When I was a kid, growing up in a small apartment in New York City, the dining table was the center of the home. It wasn't the center the way kitchens are now designed and understood to be the functional center of a home. It was the center because there was no where else to go. Our living room had a television going all the time, our bedrooms were full but we didn't have desks. And our apartment was not a Classic Six where one could retire to a study or family room.
In our apartment, the kitchen table was study space, family room, and, of course, eating space. The kitchen table was in a small space adjacent to our tiny kitchen (there were two tiny counters, a sink, a small stove, and small fridge). Actually, the dining area was nearly too small to contain our round table and four chairs. Somehow, though, it all seemed adequate--this is where I learned to cook great meals. But it was on this small table that we ate those meals, and did our homework, and played Backgammon on long, lazy, Sunday afternoons. This was the table where I would pour out my heart to my mother about my latest "boy troubles" after school each day (well, maybe not all of my heart...I was a teen too, once upon a time.)
Anyway, as I sat around another dining table on Monday, in the home of my friend Susan--who is one of the writers on the Greenblade Justice Journal --I couldn't help but think of how important these tables have been in my life. Over a simple, yet extravagant, lunch of tomato soup (a nice chunky one with bits of carrots and topped with shredded purple basil), a baguette and cheeses, and ravioli coated lightly in butter and parmesan, and a mix of figs, Dagoba chocolate, and these wonderful slim cookies that were a cross between shortbread and biscotti (but with cocao nibs!!!), over this meal the four of us laughed, dreamed, wrestled with food justice issues, and listened deeply to each other.
This is what I want church to be like. I want our altar to be the place that holds those memories and echoes to us the memories we make around the "dining tables" in our parish hall, in our homes, in restaurants, in the park. Fast food church will not cut it. Thankfully, that is not mode that Grace reverts to, but it can be tempting... We are called to something so much deeper and whole. Can the altar where we celebrate Eucharist really be the center of the action for us? Can it teach us to offer radical hospitality at our own dining tables? Just how do we meet the spiritual and physical hungers of our community? Want to talk about it?
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