Fortunes of A Rich Community Life -- And -- The Treasures Money Can’t Buy

New Horizons’ Beloved community development mentor, Murat Yagan, emphasized again and again, that the main ingredients for a genuinely rich life must include a teacher, a teaching and a community.

But – most of all, Murat stressed that it is the having of a community; a group of like-minded individuals, working together, sharing values and ideals, and implementing these in a way that builds a common good that is singularly the most important.

I have wanted to write of my recent experience at a local event celebrating Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. It gave me a sense of an enriching community life.

I did comment briefly the following day. But there was much left unsaid. Yet that reference was a first for me. In that I was gratified.

Not being a particularly tech savvy person, writing a blog post from my smart phone was both daunting as well as abhorrent. 

But an intention to push through my resistance to publish a few limited words took hold as the experience was that significant for me.

So I wrote and told you that as “strangers in the night, we met and we” were strangers no more.

In some ways those few words said it all for me. Yet when I shared them with some others they seemed to have almost no meaning at all. Folks I later talked with who had also been present at the same celebration had been left almost totally unmoved by it.

On the other hand the small group of New Horizons volunteers and supporter who attended seemed to feel as inspired as I.

What is the deal then of an event being truly an “event” or coming off as a “non-event” for some for all its planning and promotion?

I inquired further, as I am wont to do in my Anastasia The Super Sleuth mode. Thus I came to be reminded that “substance” rather than “surface” is obviously the telling factor.

So how do we achieve this state of “substance” that allows people to walk away from an occasion with a feeling of value rather than its being inconsequential? And reach as many as possible in order to evoke that state, maximally?

These past few weeks my key volunteers and supporters have been putting forth a concerted effort to create a Coffee House Conversation On Race Relations that we hope will leave people with a feeling of abundance rather than emptiness.

For me, accustomed as I am to valuing a sense of community unity above most other things I felt inspired by the Martin Luther King Jr. celebration. My experience that strangers came together, at least the ones in closest proximity to me, bonded in sharing designed to foster community building -- and -- did just that -- was awesome!

Building any bit more of a community feeling; a vibrational energy of unity and working well together, reinforces – in my mind -- Murat’s wisdom that of the three; a teacher, a teaching and a community, it is the community that is most essential.

I felt the “earth move” when I experienced the small morsel of community life we shared at that MLK event though the collective had had, no doubt, many teachers and many teachings to call their own.

For me that celebration was one that inspired, if only briefly, the force for growth and change that keeps people rich and healthy.

That is if you believe that rich and healthy might just be something other than that which money can buy; a priceless something!

I hope we are able to provide this for our participants at our coming Coffee House Conversation on Race Relations this Saturday.  Be sure and register for the event if you have not already.

We are intent on making some small difference in the way our possible society is in motion. 

We hope you will share this with us as a part of our expanding community of like-minded, forward thinking folks.