Books and Community – Celebrating Diversity

On December 7th, I was honored to present my new book at the Watauga Public Library in Boone, NC. There were about eight of us total. That makes a great group for discussion. One of the challenges in promoting my book has been…well, promotion.

What I really want to promote is well-being, community, and love. Of course, it will be great if folks buy my books, then I can buy wood for the fire or save up for snow tires. But the reality is that I write because I must write. There’s a theme to my life that won’t let me go. Even when I paint or draw, it is with the hope to build comradery or open another’s eyes to the beauty of the ordinary.

Music is the same. I remember listening to Cat Stevens[1] records as a youth and thinking how this stranger could touch my heart, mind, and soul with one song. I was listening to his song, The King of Trees. As I look at the lyrics now, I’m not sure why this song set my imagination soaring so high. Part of it was the music I know. Trees have always spoken to me. Still, through that song, I knew that someone understood me in the world even though I didn’t know him personally.

 

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” 
― Mother Teresa

 

 

Isn’t that one of the many reasons we read? To be understood or to learn to understand our own self? I read for many reasons, escape, to understand the world, to understand God, to seek to know how to live, for entertainment, etc. Books are my friends. It’s rare that I read a book twice, but I love seeing the binding and how it reminds me that the story lives in the book and somehow lives in my own life.

At the event on Thursday, I read from my new novel and made people laugh. We then began to talk about community because my novel, Finding Home, is about belonging to community. It is fiction, but this fiction is also based upon real, rural communities that I’ve lived in during my lifetime. These were places where people care for one another and look out for each other. There are places where people feel they don’t belong. I get that. My point in the novel is this, find the community where you DO belong. More importantly though, be the person who makes your community better.

In this day and time, we are losing a sense of caring for each other. I’m not going to attack social media, though I do believe we must choose better ways to use social media with an emphasis on the “social”[2] portion that emphasizes the welfare of others. When we talk about being social to each other, we most often imply a sense of respect and perhaps even kindness. While there are some of my friends who use social media to post political topics, most of my friends are seeking to remain connected (or become connected) to a community. Even those who post political things are talking about a community. This digresses a bit.

My point is this. Community matters. What does it mean to respect each other regardless of socioeconomic status, religion, political affiliation? Life. We are all in life together. While each person has a different set of circumstances to deal with, we all have more in common than we are currently acknowledging in this divisive atmosphere. Disagreeing with each other doesn’t have to be the end of the world. Letting those disagreements divide us is the action which needs to cause us alarm. Carl Sagan talks how each person is precious.

“Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

My heart and soul have always believed in the goodness of humanity. Let’s choose to focus on what’s right with our communities. When people are in need, let’s lift them up instead of belittling others. This is not an easy thing to do with so many injustices happening in our world, but we don’t have control over the entire world, just our own actions. I believe in you and your goodness. I believe that when we embrace our own goodness and kindness, the world can deal with anything that happens. We need each other.

 

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

 

 

 

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[1] Now known as Yusuf Islam.

[2] Social | Definition of Social by Merriam-Webster: of or relating to human society, the interaction of the individual and the group, or the welfare of human beings as members of society.