Beloved Block

There are 18 kids on my neighborhood block.

I know their names, what foods they like, and what sports they play. When my upstairs windows are open on a nice day and the children are playing outside, I can tell who is out there based on the tone and pitch of their voices.

I love these children, and I love their parents, who all chose to settle their lives on this small square block in the middle of the city. We have: two teachers, a grief counselor, a therapist in training, an engineer, two nurses, two photographers, a food farmer, several very talented bakers and cooks, a community organizer, and a tarot reader. An embarrassment of riches, really. The front porches up the ante on the Sesame Street vibe. Occasionally, the other moms and I will perform musical acts in the street (for each other… everyone else tends to look away).

In the words of my daughter, this block is filled with “awesome people and great helpers”.

I started calling this community the “Beloved Block” in 2020, when my circle of concern was as big as it had ever been but my circle of control was shrinking with every report of a new wave of COVID infections and deaths. It was during this time that we became more than just people on the same street who enjoyed each other’s company. We changed, by necessity, into a dynamic unit that chose to rely on one another for child care, grocery runs, emotional support, and respite from the terror all around. Our city block evolved into a remarkably special place where the currency is relationships and our energy can be spent in ways that are valuable and meaningful. In ways that make a difference and fundamentally matter to my own well-being.

Beloved Block is a real place, but it’s also a powerful idea descended from “Beloved Community” which was made popular by Martin Luther King Jr. His vision for Beloved Community is a “kind of understanding and goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles.”

Now, clearly, this is an aspirational vision. A bold and powerful idea. Maybe even a dangerous or threatening idea to those who benefit from the “deep gloom of the old age” and will do anything to keep what they have.

AND. It’s real. I know that because it exists where I live. Our belief in and our practice of this idea is what makes it real. The belief is the easy part; the practice is work. Doing things every day to bring it into now. The practice is vulnerability, grief, interdependence, and joy. This is how Beloved Community begins, and with more practice, it grows. adrienne maree brown has a great piece of writing in her book Emergent Strategy that articulates this phenomenon for me:

"The future is not an escapist place to occupy. All of it is the inevitable result of what we do today, and the more we take it in our hands, imagine it as a place of justice… the more the future knows we want it, and that we aren’t letting go."

In the same book, adrienne maree brown reminds us that nature self-organizes based on the elements that are in closest proximity. For example, in a starling murmuration, each bird relies on its nearest 6 or 7 neighbors to make decisions. For the birds, it means that the whole flock evades danger, moves with the wind, and stays together.

For the Beloved Block, it means if the bus is late, the kids still get to school even if their parents have to go to work. It means there’s no shortage of hot dog buns for an impromptu cookout. It means we hold new babies so their moms can nap.

I know what you’re thinking: “But Kathryn, we’re not birds. We are fickle humans.”

Don’t worry - there’s plenty of fickle on the Beloved Block. There are conflicts and disagreements and misunderstandings and even long periods where we pause from all that interacting with one another because we need a break from the fickleness.

That, too, is murmuration.

The root word is murmur, a low continuous sound. As with starlings in flight, there’s a low, continuous acceptance of the natural order which is change. There’s a constant shifting that we all must practice to honor, re-arrange, negotiate, release, and reform the culture that we have built and actively cultivate with each interaction.

The newest kid on the block was born in September. He is as perfect as possible. I know this because a couple of days after he was born, his mother and siblings walked down to one of our neighborhood gatherings and introduced him to us. He was strapped to her body and his feet were sticking out. I’m pretty sure every person there touched each one of his toes. A few nights later, we sang happy birthday to him and ate cupcakes (made by one of the block bakers) on the front porch.

In (very unfortunate) contrast, when I had my daughter in 2016, I suffered through a brutal post-partum winter in isolation. It’s not that I didn’t have people in my life who cared. I had plenty of them and the offers were abundant. I just didn’t know how to accept them. Postpartum depression is a “sneaky monkey with a machete” (bless you, Alanis Morrisette, you truthteller) and mine was quite effective in making me believe that isolation was my only option and even a noble option because it wouldn’t require anyone to be inconvenienced by my struggle.

Just gonna pause here to acknowledge a few things. First, there’s nothing in societal norms, health care systems, or the media that would disabuse me of the notion that motherhood is a selfless vocation and self-betrayal makes you really good at your job. It’s surprisingly easy to absorb the message, turns out. Also, the pattern of betraying myself so that no one else had to suffer did not start or end with my post-partum experience, but it was probably the peak. I attribute a lot of this to my socialization as a Black Woman and my lack of practice with centering myself and my needs. Now, I can see all of this clearly and it affirms my power. Back then, I didn’t have it.

Story time:

It was a lonely and very cold December day. My husband had just returned to work. I was both exhausted and too wired to rest. The baby, also as perfect as possible, was super gassy. My friend (who is now my next-door neighbor) told me she was coming over. When she arrived and took the baby from my arms I stood there dumbly wondering what I should do next. I decided I could take the trash out to the garage because it seemed like the most selfless/least burdensome thing I could do and the machete monkey loves that shit. She shook her head quietly, then told me to take a walk and not to come back for at least 30 minutes. It felt like she had offered me a million dollars.

These days, I get to watch another woman ASK for what she needs from people who are just waiting for an opportunity to support her and her new baby. Her openness to being supported is healing me and teaching me to forgive myself for not knowing that asking for/accepting help could be a jackpot opportunity, not a loss, for someone who loves me.

It is a rare thing to feel so connected and supported in everyday life, even in this strange world that is brimming with people who can talk to each other from different parts of the world in mere seconds. Even here, true connection - the kind that makes you realize just how many people you can love deeply at once - is remarkably hard to come by. Only 1 in 3 adults in the United States says they know all or most of their neighbors, according to this Pew study. That number goes down to 1 in 4 in urban and suburban contexts. And for those adults who do know some of their neighbors, less than half of them have parties or get-togethers. EVER.

It’s possible to be proximally close to people and never know them, let alone learn to trust them, cooperate with them, persist through conflict with them, or dream about the future with them. The Beloved Block is for sure some kind of outlier, but it doesn’t have to be. At least, that’s what I’m betting on. Because the Beloved Community can start anywhere. It is a dream that becomes true when we practice it. The evidence of its possibility begins to spread, like a murmur, until we all move together in the direction of exuberant gladness.

I’m writing this in late October and November of 2023 and there are currently innocent people in Palestine who are being murdered and displaced in a war that other people started. I am grieving the unbearable loss of the children who deserved so much more than this. I am angry to live in a country that funds war, which fixes nothing and only takes more and more without ceasing. I write to connect with others across space and time so if you are reading this, know that I am praying/working for peace today so that we can wake up tomorrow and be more free.