“This is not a referendum,” I told myself the day before. “I know I am loved.” Not said out loud: There’s Honk! There’s Indigenous People’s Weekend; folks are out of town. There’s a nor’easter coming, terrible weather is expected. This is a crazy and hectic and hard and overwhelming time—who wants to come to a book reading about grief and loss? Nobody. That’s who.
But just as the rain and wind began Sunday afternoon, the Friends Room at Friends Meeting at Cambridge and its D-10 screen began to fill. Estimates run from forty to seventy people, both in the room and on Zoom, attended the reading. But as Wonderful Man as he is known in Strands (or “Birthday Boy” that day) joked: “Cambridge police reported twelve!”
Looking out at that loving and supportive and beaming crowd of dear, dear friends, teary and overwhelmed, I found myself repeating what I’d said maybe forty-five years ago, the very first time I found myself on my feet, my heart pounding, at a meeting for worship: “My cup runneth over.” For surely goodness and mercy have followed me all my life.