Here we sit, each in our own comfortable bubble of belief, occasionally glancing sideways at a neighbor’s steadfast disbelief in what to us is so obvious. Chances are those disconnects are around one of two bugaboos: politics or religion. These days it’s hard to separate the two. And chances are those beliefs of ours, or anyway, our disdain of our neighbor’s, were nurtured somewhere on the Web.

 So, when we woke up one day last week to find our little town in the middle of what should have been a gentle debate, the Web was where the dispute took place. And as we all should have learned, the Web is no place to talk about these things.

The catalyst was a piece of polished black granite inscribed with the Ten Commandments, those Judeo-Christian rules of belief and behavior.

• Thou shall have no other Gods before me.
• Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven images.
• Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.
• Remember the Sabbath day and keep it Holy.
• Honor your father and mother.
• Thou shalt not kill.
• Thou shalt not commit adultery.
• Thou shalt not steal.
• Thou shalt not bear false witness.
• Thou shalt not covet your neighbors’ goods.

It had appeared, unannounced, standing against the seawall south of the kiosk and town Christmas tree on what most assumed was the town beach. Only it turns out, it’s not. This stretch of sand is private property, although obviously open to the public which moves freely back and forth across it.

The public, in this case the virtual public, reading online alerts, news feeds, social media posts, etc., saw a photo of the stone and a Bangor Daily News article and went wild. The apparent actual audience for the stone tablet (which is the original form of this ancient text) is vastly smaller, the few hundred beach-goers who might wander by over a summer and even fewer who might stop to read it.

Within hours Rick McLaughlin, owner of that property and of the granite stone, was barraged with online vitriol, and presumably approval, too. Everyone had an opinion. And keeping one’s opinions to themselves is apparently not in vogue these days. And much of it was so upsetting to Rick and his family that within a day or two he’d removed it.

Read those 10 “rules” again. Which ones do you follow? Which ones do you dismiss? Which ones have you broken? Clearly there are two separate objectives at work here.

The first four order behavior towards a spiritual being which you may or may not believe in. The rest describe behavior towards each other, which every one of us confront in our daily lives. The first enters the realm of faith, the second is the realm of human society.

But now politics, or at any rate, government intersects with religion. We have that inalienable right to free speech. I looked it up: The first amendment to our Consitution says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I found this listing of certain exceptions to free speech such as incitement, defamation, fraud, obscenity, child pornography, fighting words, and threats.

So, although Congress can’t regulate establishment of religion, it can’t stop people from expressing it. Nor any other “freedom of speech”.

A particularly twisted expression of free speech was the proposed 1977 neo-Nazi march through Skokie, Illinois, home to many Holocaust survivors. Skokie was a neighboring town to my own, and when the ACLU (Amercian Civil Liberties Union) defended the march as free speech, it was a big deal. The group eventually won the right to march, but in fact, never did.

We have a rainbow flag fluttering over our front stoop, and have a Black Lives Matter sign out by the road. Our yard is littered with political signs every election year. I have an extensive collection of signs in the barn, all the causes Wally and I, and now my sons, have promoted over the years.

Take a tour around town and see what our other noisy neighbors have to say. Free speech. We all have it. Some of us keep our beliefs to ourselves, or only share them with our “choir”. But others, like me,  can’t keep quiet.

Left to the level of signs, flags, and stone tablets nobody gets hurt. You might drive by my house and shake your head at our political proclivity, or wonder at the Trump/Pense or Black Flies Matter signs on other yards. Or a declaration of faith engraved in granite.

But to turn on people who are simply expressing their First Amendment rights to free speech, to threaten them, has no place here. The anonymity of the Web, of course, means there’s no way to know where the comments are coming from.

The beauty (and the bane) of a small town is that we actually know each other. We can get beyond what we see as our neighbors’ misguided beliefs to see the good that they do. And to pay no heed to their occasional missteps.

First Day of School

Tomorrow is that magical day when all our little (and not so little anymore) ones head off to school. Magical for them and certainly for their parents who, if I remember correctly, watch them go with decidedly mixed feelings. A big sigh of relief for the quiet that descends on the house for a few hours every day, along with the bittersweet realization that the kids are growing up.

It's fun driving around town at bus pick-up time to see the parents standing out by the road with their nervous kindergartners, taking that first-day-of-school photo, and then watching the bus pull away. Even more poignant is the empty nest the house becomes when the 18-year-old packs up and leaves – for college, the military, a job, the first apartment.

Lincolnville Historical Society

The Historical Society is holding an Open House for the community on October 15 to show off the progress we’ve made so far in renovating the old Beach Schoolhouse. To date, thanks to the generosity of townspeople as well as a couple of grants, we’ve raised $317,072.95 towards our goal of $325,000; just $7,927.05 more will put us there!

Save the date: Saturday, October 15, noon to 5.