Don’t Eat Alone

It can be tempting to pick something up quickly, eat in our car, hunched over a caloric onslaught of fast food as we bow down to the gods of efficiency and progress. But even as I ate alone today in my office, in front of my computer, while trying to hammer out a sermon—about hospitality and the family that’s formed around Christ’s table—I am convinced that this is not how we were designed.

Yes, there are times that we need to pick up something quickly. That we are alone as we run noon-time errands, trying to get more done that our finite beings confined to time and space are actually able to do. But these should be the exception to the rule, not the norm. Food, feasting, tables are meant to be shared, not hoarded. We are communal people. Even the introverts of the world—with their innate ability to be alone without feeling lonely (moderate jealousy)—are a part of a community.

Tables are designed for multiple people to join. They invite intimacy, conviviality, communion. Breaking bread together consecrates our shared humanity. We need to do more of this.

So invite your coworker, neighbor, lover, friend to venture with you to a yet untrodden restaurant where everything is an exercise in the unknown. Visit an old haunt where you automatically know what you’re going to order. Eat your sack lunch in the conference room and invite others to leave the weight of their tasks behind for a fleeting moment of laughter and cheer. Share the stories of your life and make new stories. Whatever you do…

Keep the feast.