In Search of a Roundtable

Update

It's been a busy last few weeks. Mike got a job through AmeriCorps with Every Voice in Action Foundation, where he will be working with Tucson youth on media projects that they are interested in.  Mike and I drove up to Moab to see Anna Meyer, one of my best friends from Beloit, and to attend the Youth Garden Project's Pumpkin Chucking Festival.  It was a lot of fun.  Mike and I dressed up as mechanics and got to watch pumpkins flying through the air.  Mike even took part in a pie eating contest.

I just got back from another BorderLinks trip, this time with the Presbyterian Church in Canada and All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington D.C. It was a great group of people and I am going to be writing about it more in depth in my next post.  Festivities for Dia de los Muertos were amazing.  There is something called the All Souls Procession, which is a community sponsored event that draws over 20,000 people every year.

As you can see, there have been some exciting things going on.  But with the ups also come the downs.  I have been struggling recently in many respects.  House life is a lot harder than I anticipated and while I love the work that I am doing at BorderLinks, it takes a toll on me emotionally, physically, and mentally.  And while Mike has a job, he is struggling to find a safe place to live in Tucson.  I am also starting to wonder about the future and what is next.  Part of discernment is figuring out what is important to me, and things aren't crystal clear yet in that regard.  I often feel like I am pulling myself in all different directions with no kind of guide.


In Search of a Roundtable


So, I've been thinking about the idea of the table a lot since I've been down in Tucson, and with Thanksgiving coming up soon, I thought it would be a good time to share some of these musings with other people.  What prompted me to think about this idea was a poem that I discovered in the archives of BorderLinks reflections.  It is called In Search of a Roundtable, from which I am going to share some excerpts:

And what would roundtable churching mean?
It would mean no daising and throning,
for but one king is there,
and he was a footwasher no less.
A healer of hearts, he, and bestower of disturbing peace,
whose footsteps we lost track of.
We looked for signs, but with uncircumcised hearts,
trying to discern a message
indiscernible to pomped and circumstanced,
yet well intentioned ones,
who while proclaiming the finding, were all the time losing.


They must be loved into roundness,
where apart is spelled a part and the call is to the gathering.
For God has called a People, not "them and us."
"Them and us" are unable to gather round,
for at a roundtable, there are no sides.
And all are invited to wholeness and to food.


Roundtabling means no preferred seating, no first and last.
no better, and no corners for "the least of these."


Roundtabling means being with, a part of, together, and one.
It means room for the Spirit and gifts
and disturbing profound peace for all.


And it is we in the present who are mixing
and kneading the dough for the future.  
We can no longer prepare for the past.
We will and must and are called to be the Church,
and if He calls for other than roundtables
we are bound to follow.


Leaving behind the sawdust and chips, designs and redesigns behind.
All the whole being harmless as doves and wily as serpents
in search of and in the presence of the Kingdon
that is God's and not ours.  Amen.

October 4th, a little more than a month ago, was World Communion Sunday, a day when churches around the world gather together to recognize the power of the Lord's table, the great leveler of the world.  Every year on the first Sunday in October, churches gather and remember the unifying message of communion and the importance of the table that gathers us together.  From any perspective I see this as a wonderfully, almost magical, thing.

At Southside Presbyterian Church, where I attend services when I am in town, the congregants are from all walks of life, with all kinds of stories, all kinds of happiness and pain, all kinds of professions, from all ages, races, classes.  And they all come together because of the table.  We are all one at the table.  No "corners for the least of these."

And think about the tables in all of our lives.  For me, the dining room table where the day to day goings-on happened and where we sat down with family and friends to share a dinner, to talk about important issues, to do homework, to play cards.  In my family, that old dining room table brought us together.

During my few delegations with BorderLinks, I have experienced the power that roundtabling can bring.  Part of our traveling takes us to Agua Prieta, a growing border town in northern Sonora, Mexico, across from Douglas, Arizona.  There, in a tiny Catholic parish, a wonderful thing called CAME (Center for Attention to Migrants in Exodus) is happening.  Over 50 people provide shelter, a phone call, new clothes, showers, and a meal to men who have recently been deported or are about to start their journey to the United States.  At these tiny tables, we sit and eat with these men.  We share our stories, and they share theirs.  We eat tortillas and rice and beans together, laughing and crying and having a hard time understanding each other at times with our broken English and Spanish.  And yet, there we are, leveled and equaled.  All hungry, all being fed.  All thirsty, and all being given drink.

That is what roundtabling means for me.  An equalizer, of sorts.  The ideal of a world which does not exist yet, but of which we can sometimes witness small moments.

So, as Thanksgiving comes up and we sit around our tables with our families and friends, let's think about who is, and especially who is not, at our tables.  How can we all become more roundtabled?

Love to all.  Thinking of everyone often.