Joining with others who share a common vision is oddly not in itself enough to guarantee successful work together. I learned this from working with children in an afterschool music program at the Oscar Mason Center, a community center of the Huntsville Housing Authority. Three years ago when this program was initiated, I realized our greatest challenge was not music education which all the children came desiring, but rather building a place of emotional security and inclusiveness for all the children who shared the common vision. Though this program met in the midst of these children’s community, barriers still existed and had to be broken so that each child was welcomed in by his or her peers. Six weeks passed before we made much progress toward violin fundamentals, but in those six weeks these children learned that music is about listening and when they found a focused point on which to listen, which happened to be the violin beside them in our small orchestra, they became more willing to listen and more apt to hear, and therefore to see and validate and welcome the person holding the violin, no longer hearing just the music, but willing to hear the heart of the player. We must be able not only to speak of our own individual visions, all noble perhaps, yet tinged with what we may qualify as justified pre-existing conditions, but to hear the vision as others speak it. I challenge us to listen and hear the hearts of our neighbors.