By CLAIRE ASBURY LENNOX, Glenn Church Member
The last weekend in the blissful world of hugs and high fives and not caring if people breathed on you, we went two for two on Glenn Confirmation activities: day retreat on Saturday, Sunday School the next morning.
Spring was just peeking out, and early on Saturday we gathered yawning at North DeKalb Mall and into the bowl of its community garden (which I had driven past countless times but never entered) to move mulch, pick up trash, and—to the delight of my forever Glenn Youth heart—belt “Bohemian Rhapsody” on top of what I believe was ultimately dubbed Mulch Mountain. In this first year of parenthood, I savored getting out of the house and chatting with my fellow Friends in Faith, all members of Glenn’s young adult group. Besides being in slight disbelief that I don’t technically count as a young adult anymore, I felt such deep gratitude for the gifts and graces they have brought to our church family and for the chance to get to know them better.
And these seventh graders! Talkative, engaged, smart, silly. I usually feel in the upper echelon of lame around teenagers, but not these folks. We drove to Chick-fil-A and sat in the brisk sunny wind of the patio, the only place that would hold us all, laughing and dipping fried goodness in Polynesian sauce.
Back at the YAAB (Youth and Activities Building), we wrote a creed for Confirmation Sunday, the students deciding how they would frame the Holy Trinity through their own words and ideas—a practice we’d gone through on my Glenn Confirmation retreat 19 years before. And we played “Telestrations,” definitely my favorite version of Telephone by far, passing notecards and pens around the cluster of couches, chuckling and groaning at one another’s artistic (in)ability as we struggled, on the clock, to figure out the original word.
The next morning, we gathered back in the same room for our lesson on grace. Connor had us all take off our shoes and socks, go outside to the YAAB yard, and walk on the frosty straw dew in (mostly) quiet contemplation. Anyone who walked down North Decatur Road for those ten minutes was probably confused. But Connor wanted us to have the experience of really getting up close to something that we pass by a lot, that’s always there (the yard), but that we don’t always notice or pay deep attention to. Like God’s grace.
Why am I recounting all this when it happened six months ago? I’m not sure. I think because part of me can’t believe it’s been half a year since I last set foot inside our church buildings that mean so much to me, and more importantly, spent quality in-person time with the people who make up our community, old friends and new. I’m almost still processing that on this early spring day, everything seemed set and solid—even knowing that COVID was lurking, no way it would take over with such magnitude—but by the end of the week, I would be leaving my office for a still-unknown period of time.
And I’m glad that some of my last days in that “before” time, outside of a small family bubble, were spent with these people. With Glenn people.
I’m grateful that I still feel close to our community of faith, and for the many folks who are working doubly hard to make connection possible in the age of COVID.
But I think back to that last in-person Sunday morning, bare feet gingerly pressing into the cold wet ground outside the YAAB, recalling pumpkin unloadings long past and experiencing up close a place that I would typically walk by fondly, but without a second glance.
How many times since then and now have I wished to delve deeply into the (extra)ordinary gatherings of worship and fellowship that I never expected to go without? To take off my metaphorical shoes and sink down into the messy, joyful details of community?
A lot. A lot of times.
I’m not sure how to end this piece since we don’t yet know how and when any of this will end. Nothing will feel fully satisfying until we can safely reunite and rejoice.
On Sunday mornings these days, I watch my toddling, babbling son—who, last time we were in worship, was still content to be held and rocked—smile and wave at the musicians and pastors on the laptop screen, in the midst of milk and toys and goldfish.
It is small, but it is something. A grace-filled reminder of who still surrounds us, a reminder of what’s to come.