“Share!” It’s a common refrain in most homes, and we said it often enough in our own. We need our children to share toys, rooms, space in the back seat, etc. etc. Sharing at the table, however, is a different experience than any of these …
Sharing food is an intimate human act. Sharing something from our plate at the dinner table, sharing a favorite entrée at a restaurant, sharing the last granola bar while lost in the woods—each is an interpersonal exchange involving a complex mix of feelings. Children know this instinctively. Just think of a cookie-possessed child asked to share with a cookie-deprived child. Whatever the response, it’s easy to see the complex forces at work in the interaction.
Obviously, the lifegiving table model involves sharing of this kind. We pass around the serving dishes, and we make sure that each person is fed. But this intimate act of sharing is actually an invitation to a much more significant one—the sharing of ourselves. In the same way that we give and receive portions of food to feed our bodies, we can also give and receive portions of our hearts to feed our spirits—hopes, fears, joys, failures, loves, desires, wonders, faith, victories. We share food to stay alive physically. We share hearts to stay alive emotionally and spiritually.
But there is a catch. Opening our hands to share food comes much more naturally and easily to most of us than opening our hearts to share our spirits. We need quite a bit more encouragement, it seems, to share our hearts, even at the table. The gathering helps. The blessing helps. The act of sharing good food and drink definitely helps. All of these experiences can set the stage. But the kind of interpersonal sharing that is truly lifegiving usually requires something more.
Through four decades of life and ministry in all sorts of groups and all variety of tables, we have become very aware of how this dynamic works. Sharing spiritually from open hearts around a table almost never happens unless someone in the group is intentional and initiating. Someone has to lead the way, to begin the act of sharing and to prompt others to share as well.
This is similar but not really the same as initiating conversation with “icebreaker” questions. The point is not just to let people get acquainted by giving out random facts, but to encourage the sharing of stories. People, after all, are not static collections of information; they are stories waiting and wanting to be told. Our stories are what define us and help to locate us within the greater story of what God is doing in us and in the world—the slow but steady progress of the Kingdom spreading across all creation. The more each person is able to see their life in that context, the more they will find hope, exercise faith, and risk love.
Read more in The Lifegiving Table!
