Sunday is Wild Dinner potluck! - Sunday, September 29, at 4 pm
We’ll gather around our brown paper covered table for dinner and reflection.
I love the brown paper covered tables. I don’t know how or when we started covering the tables in brown paper, I think it was probably out of necessity as a table covering for art, but it’s stuck around and I love it. It’s easy clean up and artistic at the same time. Delicious and colorful. To me it is one of the distinctive images of WildWood, a visual reflection of our community.
Earlier this week I attended a conference in Austin, Texas. For lunch both days we all sat down together at long tables. I’m an introvert who pretends to be extroverted so I’m not always eager to sit down at a table with a stranger for small talk. But, more often than not, my table companions and I find places where our stories and experiences connect.
On the second day of the conference I sat with a women from Brooklyn whose ex-husband happens to be a relative of a good friend of mine. She told me an incredible story about her ex’s father who was a pastor. After he retired he came out as gay following decades of closeting. Her daughter wrote a collection of poetry about her grandfather’s story by visiting all the the places where he preached. It was an amazing conversation and maybe I’ll share more of it another time, but it reminded me that our tables are crowded because of the ways our stories overlap.
I want a house with a crowded table And a place by the fire for everyone Let us take on the world while we're young and able And bring us back together when the day is done
The Highwomen, Brandi Carlile, Lori McKenna and Natalie Hemby, wrote and released Crowded Table as part of their 2019 self-titled album. Talking about the song to Country Music Association Brandi Carlile said;
“I think that the table and the fire being a metaphor for bringing people together that don’t all think the same thing, we don’t all believe the same things even in The Highwomen. But the fact that we can come to the table, that we can break bread and then we can go out into the world as activists and as women…but we come home to each other at the end of the day, that’s what families do. I think that’s a really beautiful sentiment everybody needs to hear right now.”
We need crowded tables. We need to tell stories about our lives, listen to each other’s stories and find the places where those stories overlap.
See you around the brown paper covered table on Sunday.
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