“Storytelling in general is a communal act. Throughout human history, people would gather around, whether by the fire or at a tavern, and tell stories. One person would chime in, then another, maybe someone would repeat a story they heard already but with a different spin. It’s a collective process.”
~Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Sometimes you have an experience that you know is so much more than the actual activity that is happening, the activity that is seen by onlookers who may be pass by. This is probably so more often than we are aware because, truth be told, we walk around not in the present moment but in the troubled past or the longed-for future. But sometimes, sometimes, you are in the midst of an experience and some voice within says so loudly…..”This is important. Pay attention.”…… that even the most deadened soul perks up and does just that.

Yesterday I had just such an experience. I am visiting Seattle, one of my favorite cities and the now-home of our two sons. I had made contact with someone whose mother is a part of our church, someone who has a successful cooking business near Pike’s Place Market. She has a job which sounds, at least to me, like a dream come true. She takes people through the Market as they choose food to buy and then helps them prepare it. The activity is communal…..around food and a table and the fire that cooks and is their center. Like people throughout time, they gather to cook, eat, be warmed by the fire and the presence of one another. In this activity, they are fed in both body, mind and spirit and who they were before the meal becomes something more. Something more.

Diane, the chef, shared stories of her work and the people she meets in this work. As someone whose early education was anthropology, it was clear to me that she knows exactly what she is doing. This ancient act of gathering round the hearth beats within us and it is something that cannot be fueled by fast food. It is the slow act of cutting and slicing, stirring and kneading that is required. It is the creation of nutrition and beauty. It is the looking across the table into someone’s eyes, seeing their expressions change and take shape, sometimes in the light of literal candlelight fire, that helps us remember who we are and the stories we are telling with our lives. For it is around these fires, these tables, that our human story is remember, reimagined, retold, reaffirmed.

Several times during this encounter in her beautiful kitchen of black granite and blonde wood, tears were present as stories were told about where certain pieces of depression glass and Fostoria glass cake stands came from. Stories of how she came to be doing work she loved, work that she believes is making a difference in the Universe flowed freely between us. The way in which her values and commitment to gathering people round the table and the fire shapes her every moment was both inspiration and challenge. All was pure grace.

Yesterday, as I was processing what I knew was an important experience, one on which I am still reflecting, I thought of the communion table to which we invite people in the Christian Household of which I am still a part. That image and experience of gathering around the table, has many layers, some which are more important to some than others. It is a table that is meant to help us tell our story, to remind us why and how we have gathered round the fire of our faith for all these years. I wonder if it always does this. My sense is that most often we forget to bring our own human stories, our own important experiences, to the telling. I know that is true for me.

Yesterday I was present to an important experience whose impact is still working its wisdom in me. Its transformative qualities will emerge in their own time. Like any good meal, this takes a certain rhythm that can’t be driven but must unfold. Warmed by the fire, held in beauty, nourishment will arrive. And the story will be told.