More Principles For A Truly Healing Table (The Healing Table Series, part 3)
Here are a few more principles for a healing table. Like the first few principles, you won’t find them in any corporate commercial…but that doesn’t make them any less true.
The healing table is a place of gratitude.
Purpose to take a moment of silence and gratitude before enjoying the meal in front of you. If someone prepared our meal we have something to be grateful for. If we have someone which to share our meal we have something to be grateful for.
Most of the world will go hungry and for that simple reason alone we have something to be grateful for. Our faith tradition encourages us to say thank you before every meal. It only takes a few minutes. We don’t always remember to do it.
But it is a lovely practice and has an ineffable way of centering everyone at the table in one shared emotion and purpose. We all can use more quiet times and gentle moments in our lives. They help the body digest and provide nourishment to the soul.
The healing table is a place of kindness.
In families, especially, familiarity can breed a tendency for harsh words, and sometimes mealtime proximity can bring out the ugliness that lie between us.
While there are exceptions, I’d encourage you to view and present your healing table as a place of peace.
Any deep conversation you engage in with your family can foster disagreement, of course, but these should be undertaken in a spirit of love and honest engagement, not with a mean spirit.
As much as it is in your power, make your table one of kindness: kindness in words, kindness in actions, and kindness even and especially in conflicts of opinion.
Charity begins at home and will pay dividends.
The healing table is a place of joy.
No matter how simple your food, or how unfashionable your tablecloth, or how repetitive your kitchen tasks, your healing table is a good and worthy work.
It is where you bring life to your household through food, eaten in a spirit of love and gratitude. It is a place where you take those who are uncomfortable from hunger and emptiness and bring them to a place of comfort, fullness, and contentment. It is where you bring healing to those who are hungry, in both body and spirit.
This is a wonderful work. And it is your wonderful work, unlike anyone else’s on earth. Honor your healing table — however it looks and however you make it— as the beautiful, unique thing that it is, and it will grow into a source of true joy.
Not perfection, but joy.
My best to you as you nurture this art.
~Laurie