It Takes a Table

I'm participating in a 10-month program in Co-Active Leadership this year.  The first component, a six-day program at a beautiful retreat center in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, ended last Sunday.  For major parts of those six days, our group had been sitting in chairs that looked lovely and fit the decor well, but did not make my lower back and hip joints happy at all.  I found a small end-table with a lower shelf that was a good height to prop my feet on, and life became more comfortable.

The table began to accumulate things.  I'd put my journal and pen on the shelf when I wasn't writing.  The person on my left would add hers.  The person on my right would set his coffee cup on it.  People began to cluster a bit. As we re-gathered after a break, one of the leaders remarked on the little village we were building.  I joked, "Well, you know how you always say 'It takes a village'? I say, 'It takes a table to build a village.'"

It takes a table to build a village.

As that has percolated for the last couple of days, I've let all the images that have accumulated over the years drop into it.  I remembered the power of our family dinner table to shape our identities as conversations about our day and the world unfolded over the years of my growing up.  I felt again the power of both the communion table and the coffee-hour/potluck/church-supper table to build and sustain the relationships that create and nurture the church.

I saw again the tiny house in which a study group with whom I traveled to Nicaragua gathered with Cristóbal and Conchita, a couple who were part of a Base Christian Community and who told their story of how they had been empowered by learning and conversation and being seen, for the first time in their lives, as people who could be part of liberation - their own and others'.  Carlos sold ice-cream novelties out of a hand-pushed cooler, and it was the first job he'd ever had where he worked for himself and was able to live in choice and on purpose.  They offered each member of our group an ice cream treat.  They had so little, but in sharing it, they helped to extend their village to include us.  It took a table.

There are so many stories.  So many tables.

I woke up this morning determined to use my table to build my village.  For over a year, I've said I was going to begin inviting people to dinner as a way to begin to build connection and community.  Part of my reason is selfish.  I need more community in my life.  Part of it comes from a firm conviction that people are hungry for connection.  Our busy-ness cuts us off from each other.  We don't connect.  And the longer we spend not connecting, the harder it becomes to remember how to do it.  When we do remember how, we increasingly connect only with people who are more like us than they are different.  Then we forget how to talk with people who think differently than we do.  And the gulf grows until all we can do is shout.

We need to come to the table.  Share some food.  Drink a little wine, maybe.  Talk to each other.  Connect.  And when we do, we can rebuild the village.

My first gathering is next Thursday.  When will yours be?