Community connections a reason to give thanks

Family, church, friends, community: those blessings top the list for which we give heartfelt thanks during this week of Thanksgiving.

All across the country, people will join hands in prayer and celebration of the things they most hold dear, one of those being community.

We’ve seen it demonstrated in the past two months more dramatically perhaps than ever before. We’ve seen what a community called New York City can do when citizens invest every penny of their social capital in helping each other heal, mend and rebuild.

We saw it just last week in the borough of Queens after another tragedy brought together neighbors – some of whom have known little but pain since Sept. 11 – and shed more sadness on their lives.

Those of us in the small towns that dot the map of Maine with specks no bigger than black flies know what community is all about. We know how connected we are and we understand the well-being of our town depends on that very link.

In fact, it has been shown that communities with higher levels of “connectedness” – some call it social capital – are likely to have higher educational achievement, better performing governmental institutions, faster economic growth and less crime and violence.

“The people living in these communities are likely to be happier, healthier and to have a longer life expectancy.” Those words come from a recent report by the Maine Community Foundation, which spends lots of its energy trekking all over the state looking at communities to see what makes them tick – or not tick. (The Foundation also spends its time creating new funds – 71 this past year – and awarding grants and scholarships – totaling $6.3 million during the year – to Maine citizens and organizations.)

What the Foundation discovered in its statewide survey was that those people most involved in their communities are also those most likely to display aspects of altruism to help others by contributing money or their time.

In other words, strong social capital obviously pays off for a community in more ways than one. That is witnessed in churches where attendance, membership and volunteering are hardy; why should civic involvement have different results in our towns and cities?

Over the past two months, we’ve done a lot of thinking about the quality of our lives in rural and coastal Maine, about safety and simplicity, about security. And we’ve experienced a renewed sense of community.

We look around and see social capital in our community growing – and bearing far greater interest than financial capital in stock funds or money markets.

We give thanks this week for that investment in our hometowns.