In 2020, Sidwell Friends Handed Out Rocks

In the fall of 2020, Meeting was on screens. Noreen Muhib, a parent and co-clerk of the Lower School parents' Quaker Life Committee, told the school's news site the problem. Meeting, she said, "wasn't meant to be done in isolation." The year before, her family had done it on the couch, on the bed, even on the floor, and none of it felt like a special place for sitting in silence.

So she and her co-clerk, Melissa Merideth, made kits. At supply pickup in September 2020 every Lower School student got a candle, a packet of seeds and a rock. The candle stood for the Inner Light, Merideth explained, the seeds for caring for the Earth, and "the rock reminding us of our testimonies."

The point was that every child had the same three objects. If they could see each other's rocks on each other's tables, Muhib said, it would create a consistency that might help them feel connected.

Beside a laptop, a rock has one great advantage. It needs no Wi-Fi.

I have been thinking about this kit for six years. It is the only school supply I have ever heard of that was designed to do nothing. Every other item on every list I have ever bought for my children is for writing, cutting, gluing or charging. This one was for sitting still.

In the fall of 2020 the eldest was in fifth grade on our dining-room table, the middle one was in first grade on the kitchen counter, and the youngest was one and under the table with the dog. Nobody at our house was sitting still. Nobody sent us a rock.

So this week, belatedly, I made my own kit. I took a stone from the yard and a birthday candle and some basil seeds from the drawer, and I put them in the middle of the dinner table without explaining. The middle one asked what it was for. I said it was for being quiet together for one minute.

We tried it. The dog barked at second twenty. The youngest laughed at second thirty. But for most of a minute, five people and an old dog sat and looked at a rock, and that is longer than we have ever managed before.