myself, but if there is one thing
our community can claim, it was that they showed up; on the coldest days, on
the darkest nights, in the worst hours- to push back on everything that would
unravel us as a community.
The tea got cold and I
headed out the door to start a day, to end a year, to finish a term, to start a
second one; to see what we might accomplish together.