Finding Your People

People need community. I’m not talking about your physical address, where you get your mail and lay your head down at night. A true community springs up wherever you find yourself surrounded by others who care about similar things and have similar ideals. You share a vision for what a happy life looks like, and a passion for the same interests and activities.

Community is about those common threads woven between people who may not otherwise have much in common. Further, community is not a singular concept; you can find acceptance and belonging in several communities that might otherwise appear to have nothing in common.

October was a month of community for me. The most dramatic example was the Mentone Fall Festival. To see thousands of people visiting town to enjoy the day was gratifying, but the real story has been unfolding for months. There’s no way to track how much time and energy it takes from so many people to pull off a successful town-wide event of this magnitude. Think about what’s involved: coordinating art and food vendors, staking vendor tent spots, putting up signs, taking up parking fees, coordinating entertainment, coordinating social media and other promotions, reaching out to sponsors for support, greeting people at booths, arranging activities for kids, keeping the trash cans empty, maintaining public safety … and the list goes on.

Those efforts come from people who care about Mentone, who want to celebrate it and share with others its natural wonders and focus on the arts. That’s a true community.

Also in October, we visited Huntsville for our first show at the Orion Amphitheater. This spectacular entertainment venue is rated among the best outdoor amphitheaters in the world, and we immediately saw why. We’d had tickets for months to see the Red Clay Strays. As fans of their music, we had heard that their live shows were special events. Before the night was over, we understood why. We weren’t in a crowd of concertgoers; we were among friends who shared a love for their music and story, along with an appreciation of their faith and message. We were in a community.

A week later, we returned for a very different kind of experience. It was a classic impulse buy to snag some last-minute tickets to one of the three consecutive sold-out Billy Strings shows. I’ve never seen so much dancing — or smelled so much “happy smoke” — in public. Billy Strings led a bluegrass jam band that felt like a mix of the Tony Rice Unit and the Punch Brothers plus Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead. Yes, it’s as confusing and gratifying to the musical senses as it sounds. And at the center of it all was that same sense of community. Everyone there loved everyone else, regardless of background or status.

When I think about community, I’m reminded of the song “Find Your People” from the album “Strangers No More” by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors. Here’s a sample:

   You gotta find your people
   That put the needle in the groove
   When you’re together, you got nothing to prove
   When you’re together, you got nothing to lose
   Have you found your community?