Neighbors Sing 'America The Beautiful' In Level Amid Coronavirus

LEVEL, MD — Music will be in the air at 3 p.m. Friday in Level. A pastor who lives at the parsonage on Level Village Road said she called on her congregants to join her in song last week, and word spread.

Rev. Lynne Humphries-Russ, the pastor at Hopewell United Methodist Church, said she decided to sing "America the Beautiful" at the end of her driveway Friday.

"Everybody just needed something to pick them up," Humphries-Russ said.

"I sent an email out to the congregation and said, 'Go in your driveways at 3 o'clock," Humphries-Russ said. "Everybody can come out in their driveway, on their porch and sing along with me."

About 13 people sang outside, including some who are older and home bound, she said, and it went beyond her street.

"We got email," she said, from Hopkins Produce, whose owners reported: "We were singing with you," since they could hear their Level neighbors more than a mile away.

Humphries-Russ said she's always been patriotic. Her ancestor was a sharpshooter and helped hold the line during the Revolutionary War to protect the Continental Army.

"My family has been in every war," Humphries-Russ said. "My country is really important to me. My history goes back a long way, and I love being American."

But as a reverend, she said, she has to separate church and state.

"My job is to use the tools the Methodist church has given me," she said. One of the tools is the hymnal, which contains "America the Beautiful."

When she sings Friday afternoon, she hopes more will join her.

"I hope that it will ignite that passion in somebody," Humphries-Russ said. "It's my job."

This week, she said, her neighbor called the Level Volunteer Fire Company and everybody on their street to inform them about what they were doing.

"God has given us the opportunity to make a difference here," Humphries-Russ told Patch, by staying "right on their own property and not [going] out."

The new coronavirus is spread through person-to-person contact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"There are two commandments we’re given: Love God and love each other," Humphries-Russ said. "Loving each other manifests itself in different ways, and one of them is to use the medicine that we have and hopefully we’ll be doing that. Hopefully we’ll find an answer to it. I have complete confidence that they will."

Said the reverend: "We just need to follow those two rules: Love God and love each other."