Decentralization 2

            The most quoted line of poet William Yeats comes from the beginning of his poem “The Second Coming” in which he writes:

            Turning and turning in the widening gyre

            The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

            Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold

            There is no center to things any more, everything has cracked open and separated out. At one time, everyone got their news from one straight laced news man, a single source, and that was the reality everyone bought into. At one time, you were likely to live next to a neighbor with a differing political opinion from yours and that was okay. At one time, people regularly bowled in leagues and regularly joined organizations of all sorts. Now, there are news channels that cater to any viewpoint, everything is looked at through a partisan lens and there are literally now “blue” and “red” neighborhoods—a great sorting based on ideology, the same number of people bowl as before, but alone because league attendance has plummeted, and any organization that takes serious commitment has taken a serious hit. In short, we’re feeling the effects of decentralization.

            There is a power to decentralization—a small group of people can do giant things. That should be good news to us, after all we are a small group of people tasked to do nothing short of be God’s hands in the world!