"Volunteer-Led Cheer: MDI Fosters Stronger Bonds Through Festive Acts of Kindness"
Opinion
BAR HARBOR AND TOWN HILL—The little girl standing on the Bar Harbor Village Green’s words whispered out into the night air Friday, as she stared at the tree in the town’s gazebo. It wasn’t even lit yet. “Oh, Mommy, it’s so beautiful.”
“It is,” her mom said, lifting her up so that she could see it better.
“And Santa is coming?”
“He’ll be here soon?”
“He’ll be here soon.”
All around them, sixth graders were getting ready for a performance with their teachers, doing a kick line with plastic candy canes. Other kids were running around yelling as Christmas songs echoed across the green. Others stayed close to their parents or grandparents or caretakers. One hugged a leg.
There was no one right way to do the holiday event, hosted by the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, just like there is no one right way to do community.
Later, after a brilliant Santa read “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and hitched a ride on a Gem, children and parents and volunteers gathered in the MDI YMCA gymnasium, doing crafts, talking to Santa, talking to each other.
The next day, things continued. Kids and adults took to the Criterion stage to create “A Christmas Chaos.” Crafters spread out at tables at the Atlantic Oceanside. A hearty and handy group of souls banded together and created an ice rink at the Town Hill Playground.
According to a piece by Tracy Bower for Forbes, “Strong communities have a significant sense of purpose. People’s roles have meaning in the bigger picture of the community and each member of the group understands how their work connects to others’ and adds value to the whole. As members of community, people don’t just want to lay bricks, they want to build a cathedral.”
BREAKING FORMAT
I’m breaking format today, putting this in the dreaded first-person, the “I” in the story that’s always there, lurking beneath the surface, no matter how unbiased we try to be. I hope you’ll forgive me.
I’m justifying this with the fact that other news sites have editorials, columns, letters to the editor, and we don’t currently do that at the Bar Harbor Story. So, it’s okay to stray once in a little while. Fingers crossed.
This is why I’m straying. Community matters to me, not just the sensationalist headlines and the outrage, but the positive things in a community.
There’s a lot of that on this island.
As a journalist and as an observer of community, I get to see a lot of people and spend time trying to figure them out. As Shaun and I go out and report on things, we get to see even more humans on this island—and an occasional deer or skunk or porcupine. We get to wander outside of our different friends’ groups and see people with different ways of living in this world, what they care about, how they interact, what they do, what worries them.
We get to see the choices they make and how those choices play out.
The ancient stoic philosopher Epictetus said that “if your choices are beautiful, so too will you be.”
Our choices as individuals and as a community make us a community. As a novelist and as an editor, I know that the best stories are the ones where characters lean into their choices and make a lot of them, and do so even knowing what the stakes are when the stakes are scary. They put themselves out there, they show human worth, they take action.
Everything I love about this island community is because of choices people have made and continue to make on big levels (let’s make a national park) and small (let’s decorate our store/restaurant/house for the holidays or just give someone a hug).
There’s passion here. Obstacles. Differing opinions. Stakes. But there is also so much kindness, and that kindness is a brilliant shining candle that illuminate brighter than any holiday candle for any of the religions we celebrate here.
As people bicker about paid parking or congestion or housing or taxes, about dog parks and water bills and noise ordinances and cruise ships and budgets, it’s so important to remember that other aspect of this island that makes it so great: those shining moments, those choices that parlay into action to make this place and the people in it truly beautiful.
Community is complex. It is multilayered. It is constantly changing. It is beautiful. It is about putting the we before the I. It’s about long-term measurable goals. It’s about hope.
This weekend volunteers put on a play, sang in a chorale, built an ice skating rink. They helped Santa come to town and entertained kids while they waited for a chance to sit on Santa’s lap or hear him read. They ran a craft fair. They drove (via Acadia Gem or boat) Santa. They lit trees. They lit candles. They worried about their neighbors.
This weekend, people chose to shop local. People chose to help each other, to feed each other, to entertain each other. People chose to let their kids run around on village greens and be kids, playful and wild and quiet and loud before galloping down the side streets or the main one to head to the Y and celebrate some more.
Choices make us who we are. And beautiful choices? They make a beautiful community.
Here are some of the photos Shaun and I took yesterday and today. We’ve only labeled the ones we didn’t take but are using with permission. We hope you’ll enjoy them and that you’ll find and make beautiful choices in a pretty beautiful community.
