Dear Friends,

Over the last month of holiday celebrations and travelling, we’ve gathered with others for potluck feasts, afternoon coffee, juice and crackers, sharing a newspaper or card game.  Peter and I have had more public meals in a month than we would in a year: in restaurants, hole-in-the-wall coffee shops, and airport and ferry-terminal picnics. Each one is little out of control and open to the surprises of strangers.  In one tiny storefront restaurant, where small tables were arranged too close for the wait-staff to walk between, it was impossible not to eavesdrop!  

We watched as two couples — strangers seated at adjacent tables, joined their meals and their conversation. First, they talked about the menu, then travel misadventures, then where they were from. The younger couple, two men, revealed that they were newlyweds.  The older couple, a man and woman, responded with delight and raised a glass to their marriage. The four kept on talking after the plates were cleared, and coffee came, and the bill was paid. As Peter and I squeezed out the door and walked past the front window, we saw the waiter bring them four more glasses and another bottle of wine; they were still going strong!   

It strikes me that tables remind us of the shared project of individuals living together.  As Hannah Arendt wrote in The Human Condition (1958), tables simultaneously build relationships and separate us from one another. Mysteriously, at table, we connect and we maintain our identities. And often at table we are filled with food for body, mind, and spirit.  A shared meal, a shared table, brings us undiminished into the lives of others, and it builds the community of friendship that ultimately knits us —
in all our differences — together.  

Now that the season of midwinter holidays is past, and we gather less frequently, I invite you to visit the Parish House Community Center on any Sunday at 11:15 am for shared coffee and snacks. You might sit down at a card-table or stand around an invisible table. Either way, I believe that there you’ll be filled with the stories people tell (or imply), with laughter and sympathy, and with your own sense of self and connection. Whether or not you’re a churchgoer, this table is for you.

In Peace, Becky