A Fresh Perspective
Table Talk
Setting the Table
You are welcome here. Come just as you are, bringing whatever is on your heart today. Take a few moments and allow yourself to just be. Take a couple deep breaths, grab yourself a cup of coffee, light a candle, do something that brings you comfort. Allow yourself to be present in this moment.
Consider how a picture can appear one way when standing far away and how your perspective of the image becomes clearer as you move closer.
“We don’t see the world as it is, we see it as we are.”
- Anais Nin (A quote inspired from Talmudic text)
John 9:25 NIV
“I was blind, but now I see!”
Food for Thought
Recently I was diagnosed with cataracts in both of my eyes. Cataracts (a clouding of the clear lens of your eye) develop slowly and aren’t noticed until they begin to affect your vision. It’s like looking through a frosted or foggy window. If untreated, cataracts can cause vision loss. Although this is a textbook definition of cataracts, it also describes what happens to us when we don’t challenge our perspectives as we mature: we live a cloudy, bubble-world existence that becomes more firmly entrenched the older we get, an existence that distorts our experience of the world around us, cutting us off to friendships and neighbors that I believe God wants us to know.
1 John 4:20 tells us that it’s impossible to love a God, whom you have not seen, without loving the neighbor you do see. God demands that we go beyond surface pleasantries in our interactions with others. There are neighbors we will never “see” and genuine friendships we will miss if we are not intentional about letting God perform cataract surgery on our aged perspectives.
I know this from personal experience.
It happened while guest speaking at a summer conference, attended by public high school teachers from across the country. During that conference, God performed “perspective surgery” on my heart, and I caught a glimpse of what I had been missing. At this conference, teachers of all ages, races, and genders chose to use their precious summer break to learn new ways to teach about the Holocaust, as well as strategies for encouraging respectful discussions about social justice and police interactions among their inner city students.
The conference lasted only one week, but what I learned about myself was astounding and humbling. I realized that my own education about the Holocaust and genocide was limited to school textbooks, so it had never truly become a personal concern for me. I also realized that, while I worked “closely” with people from cultures other than mine, I didn’t really know any of them. As a straight, black, Christian woman from the northeast, I didn’t have much experience with nonchurchgoers, people who did not align with my political party or participate in my church denomination, people who identify as LGBT, or people of other races or nationalities.
My “neighbors'' consisted mostly of my church family, colleagues in organizations I volunteered with, my natural family, and hand-picked friends. But after a week of working with these teachers, I decided to remove my blinders and push the boundaries of my bubble existence.
I saw that I had to be intentional about my own learning in order to grow, and I did it by creating space and opportunity for conversation and engagement through a welcome table of food. I was honest with those who gathered at the table. I confessed that I had lived in a bubble most of my life — mostly interacting with people who were a lot like me — and that I wanted to grow to understand more about other people’s differences and cultures.
And wonder of wonders — others wanted to talk and learn, too! I broke bread with people of varying nationalities, denominations, religions, political parties, and sexualities. I conversed with southerners willing to discuss southern culture and share about their experiences of race growing up. I deepened my relationships with my white friends — one of my white colleagues and I even did a podcast together focusing on race. The time I spent with the teachers solidified my dream of teaching and inspired me to complete a masters in Urban Education.
During this journey, I grew, and my cultural melting pot of real friends expanded.
Making the choice to broaden my perspective has been life-changing. I am grateful to have had opportunities to lean in and celebrate the differences of my friends. I’ve realized that we are a world that, by the grace of God, has been filled with a diversity of cultures, and that we are more unified by our love for one another than divided by our hate. I pray that we can all continue to intentionally push the boundaries of our perspectives so that we can learn from one another, love one another, and grow in grace.
Consider some ways you can intentionally open your perspective and build genuine relationships with those different from you — host a welcome table experience, reach out to a neighbor you don't know well, get involved in a local organization. Make a plan to implement that practice in your life.
Our Welcoming Growth Journaling Page offers seven daily prompts to guide you as you look for ways to cultivate growth within yourself and the world around you this week! Feel free to print the journaling page, forward it to a friend, use it as inspiration for your own journaling practice (or group conversations), or maybe just a food for thought in your quiet time.
We hope you enjoy our Welcoming Growth Journaling Page!
Blessing
Loving God, who created each one of us in your image,
you have filled this world and this country with beautiful diversity.
We celebrate the ways in which we are stronger because of our differences. Help us to continue learning from one another so that we can create a more beautiful kingdom of God here on earth.
A little Table Talk for your table...
Talk together about why it can be hard to leave our own “bubble existence”.
Share a time when you have intentionally or unintentionally experienced “perspective surgery”.
Discuss ways, with food as a backdrop, you can be intentional about meeting someone from another culture.
Try taking it to the Kids Table...
Ask your kiddos to share their favorite food. Then discuss where that dish may have originated, whether it be from a different part of the country or different part of the world.
Each of you draw a picture of a flower, allowing everyone their own creative liberty. Point out how each person has their own perspective of what a flower looks like.
Compare your flower pictures, pointing to similarities and differences. Explain that while they are all flowers, each has something unique and special that makes it beautiful.
Meet Our Welcoming Voice!
Jacki-Lynn Baynks is a veteran of the US Army. She is an educator, author, and licensed and ordained minister. She is passionate about creating successful after-school partnerships between urban churches and public schools to keep at-risk kids off the streets and Black churches involved in education. She has recently relocated from Charlotte, NC to a quiet suburb outside of Philadelphia to be closer to her family and grandchildren and prepare for a new position at Temple University's School of Public Health.
To hear more from Jacki-Lynn throughout the week, follow along on our Instagram!
Here are Five Things to Remember When Setting Your Own Welcome Table!
If you have a story that you would like to be included as a Reader's Write feature, we'd love to hear from you! Message us on our contact page or email us at thewelcometableco@gmail.com.