These are a few of my tables from just the last two weeks…
Hummus and lamb kabobs with a new friend for a three-hour lunch at The Peacock Mediterranean Grill where we poured our hearts out to each other about success, spotlights, burnout, and dreams, admitting we have both hid in bathroom stalls at events we were speaking out because our introversion is such a situation.
Little plates of chicken salad croissants and sausage queso and mini-cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes with 20 friends and family to celebrate a little punkin’ angel turning one.
Barbeque chicken sandwiches with our friend who decided to brave the vulnerability elements and tell us about his recently broken heart that is stubbornly refusing to heal.
Over steaming bowls of Salmon Panang Curry and cold glasses of Sauvignon Blanc with my oldest friend in Austin trying to solve for X regarding aging bodies, young adult kids, the election, and God.
The table brings us together. It gives us something to do with our hands so our souls can open up. People bring the same needs to the table: hunger, thirst, cravings. We all have to eat. Perfectly griddled smash-burgers taste delicious to folks of every stripe. Even the seating arrangement creates connection; here we are facing each other, elbow to elbow, in a circle or square or rectangle, passing plates, dishing out the short ribs for everyone because they are too hot to pass.
We are entering the Table Season. It feels like nonstop gatherings from here until New Year’s resolutions. This happens to coincide with a world that is fractured and volatile. Holidays in their best years are already fragile. This year feels particularly brittle, like it all might shatter with the slightest touch.
If my own extended family is any indicator, we have voters on the absolute fringes of both parties, a couple casting protest third-party votes, and at least one refusing to participate in the election at all. We have Christians, Agnostics, and something between the two. Some go to a Presbyterian church, some to Catholic Mass, one goes to a Cowboy Church, and several go nowhere. We are country, city, ranch, and downtown lights. We are Black, Native, and white; gay and straight. We are married 50+ years, married with no kids, never married, divorced with five kids, second marriage with four kids under six.
We couldn’t hit a standardized family template with both hands.
Surprisingly, miraculously even, we are super-close.
I blame the table.
We have used it judiciously for decades. Barbeques, hibachi on the Blackstone, Sunday dinners, turkeys on a spit, burgers on the grill, taco bars, homemade individual pizzas, hot dogs on the roller. My brother-in-law, probably furthest from me politically, invites me to spend the night all the time and creates a fancy steak dinner over candlelight with just me, my sister, and him for “cozy conversation.”
The polarized zeitgeist suggests we cannot break bread across such chasms, but the table says we can. It has a clear function in this wild experiment called connection, and that is offering a seat. The table says pull up a chair, look folks in the eye, hear your name spoken by someone who knows you or wants to. It holds food made by loving hands, because turns out nurture is bipartisan. Like my beloved departed friend Rachel Held Evans wrote: “This is what God’s kingdom is like: a bunch of outcasts and oddballs gathered at a table, not because they are rich or worthy or good, but because they are hungry, and they said yes.”
Here is what the table isn’t designed for: to change someone’s mind, or make them see your point, or prove why they are so misguided, or poke holes in their theories. It doesn’t exist for you to deliver a perfectly cogent speech supporting your position. It isn’t a place to finally be right, or finally win the argument. You aren’t on camera and no one is clocking your talking points. Laying down your sword for two hours doesn’t make you a bad citizen; it makes you a family member. The table isn’t a center ring, nor is it a debate stage weirdly set with glassware. It is neutral, because everyone is there to eat.
Center rings and debate stages have their place, to be sure, but not every environment is intended for a showdown. The President does not deliver the State of the Union at a birthday party. In this weary moment, the table’s chief purpose is belonging, if only for this one meal. There are some places where the highest water mark is just to be human together. That is all the table asks and offers. We are not required to place untenable pressure on a dinner. We don’t need to contort it into spaces better suited for complex debates. Perhaps, at this moment, we just need to pass the mashed potatoes.
There are some beautiful ways to make the table connective, even across every manner of division. This is in no way prescriptive, but here are a couple of thoughts for letting the table be the table at its best this season:
1. Be gently proactive in advance: “Family, we don’t have all the same views, but we love each other. Please let today just be about enjoying time together. Let’s leave divisive comments and conversations behind today, please. Everyone belongs here!” You could send this as a simple text.
2. Set the tone. I once went to a dinner party where the hostess had very simple name cards at our seats. On each one, she wrote her favorite thing about that person. It was so generous, I am still thinking about it. Believe it or not, if you are walking into a volatile room, everyone is anxious about it, not just you. Right out of the gate, start with hugs, eye contact, kindness, genuine curiosity. Keep your body language open. Uncross your arms. Lower your shoulders. Be a good listener. Be a kitchen helper. Refill drinks. Hold someone’s baby. Clear the table. Laugh at your uncle’s story you have heard forty times. Today is not for battle.
3. Consider broaching a roundtable conversation over dinner with a singular question everyone has to answer. If this feels cringey or out there for your family, I promise it is beautiful in practice. This is a way to center the people, not the issues. A few possibilities:
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- What is the best thing that happened to you this year?
- What are you looking forward to the most for next year?
- What is a fun fact most people don’t know about you?
- What is the best gift you ever received?
- What is the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?
- What is your absolute favorite holiday tradition?
- If you had to spend $500 on yourself, what would you buy?
You will end up laughing, agreeing, and connecting over stories you’ve never heard. It keeps everyone focused on each other and out of the weeds.
Priya Parker said, “The way we gather matters, because how we gather is how we live.”
The table gives us a chance to gather well, to live well, a real-time opportunity to embody the goodness we wish for. It isn’t meant to solve decades of family problems or bring us into political alignment. It isn’t a bandaid for past harm or a free pass on dysfunctional patterns. It doesn’t make anyone less difficult or more likable. It isn’t a magic table.
But surprisingly, it can become a place where we hold each other’s stories with tender hands. Where we can find compassion for someone hurting. Where we prioritize belonging, if only for an evening. The issues will all still be there tomorrow – they are howling at the door already – but the table can tuck us safely inside for a few hours of “cozy conversation” and offer a short respite for the hyper-vigilance most of us endure.
Decide it can be lovely, and it just might become that.