On Sunday December 21st we will gather together to celebrate the Winter Solstice, the night of the longest darkness. On Galiano we celebrate the solstice by gathering together as a community. This is the Seventh Annual Solstice Potluck Celebration. It’s all about gathering with your friends and neighbours, sharing some wonderful food, watching the kids arriving at the hall in a lantern procession, chatting around the fire, and enjoying the music and entertainment of some amazingly-talented locals.

One of the ways the dictionary defines community is: “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing…” That’s sounds perfect to me. We share this small island. Perhaps we all have different ideas on the best way to live here—but we all choose to be here, together. We all choose to create community together.

We are blessed to live in a community that cares about each of us, that supports us when we are sick or hungry, and need an extra meal, a community where hundreds of volunteers work at everything from making food, to running a library, fighting fires, tending a garden, recycling our garbage, or helping at the school. It’s a community where you can always find someone to stop at the bank for you, or bring something home from town, or lend a hand when you need your kids looked after for a couple of hours.

We live in a community where people go beyond all the time. Communities like this are amazing—but they are not accidental. Each and every day we make choices about what we can do to share with others, and help build our part of this community, and it is those choices, the choices we make to work together, and create together that make this place such an amazing place to live.