Community Cornerstones: Honesty and Trust

Community can only exit where there are relationships built around trust and truthful communication. Any community, even controlling, destructive ones thrive only when every member accepts and lives by a code of trust.

Any healthy community, including the community of family, needs to be able to know members will be as honest as possible and communicate with respect, courtesy, and honesty. When trust breaks down, so do relationships. When one member cannot be trusted to live within a group and communicate with truth and respect then the rest of the group may suffer or at the very least lose faith in that community member. This is the very fabric of safe community, and the opposite of this is what we see every day in the news. Murder, terrorism, abuse, theft, unethical political decision-making and behavior, even divorce, drug-related problems, you fill in the blank.

Let me make it more personal, have you ever fibbed to save face or keep from hurting someone's feelings? Have your ever spoken the hard truth but done it disrespectfully? These kinds of interactions regularly hurt relationships, and when relationships break down, community breaks down.
So how are you doing in building community in your communication?

Open Heart/Open Home

I wrote a post on mainegirl that started off about traditions and ended up being a reflection on hospitality. This post relates so much to my thoughts on Front Porch Conversations I should have written it here. It also relates to the photo in this blog, my grandparents' farmhouse, which has a beautiful front porch that they added after moving in when they were married 71 years ago this past December. I've spent many hours visiting and playing on that front porch and to this day I can see my grandfather sitting there looking out over the fields and hearing him say "What's new?" when I pulled in and walked up the steps. My grandparents' home was one where I don't know if anyone was ever turned away!

Read my latest post on mainegirl that segues traditions with keeping the door open.