One of the most astounding and beneficial aspects of the Internet is, of course, the way in which it makes it easier to connect – sometimes intimately so – with people far away.   As most people know, there are thriving communities around every possible category you can think of online; everything from people who are enthusiastic about collecting Pez Dispensers to people struggling with very serious illnesses and personal problems.

This is one of the reasons why this website was created.  We see ourselves as “citizens of the world,” and we wanted to create a space where folks from a variety of cultures, geographic areas, and personal experiences, could share with each other whatever it is that they wished to share.  Whether that’s a recipe, a memory, or a current struggle, or an affiinity for plastic candy dispensers, we want to hear about it.

A church I once attended had a segment at each meeting called “Joys, Concerns, and Sorrows,” a period where anyone in the group could share anything that they felt would fall into any of those categories. Here at Sharing Circle, I would add also the very broad “meta” category of “Interesting Things.” Something doesn’t have to be a heavy duty or incredibly personal bit of good news to be worth sharing.

For instance, here is a website that I think can be incredibly interesting at times, it describes itself as an inter-ideological discussion group.  The United States seems to be incredibly polarized politically right now, as though there is no room for shades of gray for political opinion. How will that ever change if no one ever talks to each other outside of their ideological community?  So this site: http://swordscrossed.org/  aims to make a difference, as does Sharing Circle, although Sharing Circle is far from politically centered. In other words, we are interested in your butter tart recipes, too!  

Where do you go for a sense of community online? What communities would you recommend to others? In some ways, to my mind, sites like Facebook are not communities, they are more like communities within communities. Where’s yours?