When Jung and I were walking this morning we had a long discussion about family. One thing we have not implemented yet in our family is a system for chores for our daughters. It’s becoming clear, though, that they need to be participating in some of the regular maintenance of our home environment, such as tidying up and folding laundry. We want them to be taking on more responsibility, and to begin to feel that they are contributing to our household and not just receiving. As Jung and I were talking about chores today, I had a vision of us all together sitting around folding laundry, or cleaning the same part of the house and realized that this shared activity is something we need to begin right away. We need to provide opportunities to allow conversations to come up organically, so that S and J can talk with us about the things they’re excited about, upset about, or just interested in, as part of the natural flow of working together.

We don’t lack for communication from our daughters. They love to talk with us all the time, but sometimes it’s not easy for us to listen. They often want to talk with us while we’re preparing dinner, getting ready to leave the house, or trying to find our way while driving and we have to tell them that we can’t listen carefully right then. However, when we have our Sunday family meeting, and we ask our daughters about celebrations to share or challenges they’d like help on, they often can’t come up with much. Having a time when we are all together doing work which requires a minimum of concentration seems like an ideal way to connect as a family and hopefully not only build up a sense of responsibility and contribution to the family, but also build up a tradition of talking and listening as a family—a tradition that I hope lasts long after S & J take wing and fly out on their own.

In the conclusion of my post, Shared Vision, I mentioned “First Communities, the family” in passing at the very end. This is part of a world-view I have held for a while that we all belong to many communities which decrease in intimacy as they radiate out starting with the most intimate, our immediate family, which I refer to as the First Community. As I thought about that “First Community” today, though, I realized that it’s not necessarily the family for everyone, and that in fact, it would be possible to have more than one “First Community.” In many ways, what Jung and I are hoping to do is to grow our First Community. We want to find more people who are seeking to live wholeheartedly, honestly, and joyfully and who, like us, desire to create work which feeds their souls and their families.

Who are you in relationship with who might be part of your First Community? Are there ways you could create opportunities to talk together with trust and honesty whether it be in a meeting or informally while working together? In this age of Facebook, Twitter, and text messaging (all of which, as Jung can attest, I use frequently), in-person communication is more important than ever. I believe that there is magic in the act of talking openly from the heart, and listening openly with compassion. And I also believe that First Communities created in this way could be the foundation for transforming the world. Go out, talk, and listen!