By Sara Mitchell

I remember when I first woke up. Freshman year of college, in the middle of a night with wild and very cold air - a Honduran, a guitarist, and I had just watched a film. We shared one bottle of wine that I had no idea how to gauge the quality of and tore off cheese and bread with our hands. Others joined us and with the night so young and promising, they began to read poetry to each other.

I have no idea which poets were read but experiencing this shook me. The knowledge that they spent their nights exciting the life out of each other was new and thrilling. That night gave my life a layer of meaning it had lacked. It unfolded a new way to enjoy life with people - to be in communion with those who have gone before and in the same moment to uncover the new. Afterward, I could think of nothing better to do with an evening with friends than read poetry aloud and discuss it.

We called it poetry night, which I'm sure has been coined hundreds of times by starry-eyed and prematurely world-weary university students. They were sporadic in the beginning, occurring once every few months. Only a handful of us would gather.

The meetings really became regular in 2007. Every other Thursday students from several universities convened in my boyfriend's apartment. I loved seeing new people come in. Their faces were always a mix of bewilderment and giddiness, delighted to find people enjoying poetry together.

Every manifestation of poetry night was unique. There were some constants-thinkers, wine, books of poems strewn all over the floor in a circle of chairs and couches, something to snack on. They would pour in, fill their plates, fill their glasses and pick up one of the dozens of books of poetry and flip through till a few lines strung our hearts. And then we would read. We would fill the night with lines that paralleled all the things we were discovering as new explorers of the world outside our homes and families. The discussions were tangential but meaningful. They brought us to ideas and realizations we would never recover from.

We were Baptist, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, agnostics, behaviorists, artists, sculptors, actors, philosophers, poets. Many of us had a faith that tied us together. But all of us had an excitement about what we were doing and, most of all, what we could do.

And as this description is vague, so was the focus of our fervor. We had all woken up and we wanted the rest of the world to feel it, too. Short-term or long-term, we knew what the future held for us: world change. And yet, we largely had no idea how to make that happen.

Somehow I knew for sure that we were not going to spark change right there on the streets of Dallas under the moonglow, because you don't change the world by shouting it from the tops of buildings. It may seem that The Beatles did just that, but really they probably changed more lives from the crackling speakers of record players inside millions of bedrooms than from any rooftop concert.

That's what I told our fellow poetry nighters. What we are doing is good, but what is really going to change the world is when we leave this city and settle into communities and do good things within them. It's when we each pour ourselves into the people and families around us that we really make a difference. I don't believe in mass change. I could be wrong but I cannot remember ever being deeply affected by an experience shared with thousands of other people. Inspired maybe, but not changed. The ideas and experiences we shared would indeed change the world, but they would first have to change our homes and villages.

The most beneficial moments I have shared with other people have occurred in small groups: with my family or youth group, in book clubs or over dinner with friends. Change is when you sit with the other parents at a soccer game and have edifying conversation or when your roommate takes the time to teach you the art of baking an entire chicken. Whatever change you desire to affect, whether it's bringing the gospel to all nations or eco-friendly living or whatever it may be, real change happens at the local level. The biggest dream I ever took away from poetry night was to one day imbed myself in a community and do what is good and true and beautiful right where I was planted.

So here we are. Years later my boyfriend is my husband. We moved to a small town in a new state just a month ago, a week after we were married in a small Episcopal church surrounded by family, friends, professors, and many former poetry night participants. Now, we are surrounded by a community of strangers. We know no one. We have no tall buildings to shout from. We have no wild band of poets. We do not even have another couple to share a bottle of wine with. But this is it. This is what we waited for - our community.

With those many lines of poetry pushing us onward, with all those nights of excitement, hope, and ideas to bolster us, and with our commitment to redeeming the part of the world we've been placed in, we dig in. Does the church need volunteers for Taco Night? We'll be there. Launching a youth group? We'll see how we can serve. Dinner and a movie? Sure, as long as we're sincere with each other and talk about things that matter.

And this, we hope, is the nucleus of world change: one house, committed to investing in their neighbors, their street, and their city; to redeeming every word and activity; to seeking what is true, good, and beautiful tirelessly every day.

Sara Mitchell is a freelance writer and a recent transplant to southern New Mexico. She and her husband enjoy reading a poem or a piece of prose most nights before dinner. Sara has delivered papers on the subjects of poetry, pop culture, and education at several academic forums and conferences. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Dallas Baptist University and blogs at SaraGoesWest.com.