c. 2007 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) In his parents’ eyes, the star of the evening was our 15-year-old son, playing his first major violin solo.

In the realm beyond parental pride, the evening belonged to the extraordinary Shaw University Choir and its primary soloists, tenor Corey Leak and soprano Louise Odom.

This joint concert of the Shaw choir and the Durham School of the Arts Orchestra was about dreams. At a time when predatory commerce wants to soak up children’s lives and channel their one passage through youth to such mind-deadening pursuits as iPods and online chat, these 56 musicians dared to dream of more.

With no hesitation, the high school orchestra plowed into Antonio Vivaldi’s “Summer.” Our son, nervous but composed, went inside himself, found his muse and hit every note.

Then came the singers from Shaw, a historically black university of 2,500 students founded by a Baptist pastor months after the Civil War ended, when former slaves were technically free but not yet encouraged to dream.

Odom walked onto the risers and stood by herself to sing a solo. Nervousness made her voice tentative at the start, but she pressed on, mastered her jitters, and allowed a lifetime of practice to shine forth.

Midway through the spiritual “Rise, Shine,” Leak opened his mouth to sing, and everything went up a notch. His strong voice soared beyond the chorus. He performed with a confidence that the hugely gifted can muster.

Afterward, Leak told me his dream is to sing with the Metropolitan Opera. And why not? Why not dream of “taking it all the way,” as my son told a grown-up about his aspirations? Why not stare down the nonsense and shallow pursuits of this age and dream of one’s life as extraordinary?

It’s like the dream that led to Shaw’s founding _ an absurd dream at the time, that the South’s despised could declare their worthiness to learn and to take their place in American life.

I was deeply moved by the Shaw Choir _ by their powerful singing, by the fascinating beauty of skin tones ranging from blue-black to golden, but most of all by their determination to master challenging music. Like all dreamers, they demanded our attention and said, “Listen to us!”

It is tragic how little dreaming is expected of people today. Youth are steered toward short-horizon consumer purchases, standardized testing and college admissions that promise market value, not intellectual challenge.

Workers reach the job market with some skills but little encouragement to create, to imagine something into being beyond one more knockoff of someone else’s ideas, or to see their lives as making a difference.

The “American Dream” has become real estate, not invention or conquering a frontier.

That’s why I had such admiration for these young musicians. Whether or not they make it all the way, tonight Odom had the courage to stand alone on a stage and to sing, Leak let it all out, no safe zone, and the boy we hear practicing upstairs stood before peers, parents and strangers and played with confidence.

This age feels like 1866, when the embittered South said to its blacks, “Don’t you dare dream! You are nothing!” And a Baptist preacher named Henry Martin Tupper said, in effect, “No, you can keep us out of your fabled universities, but you can’t prevent us from learning and dreaming.”

I am encouraged when I see these young people talk back to the politicians, educators and merchants who would steal their youth. “Listen to us!” they say. “We have our dreams!”

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest in Durham, N.C. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus: 100 Questions People Want to Ask,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)

KRE/PH END EHRICH

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