if the whole city prays together

My neighbor was coming up his front steps, earbuds in, shaking his head like someone who had already been through something. He pulled one earbud out and said to no one in particular:

“Brunson is carrying that team on his back.”

I looked up from the fuschia I was pushing into the soil.

“It’s that bad already?”

He grinned.

“Only way they survive the fourth quarter is if the whole city prays at the same time.”

Just like that, we were in it. Knicks-Celtics, playoff nerves, Brunson’s minutes, the usual rollercoaster. He’d been listening to the game on his commute home. I was out front, trying to get things to grow. Two neighbors catching a beat of the same city rhythm, mid-transition.

It wasn’t a long exchange. He went inside to watch the rest of the game. I went back to the planter boxes. But the moment stayed with me.

These small, offhand moments—the ones that pass between chores and commutes—are what turn a neighborhood into a community.

Stillness, I’m learning, isn’t always about silence - it’s abt connection too. Sometimes it’s a quick laugh before running up the stairs to catch the rest of the game. Sometimes it’s Knicks takes shared over halfway-done planter boxes. A reminder that presence can be simple, small, and still mean something.

A neighbor.

A nod.

A team that just might make it through the fourth if the whole city prays together.

—L