As I write this, my BBQ is doing something it has not done in a long time: it’s slow roasting a big piece of meat. This is not just any meat, it is meat for a small gathering around my table later today. We have, in our kitchen, a table that can seat eight people, but for the past two years our table has been under-used. The pandemic has taken away a deep value of ours – to host people around our table.
For us, the table is more than a place to eat, it is a place where we set the stage for our life. As a family we teach our kids manners around the table, tell stories around the table, try new foods around the table, and even pray and tell silly jokes around our table. It’s a well used table with dents, stains, and signs of use. But what our table has often become is a place to gather with others, with people who were once strangers, but are now friends, neighbours, and even those we now consider family. This is a place where some of our best memories are made, and with the anticipation of meat on the BBQ once again, and a note in our calendar reminding us of visiting guests, we hope that our table will once again make many more memories.
Sharing a table, however, is not always rainbow and butterflies. In fact, it is a risky endeavour to pull out a chair and welcome people around our table. This ancient practice of eating together is fraught with a big challenge: people. The people you welcome around your table are not perfect guests, and you are not a perfect host. This is the great mystery of gathering around a table; we are learning to love. My young daughters have had more than a few breakdowns, fits, and angry moments around the table as they’ve learned to try new food, or to listen to others. I have felt family tension around my table as someone offers an opinion on politics or insults another. Awkward silence or sheer tiredness makes some table gatherings painful. But even in this, we learn forgiveness and grace around the table. It is a place where humans are humans, and where we learn to be human together.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that, “…we share our bread” around a table. For him there is this sense that food reminds us of our shared life together. When we stop our busy-ness and make room to feed each other, listen to each other, and gather around our food with open hands, we say something very important about what this world is about. The people in our lives matter, in both a spiritual and relational sense, but also in a physical sense. We care about others around our tables, and we are reminded at just how holistic that care seems to be.
We are learning again how to open our doors and our pantries to guests after a long season without others in our homes. But perhaps what we are really learning is how to create space for people, with all their messiness and goodness, into your lives again. Your table can be a special place where you declare what is true and right about this world; served up with a side of potatoes and a glass of cheer.
