Birthday Reflections
“Planting seeds
Inevitably
Changes my feelings
About rain”
- Luci Shaw
It was a drizzly weekend, and as people dropped in for our “4th Year Birthday Celebration” we contemplated the many seeds that have been planted in and through this space, as well as the countless ways that this small outpost along Montgomery Road has deepened meaningful connections between neighbors.
From the students who first learned how to make coffee to the neighbors who just stopped by to say hello, everyone who came to Saturday’s special Sidewalk Hospitality gathering represents a piece of our community. Whether they be students who graduated from our “Coffee Cup” entrepreneurs program at Pleasant Ridge Montessori School, teens who gathered for an intense game of “Uno,” the local musician who shared the gift of steel drum music, or the president of the local chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers - everyone found their place and contributed their own light to our time together.
This kind of cross- and counter-cultural connection is what’s motivated us to action from the very beginning. In that time, we've seen shy kids become confident, friends connect over games, and strangers become neighbors.
Of course the soil of Community Happens Here reaches far deeper than the four years of community we’ve nurtured at our current location - it goes back to this organization's initial inception in 2016, and further, to its roots in the Community Council’s Clean Up Committee and Pleasant Ridge Montessori School. It was fed by our reckoning as a neighborhood and as a country, which presented us each with the opportunity to consider afresh what it truly means to connect across difference, and to do more than “just get along” with our neighbors - both physical and metaphorical.
On days like Saturday, we are reminded that CHH is more than just a physical place; it's a symbol of hope and connection. It's a reminder that kindness and understanding can be found in the smallest of places.
And it is an “outpost,” a stop along the journey where visitors find rest, refreshment and human connection.
Our outpost of intentionality, where conversations begin and the only agenda is to encourage and develop the practice of relating to one another, is a place we hope can be a model for others in their daily life.
Our desire is that all our neighbors might become outposts of kindness in their own communities. With a little effort, we can create a world where everyone feels welcomed, seen, heard, and connected.