The First Gathering

The first gathering of SoPurple (on Thursday, April 25th) was great.  Amber, Lindsey (Amber's sister), Anne, Aria, and I (Amory) attended with our mothers and Wellesley attended via phone.  We were all very excited to come.

Amber led the meeting and told us her vision.  She pointed out that a lot of missionaries are going out, leaving as boys and coming back as men.  She said that while they are out, she wants us to do our very best to become whole women.  That is the purpose of this society: to grow up and to embrace womanhood, to take it on and become whole, womanly figures.  There are so many broken men out there, she says, and a broken woman can't heal a broken man, so we need to become whole so that we can help heal the broken men.  She wants this society to help us strive to become the kind of woman that God wants us to be.

Getting further in, Amber read us a quote by Ranier Maria Rilke (who was actually a man, even though his middle name was Maria.  :)):  "For believe me, the more one is, the richer is all that one experiences.  And whoever wants to have deep love must collect and save for it and gather honey."  She talked about how she wants us to be honey-gatherers, gathering the goodness in the world, finding the different good things from different places and bringing them together; because, just as honey can be gathered from all different places and not just one place, goodness can also be gathered from everywhere.

Amber also told a story about a lady named Lydia, from the bible.  The story goes as follows:  Paul was journeying through a city, preaching.  A woman named Lydia, "... which worshipped God," heard him and listened, and she and her household were baptized.  Lydia then said to Paul, "... come into my house, and abide there."  She was offering Paul a place to stay for the night.  Amber also told us something interesting that she noticed:  The verses say that Lydia was a seller of purple.  But what is a seller of purple?  Amber reminded us that purple is the color of royalty and back then, only kings and queens and rich people wore it.  She also talked about the woman in Proverbs 31 whose "clothing is silk and purple."  Amber said that, to her, a seller of purple meant someone who gathered purple (riches and good things) and then gave it away, spreading it to others and sharing the goodness they had.  Amber also noted that Lydia was kind and we all agreed that we want to be like Lydia: a kind person who gathers goodness and then gives it to others.

We rolled names around on tongues and debated lightly about whether we wanted a name like "The Honey-gathers" or a name like "Sellers of Purple."  It was pointed out that the acronym for Sellers of Purple was SOP, and everyone agreed that SOP wasn't very attractive.  So The Honey-Gatherers seemed like it would be a great name.  Everyone put in their thoughts.  For some reason, though, the name felt (to me, at least) like it was missing something.  I still liked Sellers of Purple and Aria pointed out that instead of using SOP we could use SoPurple.  The group laughed and we agreed that we liked that.  So, Sellers of Purple was decided upon.

We talked about lots of details we needed to work out, such as what activities we would do and when, and what committees we wanted.  We talked about how it might work when someone was in charge of one of the committees: you would get assigned to two months in the year and that way you would be able to make sure that you had everything ready for that month, things like a speaker, an activity, and making sure everyone knew what you were doing that day so that they could decide if they wanted to come to that meeting.  We talked about how everyone that was invited to SoPurple was so spread out and how we could switch meeting places around so that everyone had chances to attend.

Some of us volunteered and were nominated for certain committees and assignments.  Amber was, of course, chosen to be the president, Anne volunteered to take charge of communications, Wellesley chose the Relationships and Spirit committees, Aria was nominated for and accepted charge of the Lost Arts committee, and I volunteered to be the historian.  A few of the committees and things to be in charge of that we talked about are as follows:

Culture
Lost Arts (Aria)
Knowledge
Spirit (Wellesley)
Relationships (Wellesley)
Service
Fun
Hard Things
Communications (Anne)
Refreshments
Secretary
Temple Trips

There are lots of activities that we talked about doing.  Here are some of them:

Gardening
Canning
Making soap
Quilting
Weed-eating (learning which plants you can and can't eat)
Reading books
Having Elaine S. Dalton come to speak
Singing songs
Writing missionaries
Questions about marriage - getting them answered
Attending the temple
A mother-daughter retreat
Picnicking (at Canyon Rim Park or elsewhere)
Attending the opera
Hiking
Having a Book of Mormon-a-thon

We scheduled our next activity, an opening social in Amber's backyard that would take place the next Friday.  We will eat dinner, roast marshmallows and make s'mores, play get-to-know-you games, and overall have a great time.

None of us can wait for the next gathering.  We're so excited to get started!

Lady Amory, SoPurple historian