Bookstores, Covid and Lent

The Covid lockdown seems to have happened without warning. There was no plan in place to ride out this forced closing of our lives. In the early Spring of last year, we found our groceries in the driveway delivered by Kroger, our Mass on a bench in the woods and our family's faces on Zoom calls. 

What is this? How will we get through this ? 

  And here I give a deep teary bow to independent bookstores. After a few weeks, we had to go somewhere. I rang our favorite bookstore in the small Georgia town of Zebulon called "A Novel Experience". Yes, by golly, they were kind of open: "Tell me what you want and we'll give it to you." So, on a spring morning, we drove the beloved country lanes, past cows and houses set back from the road,  acres of grass and trees to a bank parking lot. I called and asked the owner, Chris, for any Nikki French and a new book or two.  She found a few and we drove around to the back of the store. She handed us a brown bag out the back door with a gracious smile and thanked us for our business. What about that exchange that sticks with me and bring tears? On the way home I read the first line of one of the books and couldn't stop laughing; "Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle , the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down." From: "Little Fires Everywhere". I  was laughing from the sheer joy of holding a new book in my hand and at having seen and smiled at a dear person who has kept that bookstore open in the midst of all that we have endured.

  And because of this: 

 In Lent, we give up something we enjoy and and that does not include vegetables we don't. I have written of this before. Of the monks who lived on the Skelligs, rock islands off the coast of Ireland. Their love of God drove them to a place of constant prayer and their sensory stimulation was so limited that they savored everything. A sunrise would be a cause of great joy. I think Lent can teach us to savor. Like I did that first line of a new book. 

  In March, we will head off to Winder to the Corner Bookstore. I am looking forward to it as if we were travelling to Paris. What new friend will I make, what treasure will come to hand that will expand my universe ? And on Easter morning, I will have a cup of decafe cappuccino with Creme brulee coffeemate and it will taste like nirvana as it warms my throat because I haven't had any for weeks. What will we savor that we have been deprived of when our lives get back to normal? Lord, thank you for this lesson. Help me to savor each moment of my life as the great gift it is. Amen.