Okay, Mum. It’s your birthday on Sunday and, though there is a card in the mail, there is also this. Happy Birthday and thank you for the time at the table.
When I was leaving home for university, I looked forward to my own space. My own anonymous room where I could be solitary. It was an attractive image. But I also knew that I would miss our kitchen table. The spring before I left, I wondered what it would be like coming “home” to my own room and not to the table in my parents’ house. I assumed that there would be hundreds of new friends at university. That’s what the guidance counsellors at high school predicted – I would make friends that would last a lifetime. So whatever new spaces I would be in would be filled with these hundreds, right? But there still couldn’t imagine a kitchen table in my solitary residence room.
When I imagined a kitchen table, I wasn’t thinking about dinner time and food and squabbles with my little brother. I was thinking about coming home in the afternoon and the sunlight coming in through the window. My mum sitting at the table with a cup of coffee and time to talk about the day. I took a city bus to get to high school and had a ten minute walk home from the bus stop. Often, I’d walk part of the way with a friend who lived around the corner, but the last stretch I was alone, and I spent the time thinking up what to tell my mum about the day.
Great stuff. Awful stuff. Boring stuff. I probably moaned a bit.
But she’d listen to anything I had to say. And then she’d top up the coffee mugs and the advocacy would trickle in. Sometimes, she would speak up for others, gently reminding me to be gentle and loving in my reflections and sometimes-too-creative observations of other people. Sometimes, she would speak up for me, and I would hear her soothing away my own too-rough-and-ready self-judgements.
Off at university, I did miss that. The time to chat. The advocacy. I probably didn’t miss the coffee because I’m fairly good at sniffing out good sources wherever I am and consuming too much of it (usually – I must say that one of the postpartum pleasures I’m anticipating is multiple cups of coffee…) Those afternoons before I left the nest were a good grounding. They served to remind me how to stay centred even while stepping into the unbalanced almost-adult world of university life.
It’s those kitchen table afternoons that I see when I read this week’s lectionary from John.
“The advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid… ”
The Gospel of John is filled with amazing depictions of the intimacy between God the Father and Christ. It’s a textbook in how intimacy works and how close humanity and divinity can be. And then here, in the midst of the Farewell discourse, we find promise that this modelling doesn’t finish with the earthly life of Jesus. The Spirit – the Advocate – will be with the people to teach them and remind them.
And the sunshine comes in through the window and there’s time to chat over coffee in the afternoon.
The Spirit of God works among us. And within us. Advocating to us and for us and with us. Leaving us with peace.
Last week on twitter, I found out about a study from the University of Edinburgh about nutrition. Apparently, there’s now proof that it’s better for kids to eat the same food as their adults. You can read about it here. Separate meals make for inadequate nutrition for little ones. Not that we should serve the same portion sizes or condiments even, but the same foods. If we eat the same meal together, families are altogether healthier.
Offering separate ‘children’s food’ for a main meal may often result in children missing out nutritionally. It is likely that in cases where children eat different foods, they are eating a less nutritious option. This is already known to be the case with kid’s menus in restaurants, so children are best off eating the same foods as their parents.”
Valeria Skafida, Research fellow at the University’ of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research for Families and Relationships
I think that the same could be said for our spiritual needs as well as our nutritional ones. We need intimacy and the modelling of intimacy. We need advocacy and peace. Maybe we don’t need it sauced up in the same ways for our children as we do as adults. And maybe we serve it in accommodating slices. But if we try to fill our common hungers with different foods, we run into trouble. All too often, we feed our kids simplistic or sappy stories instead of the rich diversity of scriptural witness – including the trickier Trinitarian bits of John, for example. But then I worry that we’re not sharing the wealth of the table.
That’s what I’m thinking about today and what I’m finding in the lectionary and at my own table, too. I hope that I can set the table like my mum did so that my kids can find some kind of balance in this crazy, hungry world.
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The photo at the top is of my kids working at that table. Nothing deep, just a snap that’s poignant because we’re far away.
