In many towns here in New England, citizens come together at least once a year for Town Meeting Day, when the business of the community is conducted.

As a conflict practitioner, I am always interested in how people engage one another and debate the life of the community. Sometimes the differences are dealt with well and sometimes not.

Several years ago at my home Town Meeting, my friend Toby Balivet was called to the microphone to open the meeting. Toby is a lifelong citizen of the town as well as an attorney and probate judge. He is known for injecting both wisdom and humor into difficult discussions on the agenda.

The room hushed as Toby spoke the words of the invocation that he had written for the occasion. His invocation is speaks to everything I believe about how I hope people can be together in community and in difficult times.

- Susanne Terry

Town Meeting Civil Invocation

Let us bow our heads for a moment of silence and reflection.

We are gathered together in civil assembly.

We gather as a community, in the oldest sense of the word.

We gather to come together and try to make decisions, about what is right, about what is wrong.

Let us advocate for our positions, but not at the expense of others.

Let us remember that there is an immense gap between saying, “I am right” and saying “I believe I am right,” and that our neighbors with whom we disagree are good people “with hopes and dreams as true and high as ours.”

And let us always remember that, in the end, caring for each other, in this community, is of far greater importance than any difference we may have.

- E. Tobias Balivet

A number of other towns are using this opening and Toby is glad for others to do so.

Last 5 posts by Susanne Terry

• Practice Doesn't Make Perfect - May 21st, 2007
• A Civil Invocation for Town Meeting - April 19th, 2007
• Mediators and the Sweet Shoppe - February 11th, 2007
• An Interview with Mary Parker Follett, Part 2 - December 8th, 2006
• An Interview with Mary Parker Follett, Part 1 - December 6th, 2006

:: Susanne Terry is a faculty member in Woodbury's Mediation & Applied Conflict Studies program. You can learn more about Susanne by visiting this blog's About page.