The Table's Set

We all have many tables, Each of us. Whether we come from the family that had a carefully planned and provided for meal at precisely 5 pm or a mod podge of refrigerator leftovers at tv trays gathered around the living room at whatever time you happened to be there or a table that was somewhere in between. Regardless of what table you come from, today, now, you have many. There’s the “table” you gather around to eat each day, the home you abide in, the “family” that live with you there. There’s the table you go to each day, that you sit with a select group of humans with, chosen not by proximity, but by source of paychecks. There’s the one you go to maybe once a week, or month, or year, the one that isn’t about frequency but the faith it took you to walk through the door. This table is also called church, or for some of you the gym, or simply that place you go to seeking a bit of peace - to be amongst the many yet seen as one. There’s the table you get invited to, the people that keep calling, texting, pursuing, that keep showing up and keep asking you to do the same - friends. And there’s the table that isn’t about place or even a particular person or peoples. It’s the table found on neutral ground, where chit chat meets deepest fears, where politics and religion intertwine - maybe it's a bar, or a coffee shop, or a bus stop - it is wherever you collide with perfectly and chaotically beautiful strangers - it is the beginning, the very inception of “The Table”.

I know, I know, I know that “the gathering”, “the community”, “the table” it’s all become a hot topic or buzz words if you will. But do you want to know why I love them? That the whole earth could reverberate and echo one common theme, it’s beautiful. It’s perfect, really. Why, the table? Not all of us have come from good homes where a table represented a safe place to gather around, in fact fewer of us probably did than those who didn’t. But we did all have a safe place we gathered to. Mine, it wasn’t a dining room table. While I loved meals with my family, the table itself was usually covered in bills and junk mail and homework. No, we weren’t the family that gathered around a table, we gathered around Mondays. My dad was a pastor so we weren’t the type of family that worked and schooled on weekdays or played on the weekends. Sundays were kind of a big work day and, while you assumed it I will confirm it, we were absolutely homeschooled. So we took off Mondays. My dad also traveled a lot so consistency in schedule wasn’t a certainty in our home, but Mondays were. If it was a Monday and my father was within 100 Miles, we were together. My table of comfort, the safe place I gathered to, it consisted of building doll houses, of watching movies, of playing lawn darts or rummi, of reading books, of chasing the Schwan's ice cream man. It consisted of roller blades, of hopscotch, bop its, and my dad and mom and two brothers. Ask me what I think gathering around a table looks like and I will tell you all about thanksgiving feasts, the one time a year we put food on and chairs around the thing, and reminiscing over a lifetime of Mondays.

Tables, being the hot topic of the hour, I have been thinking a lot about. I’ve been thinking of the many shapes they take in my own life. There is the actual table in my home, where as a renter I understand I am a visitor to - my children will not gather around this table within these walls - but I will tell them all about it. About these first years as wife, of having a table I get to call my own where Patrick and I share meals and debrief the days. It’s the table I meticulously decorate knowing it’s the one we get to invite others to sit at, to gather around, as we welcome them into the home we are creating. There’s our couch, possibly my favorite table, where Meg comes over to and  we sit on watching Grey’s Anatomy over a dinner of junk food and glasses of wine. Where Sheyenne sleeps when she makes the trek from Central Oregon or Chris when he flies from Wisconsin. Where friends sit on and beside and below when we put out the welcome matt. Where new movies and shows are discovered and old ones are re-imagined in the arms of the one I love. And there’s Red Light, the bar downtown, whose walls have seen the gathering of many. It’s seen birthday’s, holidays, bachelorettes, date nights, girls nights and church small groups. It’s seen tears and laughter, prophecies and countless rounds of cards against humanity, and the passing of my 20’s. And most poignantly, gathered around it’s table with drink in hands, it seen the faces of many of those that I love most dear. And there’s A Life, my church, where each week I saunter in late with a barrier of coffee in hand, to encounter a table of open arms, of welcoming seats and words of care, a table of people becoming the church I want to see, to be . And there’s the table that goes with me wherever I go, as I cross the street, or into the grocery store, or the coffee shop, or the bar, it’s the one I set out by saying hello, by daring to move in closer. It’s the table of human interaction were strangers vanish and shared humanity begins. It is simply the table.

In all this talk of tables, I have been trying to figure out how to set the table. Without realizing that the table has already been set. You set it, the moment you invited me in to your life. I set it when I opened up my own. I see before me a beautiful table, sometimes it’s wreathed with garlands and others it’s littered with red solo cups, but the environment of the table isn’t found in what covers it’s surface but in those who gather at its side. I love to set tables, to create an atmosphere that inspires gathering. That is, I think, what I love most about this season of buzz words and communities, the opportunity to be open and vulnerable, to creating a safe place of tables that haven’t always been. To whip out the fine china or the paper everything as the occasion calls for. So let’s keep doing it, let’s keep coming back to the table, wherever it may be. Let’s make open hearts and lives and let’s show up. Let us be what sets the table.