SPIRITUAL PRACTICE: "Across the Table"

In this lively exchange, two rabbis discuss Jewish mysticism and the table as a sacramental space of encounter.  At this table (every table we choose and make holy), the transcendent and the imminent, the ineffable and the tangible, the unspeakable God and the word of life: we meet God and our own human destinies.  Communion.  Community.  God-in-us.  

Maybe this is our challenge--this spring, this summer: to welcome the Spirit (the Shekinah) as we prepare meals for loved ones, as we pray over our tables, as we remember in conversation those who struggle for freedom and sustenance.  At each ordinary table, with our dear ones and kin, we thereby restore and renew the image of God in our lives, in our families, in our worlds.  There will come a time when we break out: and seek other tables, maybe larger ones, intersectional spaces for transformation and new connections.  

But liturgically, we are in a kind of exile now: denied entry to our temples and sanctuaries, unable to gather at the sacramental altars and tables of our religious centers.  Even so, Rabbi Hecker reminds us that a deep, imaginative and "intoxicated" spirituality meets the Shekinah at the many other tables of our lives--ordinary tables, hallowed and scarred by years of life and doubt, struggle and joy.  If we speak God's name there--the unspeakable name, joined to the words we know and love--we find grace and we drink deeply from the cup of peace.

So what can you do, what will you say, what might you see: across the table tonight?