Building Community One Chorus at a Time

The setting is spartan but scenic -- a nature lodge with a large, open room, on the banks of a small lake. The setting sun tints the western sky through the bank of windows lakeside. Inside, busy hands set up tables, chairs, speakers and stands, snacks and centerpieces. And instruments -- from rhythm instruments on the tables to guitars and keyboards up front. And flutes, of course, and a fiddle and a bass and a banjo and accordion. We were there to sing -- because as the invitation suggested, it was too much fun last year when convened such an occasion to celebrate my birthday to do only once. I'm not sure I would go so far as to suggest there was something magical about the event, but there was something more than fun about it. and so while we can have fun in any number of ways, we were interested in that "something more."

People filter in -- from the three somewhat different circus rings of our life. There are church friends and neighbor friends and, well, friends who are simply friends. Those within each circle know each other, of course, and there is some overlap. But there are also those, like Rose, who only know us and few, if any, others. There is a willingness, but also a strangeness.

But never mind all that. The music soon begins -- a couple hours worth of three-chord roots music with which even the non-musical have little difficulty singing along. From O Mary Don't You Weep to Erie Canal to Buffalo Gals to This Land is Your Land; from Swing Low to O When the Saints to I'll Fly Away; from Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road to Peaceful Easy Feeling to Country Roads; from Today to If I Had a Hammer and We Shall Overcome and even a Polka or two thrown in for fun, we sang and sang and shook our tambourines. We laughed, we paraded, we sang at the top of our lungs without regard for who could hear. And it wasn't long before the various rings of acquaintance melded into one.

We had become a part of each other -- which is something music has the power almost intrinsically to do. By evening's end, we knew each other -- had shared with each other an intimacy -- whether or not we knew each other's name. There was, in the room, a resident kindness and grace; a corporate and palpable smile.

Perhaps part of the problem in the world is that we don't sing enough together. Maybe if the Security Council at the U.N. distributed rhythm instruments when they gathered and someone brought along a guitar the world would be a kinder place. Maybe if, instead of a "Green Zone" in Baghdad the army set up a jam session zone.

It's a silly idea, I know. But it was fun to see just what a little turn of When the Saints Go Marching In could bring out of a bunch of relative strangers one autumn evening last week:

...community; one chorus at a time.