If This Table Could Talk

December has always been a time of gathering arounds. This season of gathering around kitchen tables and dining room tables, around Christmas trees and pianos, gathering around stories and carols. When I was growing up, I can remember countless tables with generations sitting round and telling stories.  I remember those times usually began with a big meal, lingered over dessert and finished with gallons and gallons of coffee and Constant Comment tea. My favorite memories of tables had extra chairs pulled up and wiggled in…always room enough.
 
We are all needing table-time this year. I guess I need to just own that – I am needing table time this year. I feel the deep need for time gathered round, with folks who listen with their hearts first. Time with family – given and chosen -- who know my heart or (now that I’ve moved to another part of the country) are interested in stories of the heart. 2023 feels like a runaway train with despair’s engine careening down the tracks. Quaker and folksinger, Carrie Newcomer sings a line that fits well – “We’ve been traveling faster than our souls can go.”
 
If our tables could speak to us, I believe they would be reminding us of our best, as well as hardest life’s moments. Echoes of wisdom passed down from folks whose chairs are now empty. Echoes of times of feasts and times of heartbreak. Stories about growing up and growing older. Holding on's and letting go's of the living of our days. Shared stories of what we’ve come through before and ways we’ve navigated difficulties. Stories upon stories of coming out on the other side. My friend, Carol would call it Table Grace and I believe that’s exactly it. As precious souls being mindful of the significance of gathering round, we can discover glimpses of becoming hopeful again. A good slice of pie and a tender-hearted story can do that for a soul. In my life, it has happened time and time again.    
 
I love this picture. I snapped it during one of those `table conversations’ this past Labor Day weekend. Even now just looking at those precious feet connected to those most precious souls, I can hear the storytelling happening above. Each of us telling stories of what happened during the past year and stories from what we’d shared together thirty years before that. I can hear laughter, so much laughter. Even on that September morning, I could hear echoes of `the hopes and fears of all the years’ meeting.
 
That happens around tables. Life sitting down to rest a minute and catch her breath. During this season you and I just may have the chance to do the same. It’s great when the food is perfect and delicious, but you know some of my favorite meals have been leftovers. It’s the people. It’s the time. It’s the stories told and re-told and told again. It’s the listening for your heart and mine.

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