I'm not exactly sure how I feel about the gathering strategies proposed in Thee Art of Gathering. In some chapters, I agreed completely with Parker while in others I found her beliefs to be a bit exclusionary and rude. I'll try to address these two sides separately by focusing on the chapters I felt most strongly about.

Decide Why You're Really Gathering

The first chapter was a wonderful read. I really enjoyed her takes on how stale routines inhibit a successful gathering. As someone who often finds themselves stuck in a loop of tradition and antiqued gatherings, I appreciated her emphasis on the need to innovate and reinvent gatherings to fit ever changing desires and purposes. I especially thought the chart provided near the end of the chapter is a useful tool proposed to help find clearer meaning within traditional gatherings.

This idea of reinventing tradition reigns particularly true for all of us seniors who are faced with an out-of-the-ordinary graduation this May. I'm on the commencement committee helping to plan the class day events preceding the actual graduation, and we are actively looking for new ways to gather in a way that is meaningful to the students without putting us in danger during the pandemic.

Close Doors

I can't quite put my finger on why, but this chapter really rubbed me the wrong way upon reading. Maybe it's a gut reaction to not wanted to be excluded from things myself. While I understood the intentions behind the exclusions (especially in the context of the next two chapters that talk about commanding the room as a host and creating a safe environment for guests), I cannot get past it feeling a bit middle-schoolish to exclude certain people for small reasons. It reminded me of an episode of the Real Housewives that I watched a day or two ago where someone wanted to invite her sister on a girl's trip and the host refused, resulting in a drunken tantrum on the requester's part. Yes, it's important to foster a certain environment at a gathering, but is it not rude, and potentially hurtful to guests, to exclude people in this way?