WELCOME 2022 " UNPACK THE GIFT OF COMMUNITY "

Most of us have heard the word “community” often throughout our lives. It is a common term, used by companies in their marketing campaigns, schools in their mottos, and religious organizations in their mission statements. Sometimes, that is all “community” is. A word. A term. A conversation.?As one whose life’s trajectory was transformed by community, I know it to be so much more. And each day that passes, I realize that oftentimes, we underestimate the difficult work that will be required to build a real and lasting community within our workplaces, schools and Faith communities. As we start this new year together, I invite you to take a short journey to ?the places and the people who unselfishly undertook the difficult work of building the community I needed then and still need today

But for me, community has always been more than just a word.?

In my time of living on this planet, I have concluded that community is far more than a mere word. Community is an incredible gift to humanity. Like any gift, we are expected to unpack it, to experience its impact upon our lives and others.?

The community that established the trajectory of my life emerged in the 1950s in a small Mississippi Delta town. These were special, ordinary people whose special ordinary acts of unselfishness became the gift of community to me. I didn’t know at the time that I was the daily beneficiary of constant sacrifice, care, and ongoing investment. It was not until years later that I realized how profound their impact had been. But these special, ordinary people did the hard, everyday work of community building for me, even when I was too young to appreciate it.?

There is no shortcut to genuine community!?

Decades later, the circumstances of my life brought my childhood community back into my memory like a warm patchwork quilt, one that would cover my anxiety and give me reason once again to believe in my great-aunt Elna’s words, “Tomorrow will be just fine.” These words materialized in my life long after they had been spoken, empowering me at a time when I most needed to hear them. I was a soldier during the last years of the Viet Nam War, living with the daily possibility that I might be shipped off to a foreign country to fight a war in which I was finding difficult to understand. I lived with the fear that I would not return home alive, as so many of my countrymen had already perished.?

In those moments of fear and doubt, I began to write about those special, ordinary people and their consistent unselfishness that I had encountered as a young boy. I needed daily dosages of unselfishness in my life then to keep me going and still need today. ?The more I wrote, the more I recalled the people and their stories. The more I recalled the stories, the less my anxiety that dominated my thinking. Over time, those months of quiet evenings in my Dow AFB barracks became a box of yellow legal pads where my Porch People and their stories lived until 24 years later, when they became an international bestseller and a major motion picture, Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored. Even after many of my Porch People had passed away, they were still leaving a mark on my life, and on the lives of people they would never meet.

Genuine community always travels with you.

Fast forward several decades, and Clifton the soldier became Clifton the author. I was invited to Frankfurt, Germany as a keynote speaker to educators from around the United States and Europe, all of whom worked for the United States Department of Defense schools, called DODEA. As their guest speaker, I unpacked the look and feel of the unselfishness that had defined the small Mississippi community of my birth, Glen Allan. By now, the unselfishness I had enjoyed had a name, a face, and a special story. Anxiously awaiting my introduction by Dr. Delores Saunders, I tried to key in on my opening statement. How could I summarize decades of investment? How could I quantify the ongoing impact of the Porch People’s lives on mine, and now on theirs? In that moment of anxious preparation, this is the statement that came to me, the statement that eventually became a book, the book that continues to make a difference globally: “It was the Eight Habits of their Hearts.” That day in Frankfurt, I finally unpacked the gift of community I had been given all of those years ago, and ever since that day, I have left the package open as a beacon to all of us who would seek to make a positive difference with our lives. I offer this gift again to you today as we head into a new year, hopeful that their impact will continue to transform our thinking and ignite our plans of action

Genuine community is the gift that keeps on giving.

COMMUNITY UNPACKED IS WHAT I EXPERIENCED

“THE EIGHT HABITS OF THE HEART"?

Nurturing Attitude were my great-grandparents Joe and Pearl Young. They understood that their 24/7 was given to them to share with others, to family members and the many others who would cross their paths. My future mattered to them. I still remember the smell and taste of their love for me: on Saturday’s riding in the front seat of Poppa’s car to Greenville, Mississippi when normally that would be his time to ready his aching feet for the next week of field work. All they had was 24/7, as do we. We will never have 28/10.?

Responsibility was my great-uncle Cleve, an incredible mentor who never even knew the term. Unselfishly, he brought me into his Glen Allen Ice business, where I was his second-in-command. He taught me a lesson I will never forget: that I could dream beyond the cotton fields of the Delta. I owe my entrepreneurial journey to Uncle Cleve. He shared his knowledge and his time with me. His story, Who Owns The Ice-House, has been translated into multiple languages and has given countless thousands reason to see themselves in the future.

Dependability was my great-aunt Elna, who was determined that I’d get an education, though our world was surrounded by fields of cotton that beckoned me into a visionless future. I had to travel a hundred miles round-trip to school daily. I graduated valedictorian of my class. Today, I am a member of Phi Beta Kappa. This was not due to my smarts but due to an unselfish aunt, who during the cold and dark winter months for four years would stand on the front porch of her frame house and pull the string on a 60-watt light bulb. The bus driver always saw the light and knew we were home. Because of them, I never missed a day.

Friendship was the community, but I specifically remember Miss Ballard, Cousin Sister, Mama Ponk, and Miss Doll. They and others took delight in welcoming “Blind Berta” to Glen Allen. Her lack of sight was no problem for them. I recall how they would cut meat in small chunks and seat her so that she could eat independently, laughing and talking with them as an equal. With them, her impediment had no bearing on her humanity. If she ever felt lost or alone in that dark world, her laughter never showed it. The friendship of others was her vision. They unpacked the gift of community for her every day.

Sisterhood/Brotherhood were Dr. Mary Hogan and Nurse Callie Mae Ballard. We all knew them: the white doctor and the black nurse who professionally and caringly served our community. I grew up at a time when respect for black professionals was in short supply. But I have clear memory of the white doctor who stretched her professional table to include the black nurse. Their working hand-in-glove was not lost upon our community. Their names were called in concert. Working together, they healed the sick, delivered babies, and left a young boy with a memory of what is possible. ?

High Expectations were Miss Florence and Mr. Isaiah. They owned the corner grocery store where the men gathered to play dominoes. There was Miss Lottie Jones, the town’s midwife, who lived in a home with a stained glass window. Everyone called her Miss Lottie. And there were Mr. Joe Maxey and his wife Miss Mary Maxey, the entrepreneur and the schoolteacher, both examples of upward mobility extolling education and owning your own business. Mr. Maxey’s barber shop contained the only professional barber chair in our community. As a community, as a nation, we must have High Expectations for each other. We needed it in Glen Allan when I was growing up…and all of us need them now.

Courage was Jake Ayers—our homegrown political activist who fought till death for equity for all, especially in the funding of education. He was instrumental in bring HEADSTART to our community and keeping the needs of the ordinary people top of mind. He possessed a sense of presence that represented all of us, and he never veered from his calling. Courage was Fannie Lou Hamer, who became a modern-day Sojourner Truth. Courage was also Reverend Roy Grisham of “Ole Miss” who in the 1960s used his position as the Methodist Campus Pastor to aid and protect black students, who were instrumental in integrating the University. My sister Clara and my cousin Joyce were among those students who benefited from his courage. Courage has many faces, speaks a thousand languages, and lives all over the world, but I believe it looks and feels the same to everyone.?

Hope was Mary Morgan Taulbert, my mother, who for many years of her life was a maid, but one who believed in getting the maximum amount of education available to you. Early in her young life she had experienced college, but circumstances interrupted her journey. However, her skills were not forgotten by others. When HEADSTART came to the Washington County, she was chosen to become the Director of Yates Center. More importantly, she used her position to encourage others that the future included them and their children. Her voice and her presence to the many sharecroppers became Hope. The world must never forget how hope looks, acts, and feels, or the obligation everyone has to practice it, share it and pass it along wherever we gather.

Just like those special, ordinary people who now live in my memory built community in my presence, so must we all. We have the privilege to live out the principles of good community, the Eight Habits of the Heart, in every area of our lives: around the corner, around the globe, and wherever humans gather. It is indeed a gift to humanity, but one that requires unpacking on a daily basis. It is more than a delightful conversation.

The dream of good community is universal, as are the habits that build that dream. As we enter a new year, I invite you to unpack community and daily experience the Eight Habits of the Heart. The habits are mobile, vital, and never out-of-date, and they continually seek among the people of the world good hearts in which to dwell. Nor are they held captive by race, gender of geography.

The memories of the community I encountered as a young boy were my quilt when I needed one as a soldier. As a child growing up, they extended my vision beyond the fields of the Mississippi Delta…and more importantly as an adult, where I live and where I work, they remind me of my responsibility to unselfishly share my 24/7. I am not asking you to re-create the Golden Gate Bridge. It exists. I am asking you to engage daily in multiple micro-dosages of unselfishness to others. The Habits are always with me, everywhere I go, encouraging me to extend my own table, expand my own heart, and grow my own community.

Genuine community is the memory that never dies.