Observe the Pause
On the first day of school I am always in awe and hyper-aware of the ways in which community can have a massive impact on your outlook—on the ways our interactions can make us. Sometimes break us. Mostly create our future selves, but only if we tend to our present ones. This morning, upon delivering my freshly minted third grader, I drove my toddler home to finish breakfast; we then went to get stamps and mail thank you notes and generally start our day. We were to go later to a city park, one of the many good ones in Athens, GA, and in the meantime to the YMCA, another staple of community formation, a place in which I have found people of vast differences in opinion somehow still in each other’s company. I thought as I do often of all the privileges we have, even what seem like the smallest ones: transport, education, food resources, housing. Things the majority of us take for granted. Often I notice, especially in the heat of summer and the cold of winter, those souls awaiting the ci...