What’s at the top of your goal list?
Picture it: the thing that’s so big and near to your heart that you’ve mentally put it in the category of, “I don’t even know where to begin,” “maybe someday,” or worse, “yeah, right!” Can you even remember when you first dared to put it down on paper? You have done that, haven’t you?
“He who watches the wind will not sow and he who looks at the clouds will not reap.”
I skipped over that Bible verse for years, because, well, I’m not a farmer. But in January 2009, I came across it in another translation and it rocked me to my core:
“If you wait for perfect conditions,
you will never get anything done.”
Right before it fell on my head!
One project had been on my waiting list forever: remodeling my kitchen/dining room to facilitate my dream of holding communal dinners. The conditions were far from perfect, but I decided to give myself permission to do it imperfectly. It didn’t hurt that my best friend, knowing my propensity towards procrastination, showed up one afternoon with a sledgehammer.
The other long-standing item on my “to do” list was this blog; a front-burner project that I’ve allowed to boil away on the back of the stove while I lay awake at night with an acute case of insomnia. If the bags under my eyes get any bigger, the airlines are going to start charging me for extra luggage. I’d blame it on the caffeine, but I know it’s just my brain’s way of saying, “get this stuff out of your head and onto the page!”
The subject of The Shared Table? E.M. Forester said, “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” I’m hoping this will be a two-way conversation, so who knows where we’ll end up, but I do have a focus in mind. A line in Frances Mayes’ book, In Tuscany, resonates with me: “The word ‘focus’ comes from the Latin for fireplace. In Italian, it’s “focolare” – the center of the home where we cook and eat and talk, all of which gives focus, a clarity to life.”
There’s a transformation that occurs when we stop waiting for “perfect conditions” and begin to share our lives. Whether we’re sitting around the kitchen table, a conference table, or a folding table at the soup kitchen – when “two or three are gathered in His name,” it becomes a communion table, and that’s when we experience the abundant life, or as I like to call it, ‘la vita abbondante.’
I hope you’ll think of The Shared Table as just that: a place where we can sit down and have a conversation about what it means to live connected. If you’re hungry for that, pull up a chair. The door’s always open.
