What is a Sunday for?

I grew up in this sort of Bible Belt.
In the 1980s, Sunday meant church.
Everyone went.
Or at least it seemed like everyone went.
There was an expectation then that certain people were trustworthy simply because of the position they held. Teachers. Pastors. Adults. Authority.
And yet, even as a child, I remember hearing deeply unsettling things about people we were supposed to trust. A pastor had done something terrible. Someone respected wasn’t who everyone thought they were.
I didn’t have the language for any of this then.
I just knew that something didn’t add up.
And I noticed.
I noticed a lot of things in church.

Sunday morning

My family sat in the back pew.
There was a practical reason for this.
I could not stop laughing.
Not a polite little giggle either. I would laugh so hard that the entire pew would start to shake.
My mother would lean over, give me a little slap and whisper, Smarten up.
I can still remember the heat of her breath. She was so embarrassed.
Which, of course, did absolutely nothing to help the situation.
But much of the blame really belonged to Russell.
Russell sat where my sister and I could see him, wearing these wonderful thick double-bridge glasses. That classic gold Luxottica frames that every vision-compromised dad and son wore back then.
And he knew.
He knew exactly what he could do to us.
He’d catch our eyes from across the church.
Then very slowly he’d pull his glasses down his nose.
He wouldn’t smile.
That was important.
His face remained completely straight.
He’d stare at us over the top of those glasses, raise his eyebrows…
and sometimes give us a wink.
That was it.
We were finished.
The harder we tried not to laugh, the worse it became.
And I think Russell loved knowing that he could do it. He never needed to laugh himself. That would have ruined the whole performance.
He could send the back pew into complete silent convulsions with nothing more than his eyebrows.
I still laugh thinking about it.
Meanwhile, the pastor preached.
Many of the husbands were farmers from Dutch families. Some would fall asleep during the sermon. Occasionally there was snoring. Maybe even a little drooling.
Their wives were awake, overcompensating for their husbands and their kids.
The women seemed to be trying very hard to do everything properly.
And then there was Julia.
Julia was the gold standard.
She was gentle. She had lots of children. She was perfect. She did missionary work.
And she sang louder than everyone else in a tone I’ll never forget.
The women adored her or were intimidated by her.. I can’t decide.
I would sit there watching all of it and wondering about things I probably wasn’t supposed to be wondering about.
Sometimes the pastor himself seemed almost comical to me. Things spoken in Old English, something like, “Brethren, I say unto thee, let not the wickedness of this earthly world take root within thy heart, lest thou be led astray into the valley of temptation!” Does anyone actually talk like that? I couldn’t help but listen .. not because I was understanding at all what the hell he was talking about.. but more like this is hillarious. And his voice get so theatrical-sounding .. so dramtic. It didn’t help that it was a small town and I went to school with his son whom I couldn’t help but bully. I was such a meanie sometimes!
Church felt a little like a club whose rules everyone else seemed to understand.
And then the service would end, and everyone would stand around drinking bad coffee and talking. I remeber my mom always complaining about the bad coffee and you know what.. I get it!!
Even as a kid, some of it felt strangely performative to me.
Sometimes I’d sleep at a friend’s house on Saturday night only to discover that her family went to an even earlier church service than mine.
I’ve never been a morning person.
Even as a little girl, I had trouble sleeping at night, so being woken extra early on Sunday, getting dressed and then having to sit very still beside a friend while trying desperately to behave felt like an especially difficult assignment.
I usually failed.

And yet…

Here’s the complicated part.
I am fascinated by the history of Christianity.
I went to Christian school until I was about twelve. I grew up hearing biblical stories over and over again. I’ve always listened and interpreted things visually... I’d paint a picture in my mind of these plaster and stone houses, a designated fireplace to cook and keep warm at night. Most of the furniture was built-in, of course. And there was always an arch separating the rooms. Everyone wore linen tied with a rope around their waist. And there were always palm trees outside.
Years later, when I travelled to Europe, suddenly pieces of those stories existed in physical places.
I could connect things.
I could stand inside churches that were hundreds of years old and look up.
And I mean really look up.
The scale. The stone. The paintings. The windows. The evidence of all the people who had stood in exactly that place before me.
Those churches blew my mind.
So perhaps it wasn’t spirituality I had rejected as a child.
Maybe it was the performance of it.
Because I never found much comfort in the churches I attended growing up.
Comfort came later, somewhere else.

When things became quiet

Eventually, we stopped going to church.
And suddenly there was time.
My Sundays got quiet. I remember noticing little things, like light and shadow. How the light made me feel, and how it wouldn't have felt quite the same without the shadows. The shadows defined things. They made everything dramatic. But it wasn't the shadows I chased. It was always the light.
The smell of the farm. I loved it!
The sounds outside.
The particular feeling of a day when there wasn’t somewhere you were supposed to be.
Back then, stores were closed on Sundays.
The world actually stopped a little.
There was nowhere particularly important to go.
Nothing arriving at the door.
Nothing you could order and have within hours.
There were stretches of time when you simply had to be where you were.
And I think some part of me has been trying to get back there ever since.
Not back to childhood.
Not back to church.
Back to stillness.

All the Sundays

That’s really where the name comes from.
All the Sundays is an idea.
I think Sundays should be sacred.
Not sacred because someone tells you what to believe or where to sit or how loudly to sing.
Sacred because you decide that some part of your life should be left alone.
A little space before the week begins again.
Time to notice the light coming through the window.
Bake something that takes too long.
Put your hands in the dirt.
Make coffee and actually sit down to drink it.
Walk outside.
Photograph something because you can’t stop looking at it.
Make art.
Read about something simply because you’re curious.
Do something gentle that makes you feel good and close to the earth.
Maybe that’s church enough for me.

The coffee shop

Years ago, I opened a coffee shop.
And for a while, it was lovely.
Until it wasn’t.
I’m not ungrateful for that experience. Quite the opposite.
I learned an enormous amount.
I learned technical things. How to make things. How to run things. How much work exists behind something that looks effortless from the other side of the counter.
But I learned much more than that.
I learned about people.
And I learned about myself.
I learned that running a busy, demanding business that needs you constantly isn’t the life I want.
When the coffee shop closed, I thought perhaps that was the end of it.
Except I couldn’t stay away from the space.
I’d go back.
I’d think about it.
I’d imagine things.
My dreams kept pulling me in there.
There was something unfinished.
Eventually I realized I didn’t need to resurrect the business I’d had.
I needed to make something different.
Start fresh.
Use what was already here.
And, perhaps for the first time, build the business around the life I actually wanted instead of building my life around the demands of a business.

A different kind of shop

I love art.
I love beautiful things.
I love food and photography and old objects.
I love light.
I love seasons.
I’m endlessly curious about things.
And I love quiet.
So All the Sundays gets to be all of those things.
I can make something.
Photograph something.
Bake something.
Find an old piece of clothing that deserves another life.
Learn the history of an apple.
Open the doors.
Close them again.
There can be a schedule without everything becoming an obligation.
And when life happens, as life inevitably does, I can shut the doors.
The business can wait.
That might be the most important thing I learned the first time around.

What is a Sunday for?

I don’t think Sunday needs to look a certain way.
Maybe yours is loud.
Maybe there are children everywhere.
Maybe you’re alone.
Maybe you go to church.
Maybe you sleep until noon.
Maybe you make bread.
Maybe you spend the entire day in the garden and come inside with dirt under your fingernails.
I don’t think the activity is what makes it sacred.
I think it’s the decision to leave a little room in your life for being a person rather than constantly being productive.
To notice where you are.
To become curious again.
To make something with no particular urgency.
To let the light move across the floor without immediately getting up to do something about it.
And perhaps that is what I was looking for all those years ago while I sat in church watching farmers fall asleep.
A sacred place that didn’t require me to behave.
One that simply asked me to pay attention.
That’s what I want All the Sundays to be.
Not a shop that is always open.
Not another thing demanding your attention.
Just a little place devoted to the things that make ordinary life feel worth noticing.
And maybe Sunday isn’t really a day of the week at all.
Maybe it’s the little bit of life we leave unaccounted for.