If I quiet the noise around me, I can still hear the echoes of trombones that played last Thursday night in the backyard of The Bungalows. Zeb and the guys close out every DHC block party with “When The Saints Go Marching In.” The tradition traces back to a request many block parties ago from Davidson matriarch Ms Bernice. It is but one of the myriad gifts she has bestowed on our community. And Zeb’s rendition always inspires a dance line that radiates pure joy and affection.
Trust a lady who has witnessed a full century of our country’s uncertain, but stubborn, path along the arc of the moral universe to understand the release we all need to get us up and commit to keep on going. That sort of powerful nudge from an elder has never been more important than it is now.
DHC’s block parties are our effort to turn back to our neighbors in every corner of Davidson and express our gratitude—to the people who write checks in support of affordable housing, to the people who volunteer their voices and skills to advance the mission, and to the people who choose to call the housing we can offer home.
Building and keeping affordable housing options in Davidson is arduous, head-down work on the part of everyone it touches. It moves forward only with unflagging support from the broader community and unfailing accountability in response to that support. It would be easy to imagine that the two-steps-back days far outrun the one-step-up days. Months slip by in a flash, even as we work to meet unmet needs that clang unrelentingly minute after minute, day in and day out.
That’s why calling music into our midst is so transformational.
In the last 10 days, I’ve been gifted not once, but twice with the chance to stop and let the music flow up, over, and around me. If you know me, you know I’m devoted to Bruce Springsteen and his music. Right after Memorial Day, my family traveled to my hometown Washington DC to stand in center field at Nationals Park while Bruce and his band called forth our American ethos. When the lights finally came up three hours later, I was ready to run out of the stadium, fists pumping in the air, convinced that all of us can be the heroes we need to rise above inequity and injustice.
And, yes, I know. Bruce, doesn’t do it for everyone—I’ll never understand it, but I accept it.
My hope for you is that somewhere out there, there’s music that finds its way into your ears and into your soul and fires you up in that same way I felt in DC and on Thursday night as Zeb blasted out the anthem Ms Bernice has chosen for us as neighbors.
The road is long. Something or someone is always keen to find ways to turn down the music. I love Davidson because we don’t cotton to the pettiness and defeatism that conspire to set neighbor against neighbor. Instead, we spring up on behalf of each other and embrace the joy of community—even if that means pushing on with a walker or riding a wheelchair as regally as Ms Dot and Ms Shirley did in leading the dance line on Thursday night.
Oh, and for all you true believers out there . . . You know who else was marching in his own dance line in New Jersey to the “The Saints” on Thursday night? Bruce.
That’s right. There’s solidarity among the righteous.
And now, back to work.