Leaning against the wall in the county courthouse awaiting our next instructions, I surveyed the crowd. While most of us gathered there didn’t know one another, what we all had in common was that we had been summoned to serve on a jury.
We were nothing if not a subdued bunch. Some people engaged with their devices, others leaned against the wall, some sat on benches with their eyes closed, and everybody looked in need of another cup of coffee. No one looked as if they had leapt out of bed in excitement over playing their part in our shared justice system. The few snippets of conversation that I overheard confirmed that perception as people semi-jokingly suggested that they hadn’t been able to get out of it this time.
I get it.
When I first received the summons I didn’t do backflips either. There is rarely a convenient time to save multiple days to serve on a jury for a trial that may or may not actually happen.
However.
As we moved through the jury selection process of “voir dire” (Latin for “to speak the truth), the judge and attorneys asked questions to assist in determining which six people out of the twenty-five of us gathered in the small court room would make up the jury for the case before the court. Some questions were easier to answer than others, and some required downright courage to actually speak the truth. The longer we sat together the more the gravity of the role we might play dawned on me. A jury has the power to change the course of a person’s life in the flash of a verdict.
In the end I wasn’t chosen, which meant that I could use the day to tend to the many things that were in need of tending, and I was grateful for the time made available.
However.
Participating in the process reminded me of how just much our lives are interconnected, or at least are meant to be. We all have a stake in the state of our shared union, and while many of the systems that are meant to contribute to the health of that union, like our justice system, are badly broken, they won’t get better if we try and get out of our responsibility to play our part.
Now more than ever we seem to have, in the words of Mother Theresa, “…forgotten that we belong to each other.”
It’s time we remembered.
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