Dust, Division, and the Sacred Work of the Table

Have you ever lived through a renovation? Before we began ours, I seriously underestimated all that is involved. It isn’t only about walls and wiring. It’s about patience stretched thin, budgets stretched thinner, family togetherness becoming almost too much togetherness and the daily choice to keep believing in the vision beneath the chaos.

During these past six months, as contractors measured and sawed, as invoices got paid and timelines slipped, I and my wife have kept coming back to the same thought: this is exactly what it takes to build space big enough for people to belong.

Creating a kitchen and dining area where friends, family, and neighbours can gather has become more than a design project. It has turned into a parable about the world we’re living in. And now, more than ever, that world needs more tables to gather around.

Lessons from the Dust

Every unexpected expense and relocated cabinet has whispered something about perseverance and about what matters most. To make room for people, you sometimes have to tear down walls – literal ones and the invisible kind we build around our hearts.

Renovations require risk and resilience. They demand that we hold the messy middle while trusting the beauty on the other side. Isn’t that the same work we face when we try to make room for those who live, see, vote, or worship differently than we do?

A World Shrinking into Camps

We’re living through a season in our country and in society where disagreement often turns into disdain. Algorithms hand-feed us stories that confirm our biases and sharpen our contempt. Curiosity gives way to mistrust and people we once loved across tables are sometimes recast as “other,” even as enemies.

We lose sight of their humanity, and of our shared humanity.

But the table – any table – has always been a quiet act of resistance. A place where we risk sitting close enough to see the laugh lines around someone’s eyes, to taste the meal they made with their own hands, to hear the unguarded story behind their opinion. At a table, people stop being headlines and start being whole. Our curiosity returns and we begin to see that what we share matters so much more than what divides us.

Who Needs to Sit with Us?

Renovation has made me ask: if we are investing this much in building a beautiful space, who are we preparing it for?

It’s not just for the friends already on our guest list. It’s for the ones who’ve been shut out of other rooms, who carry stories of exclusion, who wonder if there’s still a place where they belong.

The table isn’t meant to be perfectly curated or reserved only for people who agree with us. It’s meant to be long enough for strangers to find warmth, and wide enough for stories we’ve never heard.

A Hope Taking Shape

As the last layer of dust settles and light begins to pour through new windows, I feel a rising hope. Our table – still sitting in the dark of a storage container after months of construction, but steady and strong – is almost ready.

Soon it will hold bread still warm from the oven, mugs of coffee, mismatched glasses of wine. Around it will sit friends, family, neighbours, and strangers who may leave as friends.

This is the heart behind The Shared Table: to welcome people in real life, to see the humanity we all share, and to help our communities heal, one gathering at a time.

The work isn’t finished – not in our kitchen, not in our world. But each invitation, each place set, is a small, sturdy hope that division isn’t the final word.

So come hungry. Come curious. Come ready to build something better, one meal, one conversation, one long table at a time. I can’t wait to see who will gather around our table, and who will be inspired to open up their own table to keep sharing, nourishing and healing our neighbourhoods, communities, cities, our country.

Does this sound like an overly idealistic notion? That we can heal division by sharing a meal around a table with someone who might not be just like me? Maybe. But maybe healing division can’t be done by governments and corporations, media outlets and systems. Maybe the healing has to come from you and me, from breaking bread and listening to our stories. What if common ground is found in adding one more chair and welcoming one more person? What if peace comes through the building of longer tables and not the building of higher fences?