Can’t Get ‘er Done!

The other day I heard someone say that the US Congress is  considered less popular than influenza by many Americans. Recent years have shown our legislative branch unable to reach a consensus on anything, making accomplishing even the most insignificant of tasks nearly impossible.  General cocktail party and barbecue conversation puts the blame on a waning moral compass on the part of the country or more simply put; “they’re all crooks”.  The implication is that in order to be elected to office, a person is somehow not walking the straight and narrow. While for some that may be true, I’ve noticed that smaller groups of people, when attempting to work together on a project, can struggle with similar challenges in trying to get something done.

For the past several months, our tiny parish of 150 families has struggled with the task of installing a few cabinets in or social hall to create a small coffee bar in the lounge area to provide more storage for paper products as well as ease the congestion in the kitchen after Mass on Sundays.  At first it seemed like a fairly straight forward plan.  Our Hospitality Committee requested and was granted the funds from our Parish Council.  We even purchased the cabinets, countertop and hardware for the installation.  But when the time came to hire a contractor to do the work, that’s when the fun began.

Instead of the Hospitality Committee simply hiring a local contractor with a known track record, folks started popping up with a variety of opinions on how the project should proceed.  Members of the Finance Committee felt that we should be required to obtain three written estimates prior to choosing a contractor. Others felt that before we even hired a contractor, we should do a five-year plan on the entire kitchen, to evaluate the impact of putting cabinets on a wall that may be removed during future renovations.  Still others felt we should save the money on paying someone to complete the work and have parishioners do the install.  All this spawned a flurry of emails back and forth from all the different committees each defending their position and virtually no one stepping back to any point of consensus. The result is that almost ten weeks since the meeting when we decided to purchase the cabinets, instead of having an inviting snack bar in our lounge, we have a pile of cabinets, still in their boxes, stashed in our great hall with a length of counter top perched on top.  Indications are that we are moving forward with the project, but making our deadline of September 7th seems less and less promising.

To his credit, our priest, Father Michael has stayed out of the fray, letting us hammer out the details on our own.  I sometimes wonder how silly we must seem to him as a newly arrived immigrant from Uganda.  Although he never shares any of the strife he’s no doubt witnessed in his lifetime in a country with a government that has been truly unstable at times, I can only imagine how petty this whole debate must seem to him.

I don’t know if it’s just human nature that creates this constipation of progress or if we have evolved into a nation of people who are always looking for the angle, the weak link, that tends to blow even the smallest of projects into gigantic obstacle courses of discussions, emails, hot tempers, hurt feelings, and in this case the opposite of what our coffee bar was intended to provide, a sense of community.

This Sunday, I happened to meet Father as he was coming into the Hall before Mass as I was leaving.  He looked at the corner where the new coffee bar will someday be and said, “I thought the new bar would be done by now.”  So did I Father,so did I.