Gathering In
This past weekend, my husband and I hosted couples from our marriage group for a meal after church. Four couples and assorted children gathered in our kitchen for a group “cook-fest”. I taught my friend how to make “toum”, a type of Lebanese aioli to accompany our shish kabobs, and reveled in his delight when he was done... when he has tasted that first bite. I chatted with a dear young lady who is close to giving birth, and smiled as she inhaled the appetizers laid out on the kitchen counter. We gloried in the big sweet slices of a coconut cream cake baked and shared by friends.. We talked of family, of faith; of the mundane, of the sacred. We watched over children, and decadently sipped wine mid-day. There was noise, and laughter, and children’s giggles and love. Gathered in my kitchen. Gathered around the table. For a few hours, we were family.
I love my daughters and their families with a love that is fierce, hot, without end. (My fantasy is that they lived within a 5 mile radius, and that Sunday dinners around my table were a weekly event). But that’s not possible; they live too far away for us to gather for meals very often, and the vacuum that leaves in my heart is vast, ugly, hungry. And as we know, nature abhors a vacuum - as true for emotional vacuums as for physical ones. This longing to be with young families growing and living life together, to break bread as one, to cook together, to live life together - it is somewhat satisfied when I gather others in my kitchen as family , when I join people around the dining room table for a common meal. These disparate folks turned family cannot replace my own, but the longing to pour out love and care is sated for a little while - until I find I must reach out, and gather in. Again.
There is no doubt we are an isolated, isolating society; a vast archipelago of humanity, disconnected one to the other, unable or unwilling to reach out and wrap other people into our world. It’s ironic. At no other time in human history has man or woman had the ability to be in such constant contact with other humans. At the touch of a finger, a flash of cellphone or tablet screen, eyes and ears focused on the actions and words and scenes of others, we are connected to an incomprehensible network of people, places, languages, philosophies, religions, politics, ... the exposure to “other” is endless, overwhelming. And yet, we have never been so alone. So lonely. So adrift on the sea of self. And it’s destroying something elemental inside of us, starving a hunger for love and connection so deep within that many fail to recognize that inner longing that whispers quiet to each of us, “I need to belong, I need to gather in. I want to be gathered in by others.”
Today, the gathering in of people to create community, to be family, must be intentional. In our frantic, over-committed and busy world, it’s a rare thing for people to spontaneously gather. We have an elemental need to gather, but for most, our modern neighborhoods and communities no longer provide natural, organic ways to meet that need. And so, to gather-in, to be family, to be as community, will require purpose-- a willingness to reach out and bring in, to open up and let go.
To gather in requires the gift of time, the giving up of time we’d use for our own gain, or our own diversion so we can spend it with others; and in a society that is already over-committed, that may require some prioritizing, the pruning out of one thing to make room for another. Gathering in is intentional in that it requires me to allow others into my home, my personal space and time. That can be difficult when I am busy, and when there is little in my life that has been set aside just for “me”; yet - when I do reach out and let go, the rewards that are mine far surpass what I thought I was giving up. As is often the case, when I reach out, let go, and gather in, others fill the void to overflowing with love and joy and laughter. Community. Family. It is as necessary as breathing.
To gather in and around and together is as old as time, as ancient as the first families who gathered around their simple home fires for warmth of body as well as soul. And it continues in many other ways and places besides my own home. I have a friend who started an annual neighborhood “soup and bread” night so she could get to know her neighbors who had grown distant over the years. Once a year, she makes two or three large pots of soup, hand-delivers her invitations to folks in her scattered neighborhood, and opens up her home to an evening of a simple shared meal, creating what has become her neighborhood’s beloved and much anticipated annual gathering.
Another couple I know hosts “The Table”, a bi-monthly event to gather friends together in their home for a simple meal, but also for an opportunity to discuss issues of faith among disparate-minded souls. We are Christians with fundamentally different backgrounds: Jewish, Indian, Anglican, Yankee, Southerner. It has become a delightful gathering of special people, a new “family” of friends we enjoy over soup and bread and deep conversation —all because one visionary lady had a dream of opening her home and gathering in- to experience more.
I’ve read of many other such efforts around the nation, and throughout the world. The need to gather in, to belong, to break bread together is elemental, a shared bond between all human beings. There is something sacred about gathering around a table and sharing a meal that all faiths share. And at the end of the day, it’s not about what was eaten, or the type of table we sit at as we talk. When the last bowl is rinsed and the last pot is scrubbed, what remains is the echo of the laughter around the table, the warmth of joy and family in the heart- the best kind of “gathering in”.