Breaking Bread and the Franciscan Solidarity Tables

I would like to share two of Fr. Richard Rohr’s daily meditations from this weekend, as I think they are particularly relevant to the Franciscan Action Network’s efforts to build Franciscan Solidarity Tables in cities across the United States.  I have shared some commentary in between as well.

Fr. Richard Rohr shared in his daily meditation on July 21^st: 

Again and again, Jesus demonstrated one of the simplest, surest ways to connect with others across differences: share a meal. Somehow in eating together our barriers lower. We sit across from and beside one another, at the same level. Perhaps we recognize the familiar in each other, the universal need to be fed.

He encourages us to “participate in some form of breaking bread… as a contemplative practice, a way to open your heart and be deeply present to someone else.”  He then shares,

The People’s Supper, a nonprofit “building community through better conversations,” offers a helpful framework for purposeful meals. Their goal is “to repair the breach in our interpersonal relationships across political, ideological, and identity differences, leading to more civil discourse. And, we plan to do it in the most nourishing way we know—over supper!”

This isn’t about a political party, or what is or isn’t happening in Washington. It’s about us, and our relationship to one another. Too often, we exist in echo chambers and see each other as monoliths: one-sided stereotypes who can be reduced to a single word or phrase.

Instead, we want to go beneath the headlines, to see each other as real people with real struggles, real fears, real hopes, and real dreams.

Suppers are a place where we can come together over one of humanity’s most ancient and simple rituals. A place where we can share meaningful stories, good food, and a sense of community. A place where we can build understanding and trust.

We invite you to pull up a chair. 

The People's Supper helps hosts create a safe, comfortable space. You don't have to be a professional chef!  Potlucks - where everyone brings something to share - are the best way to build community. 

This is precisely what the Franciscan Action Network is working to build: Franciscan Solidarity Tables where all are welcome and we can build understanding and trust and work for justice for the marginalized.  This frequently means engaging on political issues, which Fr. Richard quotes Peter Armstrong in saying that this is necessary to do for us as Christians to be able to claim we “have anything to do with Jesus.”

We need not seek division and further polarization; however, we can continue to engage in tough debate and conversation across dividing lines, expressing our own deeply held convictions and being willing to be changed by our encounter with the other, because that is the way that Jesus engaged with others.

He also quotes Parker Palmer on the topic:

When we forget that politics is about weaving a fabric of compassion and justice on which everyone can depend, the first to suffer are the most vulnerable among us—our children, our elderly, our mentally ill, our poor, and our homeless. As they suffer, so does the integrity of our democracy.

On July 22 in his daily meditation, Fr. Richard discusses “The Shape of the Table.”  He starts with the Eucharist’s relevance to the conversation about bringing people together around a table in today’s context: “the Eucharist is an invitation to socially experience the shared presence of God, and to be present in an embodied way.”

First, let me share some context. In Jesus’ time, the dominant institution was the kinship system: the family, the private home. That’s why early Christians gathered in house churches, much different from the typical parish today. In Matthew’s Gospel the word house is used many times. Jesus is always going in and out of houses (as in 8:14, 9:10). What happened around the tables in those houses shaped and named the social order. Table friendship ends up defining how we see friendship in general.

Jesus often used domestic settings to rearrange the social order. Nowhere was that truer than with the meal—with whom, where, and what he ate. This is still true today, more than we might imagine. (Another example of Jesus changing the social order is in the relationship between employers and workers.) Jesus’ constant use of table relationships is perhaps his most central re-ritualization of what family means. Note that he is always trying to broaden the circle (see Luke 14:7-24 for three good examples). Jesus brought this all to fullness in his “last supper” with “the twelve.” This was not to emphasize male fellowship, but the full quorum of the twelve tribes of Israel. (I know it does not look that way to us now, but the Eucharistic meal was from the very beginning a gathering of both women and men, which shows how Christians understood equality.)

Jesus didn’t want his community to have a social ethic; he wanted it to be a social ethic. Their very way of eating and organizing themselves was to be an affront to the system of dominance and power. They were to live in a new symbolic universe, especially symbolized by what we now call open table fellowship.

This has a particular relevance to food justice and climate change:

In all cultures, sharing food is a complex interaction that symbolizes social relationships and defines social boundaries almost more than any other daily event. Whom you eat with defines whom you don’t eat with. Certain groups of people eat certain kinds of food. Through our choices and behavior at table, we name and identify ourselves.

…today a vegetarian (or even vegan) diet has become a conscious choice for many because they’ve studied the politics of food: who eats meat and who can’t eat meat; what eating meat is doing not only to our health but even to the planet. Researchers surmise that the meat-heavy Western diet contributes to one-fifth of global emissions on our planet.  Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “As a spiritual family and a human family, we can all help avert climate change with the practice of mindful eating. Going vegetarian may be the most effective way to stop climate change.”

(While overall there are climate benefits to eating less meat, there are also health implications to consider in going completely vegetarian, and it is not something everyone should do.  However, the majority of people could eat less meat and adopt a “reducetarian” diet for climate and health benefits.  There also a host of complex economic, cultural, and social factors to consider to be able to answer the question, “Who sits at my table?” with integrity….to be covered in future dialogue.)

Another element of breaking bread together speaks to the statement that eating together makes about immigration policies: when citizens and immigrant families eat together, we are working to keep families together rather than break them apart. This is the essence of the movement “Break Bread Not Families.”  Breaking bread together with immigrant families not only allows us to get to know different peoples’ cultures and cuisines, but also gives us an opportunity to learn about the stories of what brought people to immigrate in the first place. Were they seeking refuge or asylum, escaping tyrant governments or violent gangs in their home communities?  Were they forced off of their land because multinational companies started pillaging the land so they could make a profit off of its resources, thereby leaving the families without a means to grow food, access clean water, and make a living?  Coming together around the table allows us to hear stories from our immigrant brothers and sisters and then see if there is anything we can do to help, both in their current situation such as with food, shelter, or healthcare, as well as the situations of their home countries, such as through working with Franciscans International and engaging at the United Nations.

In September 2017 when the New York City Franciscan Solidarity Table preliminarily began meeting, three of the topic areas people expressed interest in engaging on were immigration, health/food justice, and climate change.  There is certainly overlap between each of these issues; coming together around a table allows us to discuss the areas of overlap as well as how we can make progress on achieving justice and continue bringing more people to the table and building community.  

Kelly Moltzen, OFS, MPH, RD is a board member of the Franciscan Action Network, program manager of Bronx Health REACH, and 2015 Re:Generate Fellow of the Food, Health and Ecological Well-Being Program of Wake Forest University’s School of Divinity.