Around the Table

Family meals around the table — how is that possible today? Busy lives and takeaway foods, sport commitments and meetings all take their toll and isn't it nice just to nurse your dinner on your lap in front of the television?

Well maybe. But what are we missing?

	Rosemary Canavan

Through the growing years I was unpopular at times for insisting that dinner would be eaten at the table with the television off. It was always prime time for news or cartoons or the latest 'soapy' but this time of eating together is a sacred moment for family, for friends, for community. In some manner and form we managed to do this for years with, of course, exceptions and when the evening meals were disrupted by casual working arrangements there was still at least one meal on the weekend together.

In calling this a sacred time I do not wish to give the impression that it was always an ideal time or a perfect family picture. We would come there with all of the experiences of our day at work, at school, with frayed tempers or joyous events. Some of them could have been seen as disasters and sometimes that wasn't the cooking! Yet I think of them all as a form of communion, of participating in the body of Christ, or extending the eucharist into our daily lives.

Many people joined us around the table for a meal over the years and friendships were born and plans hatched, problems solved and discussion of all manner of things engaged. The meals together survived long after the reality of the family at church each week.

When I think of our Eucharistic celebration and the breaking of the bread I think of it as like our meals around our table. All of us beloved and chosen, each of us broken or flawed in some way, beautifully imperfectly human, shared in conversation and presence(whatever the mood) and given for that day and for every day as friends and family for the world.

When now the family is dispersed and meals together are rare each has a little of that meal time experience in their new home and in the place where they used to be they are remembered at each meal.

So is it possible amid the household din, the conflicting schedules and the complexity of our lives to find a time to have our meals in the presence of each other and in the presence of God? Maybe just once a week?

Rosemary Canavan lives in Adelaide. Her qualifications include a Bachelor of Arts major in Psychology and two Bachelors degrees in Theology, the most recent an Honours degree in New Testament studies. She has two adult children.

Photo Credits: The main image used as background to headline this story came from stock.xchng
the free web photo source – www.sxc.hu Photographer: Marcello Gambetti, Certaldo, Florence, Italy.
The secondary image is from the editor's library.

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Rosemary can be contacted at: rosemary@catholica.com.au

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