Wake Up And Dream

It’s been over a year since my book club last met. 

I was sitting on my friend’s couch in her living room. The lamps were on, offering a glowing dim light that made me feel relaxed and at home. There was a candle burning in the corner, and her husband and kids were nestled safely upstairs, leaving us ladies all alone. There was wine on the coffee table, surrounded by snacks. A plate of cheese and crackers, a small chocolate cake, homemade bread. Evidence of time well spent. Forks clinked against the plates as we began to chatter about our days.

Five women sat around the room. The youngest, barely thirty, was sitting on the couch with me, just to my right. My neighbor sat in the chair to my left. She helped convince me this group should be a thing. My midwife of sorts—she helped me birth this group that’s become so precious to me. 

Next to her sat our host, who’s really more like a sister to me. She was my very first friend in Massachusetts. She helped me visualize this group, helped me dream it, helped conceive it. She named it and claimed it and is my partner in all this. Across the room sat a middle-age woman whose children are all grown. She gives me a glimpse of what life might look like ten years from now. We were missing our oldest member. I missed her voice that night—having just turned seventy, she has a perspective the rest of us don’t, and I always learn something new from what she has to share.

This is my book club—The Woebegone Literary Society. There are a few other people that pop in here and there, but if I had to define a core group, this would be it. I had big dreams for this group. Dreams that it would become more than just a book club. Dreams that it would become a family. We met every month for only a year. And if I could go back to that last gathering in February 2020, I would never let it end.

I can remember it as if it were only yesterday. We were discussing Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger and I still don’t know if I liked it or not. The book, that is. I was sitting in my favorite spot on my friend’s leather couch, right next to the lamp. My legs were curled up in a crosslegged position and I was slouched back—my chiropractor would have been appalled. We talked about what it must have been like to be the main character: this young kid who felt bullied. What it must have felt like to feel as though you were being robbed. How it must have felt for there to be no other choice but to kill the bully. Or maybe he did have a choice—did he choose the right one?

We talked about how they ran, how they sought an escape. We talked about what it meant to go after the ones we love. We tiptoed around harder conversations about our world, touching on politics, but not really digging in. In that moment, I longed for more. I wanted to talk about how impossible some decisions feel. I wanted to talk about how we respond to fear, and how sometimes we make a decision that turns out to be wrong, but in the moment feels exactly right. I wanted to know the impossible decisions each one of us had faced, but no one seemed ready to go down that path. Our friendships were still too new, I think, to really dig in to the ways we’ve felt stuck or wanted to escape. Or maybe we weren’t ready to be honest with ourselves. Public introspection can be incredibly hard, especially in a room of book-loving introverts. I wanted to talk about forgiveness and social justice and the prison system, and all the problems of the world—but there was just not enough time.

We ate food. We drank wine. At the end of the night, our host made tea. As I sat in that room I felt like my dream was starting to take root. I looked at each face around me and felt deep gratitude that we had all been brought together—with all of our differences.

It’s not that we had long meaningful discussions. Sometimes we did, but we rarely strayed from the questions on our page to talk about the challenges we were facing in our own lives. But we were on that path. After a year of reading together, sharing snacks together, drinking wine and tea together, we were becoming more than just a book club.

We were becoming friends.

Years ago I read The Reading Group by Elizabeth Noble and this dream was first imagined in my mind. One day, I thought, I will have a book club like this. A book club made up of women from different places, with differing perspectives. Women of all ages, who start out talking about books, but end up being so much more.

A group of women that walk together through the hard times. A place to go where there are no walls—a safe space to say whatever is on your mind. A place where you feel free to disagree. Without any fear that they will kick you out. Women who help you be a better woman. Women who help you be a better friend.

The pandemic ruined my book club dream. We haven’t met in a year and now my worries aren’t “how do we pick a book?” but instead “how do we pick up where we left off?”

How do we get back to that point where we all feel comfortable being ourselves? Has our time apart changed all that?

I contemplated trying to host a gathering in the summer, back when the infection rates were low, but I just didn’t have the mental energy for that. I was afraid of planning anything, for fear that it would be cancelled. I held so much disappointment for so many months that hibernation felt like the only right choice. I ignored my desire to see them. Because let’s face it, by summer, I really could care less about a book. It was the group of people that I missed. I read books and wondered what they might think, then buried my sorrow and moved on, giving thanks that we were all healthy and alive, and knowing that one day we would meet again.

By summer, it had been months since I saw anyone outside my house. With all of our trips canceled, all our plans on hold, I was doing a lot of reading. And although I longed to talk about the books I had been digging into, I mostly just longed for conversation about anything at all. I longed for the chance to sit around and share snacks with these women I had been growing to love. I longed to talk about what we had been doing and how we were spending our time. I knew Zoom was an option, but I had shunned off technology. If I couldn’t be with them in person, I didn’t want to be with them at all. Zoom always left me feeling half empty. It was a stark reminder of all that I was missing; of all we couldn’t have. The whole point of book club is to gather together. The book is a tool—an avenue towards conversation. A way to get people to open up about what they are thinking. I just couldn’t bring myself to try that on a screen.

Late in February, I decided Covid would hold us captive no longer. I’ve gone more than a year without my Woebies. Without this group of women that were making my dream a reality. Without this group of women that had become my friends. 

And that year has been far too long. 

I invited them to an outdoor gathering on a Saturday afternoon in late May. Surely by then it will be nice enough to sit outside. We can talk about a book, and how life has been over the last fifteen months, and maybe pick up where we left off. It feels like a brave thing to do. Inside all I feel is fear. 

What if they don’t miss Book Club the way I do? What if they don’t miss me? What if they aren’t ready yet? The fear of having to cancel isn’t really in my mind this time. By now we’re pretty good at outdoor gatherings, and not even a little rain can keep me from putting on rain gear and getting outside to see my people. So unless there’s a deluge, Book Club will happen. But will it feel the same? Or will it feel like our first meeting? A little shy, a little timid, a little unsure?

After a year of burying my head in the sand, I’m starting to wake up and dream a little once again. 

One Year Ago: A Lego Club Church

One year ago today, we went to Lego Club at the Library. My 5-year-old had been talking nonstop about Legos, and I didn’t want them in the house. I wanted to nurture her interests though, so I compromised and agreed to go to the weekly Lego club down the street. “Club” is really a misnomer—they just pulled disorganized boxes of Legos out and let the kids go to town.

The kid sitting next to us had a snotty nose and I can remember being totally grossed out. Even pre-covid, I never understood why parents would take their kids out in public with snot hanging from their nose. Just keep your snotty kids home please! The rest of us don’t want to have to wipe up snot for the next week. It’s really just common courtesy to other parents, ya know? 

I moved my kids to the end of the table and sat next to the snotty-nosed kid. Maybe that way my kids wouldn’t end up snotty nosed. If one of us was going to get sick, I’d rather it be me. In my annoyance, I almost missed the creation that was taking shape before me. 

“What are you making?” I asked my oldest, who had just turned 8. 

“Church,” she replied. “See the organ? And that’s Mr Ted. And over here is Pastor Anne. She’s doing Communion. I have to make the pews and the people next.”

By the time she was done, it looked just like the Sanctuary we had learned to call home. All the way down to the Christ candle and the people in the pews.

This church was fairly new to us, we found it just a year before. Although the congregation was largely made up of people much older than us, it felt like home from the moment we first walked in. It was a place that welcomed us with open arms, even if we were the only family with small kids in the pews on more Sundays than not. We could truly come as we were and be loved and accepted.

Little did we know that we wouldn’t set foot in that Sanctuary the rest of the year. Little did we know that in six months, our beloved pastor would retire and we wouldn’t get to hug her neck before saying goodbye. Little did we know we’d already had Holy Communion for the last time in who knows how long. Little did I know this tiny little Lego Sanctuary would speak such loud volumes to me now.

I snapped a picture and sent it to my husband, and then to our pastor, impressed with my kid’s desire to build a Sanctuary from Legos.

When our time was up, we cleaned up the Legos, left the room and went the bathroom to wash our hands. Then we went home, fairly certain that none of us caught some terrible disease. 

I wish I had snuck that Lego Sanctuary out of the library that day. I wish I had known how special that memory would become. It was the first of many lasts for a very long time. 

This post was written in response to 10 Things To Tell You Podcast Episode 106: 10 Questions to Mark One Year of the Pandemic. What was your life like in early 2020?

Ash Wednesday: 2021

I wasn’t happy about it. 

If it weren’t for A asking me what we were going to do for Ash Wednesday, I probably would have ignored it. Pretended it was just another day. Neglected to do anything, simply because I couldn’t have it the way I wanted. It would have been a terrible decision, and one that I would have regretted, but it would have been the easy one. Instead, I did what I felt obligated to do—I put this worship guide out into the world—it was only right that we actually used it.

I also knew if we did nothing, my girls would grow up and always remember the year we didn’t do Ash Wednesday. It would be one more thing the pandemic took away.

So when we finished eating dinner, I quietly cleared the dinner dishes and lit all the candles I could find. We turned down the lights and sang a version of Create in Me that will forever be a favorite (thanks John Tirro). I asked if anyone wanted to read from the Bible, and A jumped at the chance. I always get a little teary when I hear her read from Scripture. There’s something about hearing God’s Word from a child that gives me a new perspective on whatever is being read.

After she read from Joel, we talked about what it means to confess our sins and to return to the Lord. This is always hard for the girls. For all of us really. None of us really want to admit when we’ve been bad. We want people to love us, and if we’ve been bad, that might not be so. We want to be right. We don’t want to think about the people we’ve hurt; or the ones that have hurt us—lack of forgiveness is a sin too. 

We talked about how God is a merciful God. Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And that because of that, we can feel free to confess our sins to him and know that we will be forgiven. We had a few moments of quiet as we each contemplated what to write on the blank page before us. One looked at me with tears in her eyes, so I took her to the next room and we whispered about some of the things she’s done over the last few days that might not have been the best behavior. It reminded me that sometimes it’s hard to think about what we need to confess. We get in our routine and we don’t even realize how we have turned away from God, or the need to repent—to turn back.

We folded our pieces of paper full of confessions and threw them into a bowl, praying that God would create in us clean hearts and renew right spirits within us. We lit a match and threw it in. One after another, the pieces of paper caught fire and we watched as they burned. When the smoke began to rise we feared the smoke alarm going off, so we moved the bowl to the stove and turned the vent fan on. “But I want to watch!” they cried. So we moved the stool and gathered around our bowl of sins, and watched as we lit match after match until they were finally all burned.

There’s something almost cathartic about watching your sins burn. The flames lick the edge of the bowl, the colors change from red to orange to blue and back to orange again. The paper that was once white is now black and ashy. “That looks so cool,” the littlest one said. “I love watching all the colors.”

It reminded me of a time at church camp when I was a teen. The confessing of sins and the burning of them in the courtyard outside our dorms. I don’t remember the confessions I made, but I remember how I felt when I watched them go up in flames. I remember the tears as I apologized to God for the things I had done. And I remember the way my heart felt lighter after the absolution had been proclaimed. 

After they were all gone, we moved the bowl over and let them cool. We read more Scripture, talked about what we might do during Lent to turn ourselves back towards God. And then, in the holiest of moments, the baby of the family—my tiny 6-year-old—she turned those burned sins into ashes with her hands. As she mixed them with olive oil and her fingers turned black, she took on the role of the one who reminds us. I put my finger in the bowl, turned towards her and made the mark of the cross on her forehead as I said “remember you are dust ... and to dust you shall return.”

She took great pride in reminding us all. She dipped a finger in, pulled it out, raised it up to a forehead, and in her small, quiet, 6-year-old voice, “remember you are dust....and to dust you shall return.”

For me.

For him.

For her sister.

It was in that last tender moment between sisters that I most strongly felt the presence of God among us. It was in that moment that tonight became most holy. In that moment, God took all my sorrow of being away from my beloved church community and filled my heart with a deep appreciation for this tender family worship experience we shared around the same counter we had just eaten dinner on. 

We washed her hands, then gathered in a circle to say the Lord’s Prayer together. And as I heard their little voices say the words louder and clearer than they’ve ever said them in church, I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that this will be an Ash Wednesday we will always remember.

Not because of what it lacked, but because of how God showed up.