[img]1307|right|Meghan Sahli-Wells||no_popup[/img]After the fireworks at Monday evening’s City Council meeting, after juiced-up partisans poured out their passions and their souls over the legitimacy of the tradition of the pre-meeting Invocation, Her Honor the mayor was proclaimed the winner in a church-state showdown.
Unexpectedly, the muscular power of compromise – a seldom-consulted solution – allowed aroused backers to raise the arm of Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells in triumph over Vice Mayor Mehaul O’Leary.
Modestly and reluctantly, Her Honor demurred, even though Mr. O’Leary’s supporters did not believe she had, or deserved, a prayer of prevailing.
“I don’t see this as a competition,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said after the double-day meeting ended at 12:30 Tuesday morning. “I would not couch this in terms of winning and losing.”
The unlikely panacea ultimately judged to be appropriate – each year’s new mayor choosing his or her own form of lower-case invocation – was imaginatively forged by a presumed non-player, Councilman Andy Weissman.
The rocky road to the Hardly Okay Corral, however, was strewn with shards of partisan disbelief toward the other side.
A perfect setting for redeeming Mr. Weissman’s peace-seeking talents.
A little-known critical element in the backstory to this flaming God vs. Everyone Else dispute is the profound, largely private, respect Ms. Sahli-Wells holds for Council colleague Mr. Weissman, the Grand Compromiser. His imagination, his often under-rated gift for uncurling hopelessly knotted disagreements, paved an improbable path to peace.
[img]1305|left|Andy Weissman||no_popup[/img]At the outset, the patriarch of the City Council was no more than a detail when Ms. Sahli-Wells controversially proposed at the end of a midnight meeting a month ago that the traditional Invocation invoked by the city manager before meetings by replaced by a less overtly religious symbol. “Invocation,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said, flirted too intimately with violating the sacredness of church-state separation.
The equally newly elected vice mayor, Mr. O’Leary, roared back with a rarely uncorked religious ferocity. The mayor’s proposal was too intensely personal, he charged. “If they are going to take my God out of Council meetings,” said the God-centric parishioner of St. Augustine Catholic Church, “I might as well step down.”
Each side in the Secular vs. Sacred showdown encouraged fellow believers to thunderingly respond. They did. They peppered Council members’ email accounts with 50 pages of fiery rhetoric over the (in)validity of the Invocation and a second unrelated matter, the perceived blight of possibly forthcoming billboard signs.
Ten critics and four defenders stepped to the microphone to plead their convictions.
Ironically, perhaps, outside of the two disputants, no other Council member’s temperature rose by even a degree.
After Mr. O’Leary had defended the overt presence of God at the outset of Council meetings, Ms. Sahli-Wells turned to Mr. Weissman, who stepped back for others to speak first.
Jim Clarke pleaded that he was agnostic on the topic, a not unpopular stance, it developed.
Jeff Cooper’s conclusion was clouded, even to his colleagues.
That left the two main disputants and Mr. Weissman. The mood of the evening suddenly softened as the Grand Compromiser began speaking. When he was mayor, he said, unobtrusively he began referring to the ritual as the “Thought for the Day.”
What opposition?
Since Culver City elects a new member of the Council to the heavily symbolic position of mayor every April, why not allow each mayor to choose his own title for the city manager’s pre-meeting comment?
Moderate though it may have appeared, Mr. Weissman’s compromise split the Council again, 3-2.
No, vowed the unmovable Mr. O’Leary and Mr. Cooper.
The outcome certainly was an improvement on kissing your sister, even if Ms. Sahli-Wells declined to react as a prevailing warrior and proclaim victory.
“This was a good solution for where we are now,” she said.
Standing stoutly for her side, Culver City’s progressive mayor said this unquestionably was the people’s choice. “The overwhelming majority of people who spoke,” said Ms. Sahli-Wells, “favored changing the name ‘Invocation.’ The bottom line with me is what the people want.”
