If You Start A Book Club….

If you start a book club and if you meet once a month, every month for almost three years, and if you have a book society retreat in the nearby city for a long weekend in January of 2023 and again in March of 2024, then you might find your book clerisy in February of 2025 gathering swimsuits and sunglasses, bags and books, passports and phones and checking in with American Airlines to fly first to Dallas and then, destination Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. 

If you start a book club and hold deep discussions and ask vulnerable questions and hold space for each other, then you may find your Clerisy stepping into seventy and sunshine, starting each morning with coffee and croissants, hot tea and yogurt, sitting on the veranda around the pool.

If you start a book club and share laughter and tears, worries and woes, health diagnoses and scares, you could find your Clerisy loading up en route to the marina, loading up on a Zodiac charter, heading out on the Sea of Cortez in search of whales. And it might feel straight out of a storybook when two humpback whales offer the best show as they breach and play and circle the water with their gorgeous gargantuan flippers. And your group gasps and applauds and can’t help but exclaim, every time these two gentle giants break the surface.

If you start a book club and the pieces click in place, and the conversations continue, and the book title count climbs, then you may find yourselves dressing for dinner at a lovely eatery with the name The Secret Garden on the sign above the doorway. And you’ll feast on pizza and beef ribs and paninis and pear dessert. Wander the streets of old San Jose in the dusky twilight.

If you start a book club and throw in a large dash of creating and sharing what was created, you may one bright Monday morning bounce across speed bumps, park in an almost full lot, and wend your way to the door of a Dolphin Encounter. Once checked in you’ll be given a key to a locker to stow your gear, handed a wet suit to don, and wait your turn to climb the stairs to the deck of the tank. The six of you will clap enthusiastically for Kahal the dolphin and he’ll click back an earnest hello. You’ll cheer each other on as each poses for a dolphin kiss and the photographer nearby clicks her shutter furiously. It will be a trip highlight, only second to the humpbacks. 

If you start a book club, these exact experiences will likely differ, but it is to say rather than the exact details it is the magic and mystery of a group of people who connect over curiosity and coffee and creativity.

If you start a book club maybe you’ll never travel to a physical location together at all, but you will travel beyond the coffee shop walls together and you will travel through book pages together and no doubt magic and mystery will stand as ready companions.

 It is to say if books aren’t quite your cup of coffee, the actual real reality is a group of connection, a group of compassion, a group who holds space and listens well. 

A group, whether you meet up at the airport or only ever meet at the corner cafe, who spreads the pages of community where each person is allowed to be themselves, welcome to bring questions, offers and offered kindness, listens attentively, never belittles or sneers, holds shared space, voices insecurities, and affirms healing in the face of another friend’s fears.

And it is to say, a rare thing in my lived experience to stumble upon or fall into a group such as this. Perhaps it happens more readily for say, Enneagram sevens or extroverted individuals. For this introvert, it doesn’t even number a whole handful. 

And this is to say, if you read this and long for some such experience, I see you. I’ve lived in the space of longing more of the time than I’ve lived in the grace of a clerisy community.