Pull Up a Chair and Ruffle Some Feathers

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I spend a lot of time thinking about movements. No, not leg jitters or eye twitches. The social kind: movements that mobilize and gather people to affect change in their communities, nations, and around the globe.

In the first season of Fully Yours, the podcast I co-host with my seminary friends Chloe and Christy, Christy and Chloe shared an episode inspired by Julie Turshen’s Feed the Resistance book. Turshen’s delightful read contains recipes and tidbits of wisdom for sustaining bellies and souls that in turn sustain social movements. Similar to Turshen’s assertion throughout the cookbook, I think we are living in a particularly rich and powerful time of public activism. I am especially moved by youth-led climate movements, like that of Sunrise and the Fridays for Future movement.  I wonder if we might be support and strengthen them even more through practices of meal-sharing and table conversation.

In this age where activism of many sorts seems to pop up all around us, I wonder if seemingly disparate rallies or one-off events be more sustainable if they also invited sustenance?

I know too many burned out organizers, pastors, and other change agents who (rightly) recognize the urgency of the issues we face and throw their all into them, but often do so at the expense—of their mental and physical health, their connection and relationship to family and friends, and often without a clear sense that the work they do is linked to their spirituality, however they define it. I am also guilty of this.

As I think about where meals and tables might meet my own activist commitments, some questions come to mind: do I really know the folks I’m holding signs next to at protests? Do I know the people who support, or even those viewed as opponents? I wonder if creating space to hear their stories—their real stories, not the glossified versions we so often show the world—might not only deepen relationships, but deepen movements? What better way to do so than over a meal. In a couple of weeks, I’m going to co-host a “climate supper” with my climate organizer friend. I’m attempting to put this into practice: to hold space that nourishes community even as we acknowledge the scary and daunting reality that is climate change. I’m nervous, excited, and eager to observe what it means to help create what I hope is an authentic space for sharing and reflection. If you’re in the Little Rock area, I’d love for you to join!

For me as a Christian, the most important and powerful example of a transformative meal is that shared by Jesus and his disciples the night of his betrayal and exploitation by religious and political violence. It’s not a romantic meal, nor is the sharing of bread and cup afterward. A broken body is offered, not a shiny one. And in its offering , Jesus makes a powerful ask of his disciples towards his own social movement and gospel of peace: take care of one another. Practice humility. Give your life—your whole life--over to love. Do table-flipping things like journey alongside the poor, feed the hungry, sell your possessions.

This 2020, I’m hoping to pull up a chair at more tables of conversation and movement sustenance. I hope you will, too.

Have the conversations. Ruffle feathers that may need to be ruffled—in yourself, and in your table companions. Break the bread and share the cup and commit to transformation; it might just be the most urgent thing of all.

With a saved seat next to me,

Eva