There is an old story told by minister Harry Emerson Fosdick about an experience he had as a boy growing up in New York. His mother sent him outside to pick a quart of raspberries. He didn’t want to do it. He approached the chore reluctantly, and that container seemed to fill painfully slowly. Then he changed the challenge in his mind. Instead of picking the quart his mother requested, he decided to surprise her by picking two quarts. Suddenly, everything changed. The raspberries hadn’t changed. The chore hadn’t changed. The amount of time he had hadn’t changed. His mother hadn’t changed. His attitude changed. I’ve been thinking about that story because I believe it applies to how we approach our neighborhoods and communities. It is easy to look around and focus on everything that needs to change. We want local government to do more. We wish people volunteered more. We complain that nobody knows their neighbors. We wonder why someone doesn’t organize an event, clean up the park, welcom...

  Q: My neighborhood has been engaged in the past but more and more I am seeing the core participants stop serving and as a result we have returned to apathy and it is so discouraging. Do you have any thoughts on how to change things, to get things going again. - Worried in Missouri Dear Neighbor First, thank you for your honesty. What you described—a once-active neighborhood that now feels “cold”—is something many community leaders experience. You’re not alone in the disappointment, but you’re also not alone in the calling to keep trying.  Kurt Kaiser wrote the song "Pass It On. That song includes the phrase, "It only takes a spark to get a fire going." An engaged neighbor is a spark in their neighborhood or association.  You can be a spark like Alyssa, who turned a vacant lot into a sunflower garden that brightens downtown Springfield. Or like Lyndal, who mows the widows’ yards on his street all summer to keep the neighborhood looking nice. Or like Sandi, who started a...