“It’s of no small importance that Christ asked us to do something in remembrance of him…It is at the table that we participate in the narrative God has been writing throughout all of history. Something powerful happens at the table.” (Kendall Vanderslice)

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One of my favorite luxuries is sitting at a dinner table with two or twelve of my favorite people: feeling known, loved, at perfect ease. One of my favorite adventures is sitting at a table with a somewhat motley group of people, who don’t totally know or understand each other but are still packed in together, laughing and eating and drinking. I feel like I’m flying: a little dazed, a little terrified, my heart blown open.

A sterling example happened twenty-ish (!) years ago in the cool, musty basement of my little Baptist church. On Sunday mornings that summer I was helping teach a ESL class for adults who’d recently immigrated from Mexico; on Wednesday evenings I was taking an American Sign Language class from the church’s ASL interpreter and a couple of deaf congregants. All of us ASLers and ESLers needed more language practice, so one night we threw together a potluck dinner. There were maybe 12 of us, teenagers and adults, Mexican immigrants and white Michiganders, some hearing, some deaf, some bilingual, some trying-to-be-bilingual, some trying-to-be-trilingual. We sat at a folding table with watermelon and tacos on paper plates and did our damndest to have a conversation in Spanish and ASL and English, with pithy exchanges such as:
 
 “DO. YOU. LIKE. THE LEMONADE?”
 
 “YES. I LIKE. LEMONADE. IT. IS. GOOD. GOOD FOR SUMMER HOT! YES!!!”

It was absurd and chaotic and 100% Table and I’ll never forget it.

“Something powerful happens at the table,” says Vanderslice, and I know that she’s right, that something bigger than the sum of its parts is going on there, something that unclenches our muscles and attaches us to each other.

The Table isn’t (only) figurative, and it’s not (only) future: it’s literal, and it’s now.

Penultimate hypothesis for Table living: Eat with people, especially people outside your usual circles. Structure your life to do this with increasing frequency.

This hypothesis combines two fundamental themes in justice work: food and proximity. If we want to be Table people, we cannot (and shall not!) stay comfortable and segregated in our mostly-homogenous worlds. Equal Justice Initiative’s Bryan Stevenson often urges his (mostly white, affluent) listeners to get proximate: “You need to get closer to the parts of the communities where you live where there’s suffering and abuse and neglect. I want you to choose to get closer. We have people trying to solve problems from a distance, and their solutions don’t work, because until you get close, you don’t understand the nuances and the details of those problems. And I am persuaded that there is actually power in proximity.”

Listen. I know we’re never 100% Ready for what Stevenson describes, but: sometimes I think parts of my white American evangelical-girl background particularly and specifically hindered my ability to “get proximate” with people whose life experiences are different from mine, without becoming a total weirdo. White-saviorism + arrogance + neurotic worry = a real toxic stew; in those “get proximate” situations, I end up behaving like a glitchy pretend human, like Edgar from Men in Black. (And I know! My church background, as described above, also provided so many opportunities for good eating-with-people! We contain multitudes!)

I think (and, not for nothing, Jesus seemed to think) that we stand a much better chance of moving further into social-justice work holistically and without saviorism if we have a regular practice of eating with people who are not in our usual circles, who are not Just Like Us racially, socioeconomically, educationally, linguistically. We start by pushing open our circles, limbering up before we go lumbering around.

We eat together. It’s simple, strangely uncommon, and extremely potent.

SO. HOMEWORK:

At least once this summer, eat a meal with people outside your normal circle, ideally people further from centers of power than you.

1. Look around your life for a not-you-and-yours group that still makes sense. (Obviously do not assemble a totally random group of people for Diversity’s sake; we’re not doing that shit!) Work colleagues? Members of a committee you’re on? People on your block? Parents of a few of your friends’ kids?

2. Invite them over to your home or out for a meal, and be the person who follows up to make it happen. Script: “Hey, would you all be interested in getting drinks after our next practice?” Or “I’d love to have this group over for hamburgers and hot dogs this summer, nothing fancy. Does any of these three dates work for you?” There are options for any personality type: big or small group; host, be a guest, or go out.

3. Eat and get to know people better. (This is a good place to remind us ex-evangelicals not to be Meaningfully Purposeful. DON’T BE WEIRD. The purpose is to hang out with people you don’t know well enough, full stop. In fact, if you’re feeling at all "Ministry!!!" about this, best to go out, not have people at your house.) It will be more tiring and awkward than hanging out with your best friends. This is OK. Watch for some of the power, some of the magic. Note: Eating with people might start making us each other’s people; or, like the ASL-ESL meal, it might be a delightful one-off. Either is fine!

Are you in? Why or why not? Does this still sound suspiciously or stilted to you? TBH, it kinda does to me. What am I missing here?

And: what are your best motley table memories?

xo