New Series: Connecting Neighbors

Connecting Neighbors 

Interviews Conducted by the Logan Tabernacle Concert and Lecture Series Committee of Cache Community Connections

A community’s citizens become neighbors to one another when they become aware of their mutual experiences, challenges, successes, and perspectives. Communities with low neighborhood attachment and high levels of disorganization, where many residents do not know or associate with one another and are not committed to continuing relationships, have higher rates of adult and juvenile crime and drug trafficking.  Conversely, “communities that care” protect and support their citizens by developing and encouraging relationships that bridge social, cultural and economic divisions.

In 1963, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King offered these insights:

“The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human, and therefore, brothers” (“Strength to Love,” 1963).

“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.”

We believe that before a community’s residents can truly become neighbors, they need to know a little something about one another.  Then, we can act in the true spirit of common knowledge and respect, acknowledging similarities and differences in experience and perspective, and honoring both.

“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him” (C.S. Lewis, 1943).

Over the coming months, watch this page and our Facebook page for interviews and information about our Cache Valley neighbors.

Would you like to be involved in this interview project? Contact Richard West at [email protected].