A Sunday Morning Letter
The coffee is ready.
I am glad you came back.
Last Sunday we gathered for the first time around this old dining room table. Together we noticed the uneven floorboards beneath our feet and wondered if perhaps the marks left behind by time are not always imperfections to be repaired but reminders that life has been faithfully lived. We looked at an old fireplace that no longer burns wood yet still warms the room by displaying our daughter’s artwork, quietly reminding me that old things do not lose their purpose simply because they discover a new one.
As I sat down with my second cup of coffee this morning, I found myself looking around the room again. Not at the floorboards this time, or the fireplace, or even the mural of pilgrims walking above the mantle. My eyes settled on something much simpler.
The chair across the table.
It is an ordinary chair, much like the others surrounding this table, and yet it has held an extraordinary number of stories. Family has sat there. Friends have sat there. Neighbors have sat there. There have been evenings when laughter filled the room, and there have been quieter moments when difficult conversations unfolded with the kind of honesty that only seems possible around a table. There have been birthdays, ordinary Tuesday dinners, homework spread across the tabletop, cups of coffee shared with people seeking advice, and more conversations than I could ever remember.
A chair, I have come to realize, quietly keeps the history of everyone who has ever occupied it.
One of my favorite moments around any table has always been after the meal is finished. The plates have been pushed aside, someone pours another cup of coffee, and no one seems to notice that the evening has stretched longer than anyone intended. Those unhurried conversations often become the ones we remember. Stories are told that have been told a dozen times before, yet everyone listens as though hearing them for the first time. Someone recalls a childhood memory that makes the whole room laugh. Someone else shares a burden they have quietly carried for weeks. Without anyone announcing it, the table becomes something more than a place where we eat. It becomes a place where we remember who we are and to whom we belong.
I have always loved the idea of Sunday dinner. It has never really been about the meal itself. It has been about belonging. It has been about knowing there is a place where your presence matters, where someone notices if your chair is empty, and where the invitation to sit down never has to be earned.
Yet I also know that not every table carries those memories. Some people read these words with gratitude, remembering voices they would give almost anything to hear one more time. Others remember silence where conversation should have been, or chairs that became empty far sooner than anyone expected. Tables, like our hearts, carry both joy and sorrow. They remind us not only of the people who gathered there but also of the people we continue to carry with us long after the meal has ended.
Perhaps that is one of the reasons I have always been drawn to the stories of Jesus around the table. The Gospels are filled with meals. Jesus eats with friends, with strangers, with people admired by society and with people everyone else tried to avoid. He seemed to understand that sitting across from another person changes us. It becomes much harder to reduce someone to an opinion, a label, or a disagreement when we have shared bread, listened to their story, and looked into their eyes across the table.
This week the Church remembers Benedict of Nursia, whose wisdom has quietly accompanied me for many years. During my time with the Benedictine community at Glastonbury Abbey, I discovered that Benedict’s Rule was not primarily about monastery walls or ancient customs. It was about learning to recognize Christ in the ordinary rhythms of life. Prayer, work, hospitality, listening, and community were not separate parts of life; together they became a way of living faithfully.
One sentence from Benedict has remained with me through the years: receive every guest as Christ.
That instruction becomes much more challenging when we imagine an actual chair across the table. Benedict was not speaking about an abstract idea. He was speaking about the real person who walks through the door carrying their own history, hopes, fears, and burdens. Hospitality begins long before the meal is served. It begins when we decide that another person belongs here.
This Sunday’s Gospel tells the familiar story of the Good Samaritan. It begins with a lawyer asking Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” It is a question that seeks definition, perhaps even limitation. Jesus, however, answers with a story that quietly refuses to draw lines. By the time the parable ends, the question has changed. It is no longer, “Who qualifies as my neighbor?” Instead, Jesus invites us to ask, “Will I become a neighbor to the person God has placed before me?”
The Samaritan noticed what others had seen but chosen to ignore. He allowed another person’s suffering to interrupt his own plans. Compassion became something more than a feeling. It became a decision to make room in his life for another human being.
I wonder if that is one of the quiet invitations hidden within this long green season of Ordinary Time. Gardens grow slowly, almost imperceptibly. We rarely notice their growth from one day to the next, yet over time everything changes. Perhaps compassion grows the same way. Hospitality is learned one conversation at a time, one shared meal at a time, one chair offered to another person at a time. We seldom become more loving all at once. Instead, God patiently teaches us through the ordinary rhythms of everyday life.
As I finish this second cup of coffee, I can hear the house beginning to wake. Before long there will be footsteps crossing those uneven floorboards we talked about last week. There will be conversations, laughter, interruptions, and all the beautiful unpredictability that reminds me this old house is not preserving the past. It is still making memories. New stories are still unfolding around this table.
Perhaps that is true for every one of us.
Before we leave the table this morning, I invite you to notice the chair across from you. Think for a moment about the people who have occupied that place in your life. Give thanks for those who helped shape you. Hold gently those whose absence you still feel. And if there is an empty chair somewhere in your life today, perhaps ask God who might be waiting for an invitation.
Love, after all, has always known how to make room.
Thank you for sharing your second cup of coffee with me this morning.
Until next Sunday, companion, keep noticing.
I’ll be here.
The coffee will be ready.
