The Grand -- If you cut me, I would shine. - the conversation i was having in my head

A dining room table

13:table, originally uploaded by Mrs. Opus.

November is National Novel Writing Month (our friend Jared is going to participate. Go Jared!). I am not nearly that ambitious, but I am instead going to participate in National Blog Posting Month--which means I'll do my darndest to post every day in November.

I found out about this blogging month business through Chookooloonks: The Journal, a wonderful blog by Karen Walrond (whom I don't actually know...unfortunately--she seems just amazing). I am additionally using her idea of posting about some of my favorite things. I loved her reasoning:

Okay, so let's do this: For the next 30 days -- except for Love Thursdays -- the images I'll use on here on Chookooloonks will be photographs of some of my favourite things -- items which, for me, help transform our house into home. In many ways, I think photographing these items and telling you why they're important to me will give you about as personal a view of me as I've ever done, so I'm a bit nervous, but hey -- you only live once. And if, as they say, you can't take it with you, these are some of the things that if I could, I would.)

So...here goes:

Before I moved to the Grand three and a half years ago, I lived for six or seven years in places without a dining room. And I missed it dearly. You know that I'm not necessarily a formal dining room sort of gal, but I missed having that particular kind of space. I prayed for a while about "someday" having a dining room and then, to be honest, kind of forgot about it and even moved a couple more times to dining room–less digs.

But wouldn't you know that this house (the answer to so.very.many.prayers) had one! And what's more, we got this beautiful table from Zion. We (probably Charity) let it be known on the Zion e-mail list that we needed a table, if anyone had one. And it happened that there was a table in one of the offices that wasn't being used, and they said we could have it. I do like the table itself--it seats about eight quite comfortably and I think we've squeezed up to twelve; I like the look of it; and I can even forgive that the leaves take more patience than I have every time--but more than that, I love where it came from and I love what it does.

The table was the first experience I had had of a church providing for a need of mine (and, truly, this was really more of a desire than a need). It's not that I didn't understand that the church, that is, the people in the church, could do that sort of thing; it was simply the first time that I had ever actually let a need be known. It helped me very concretely to understand that God is not stingy, that he is able and, the part I had more trouble believing, willing to provide something as straightforward and specific as a dining room table. I was not yet even attending Zion at that time, but having the table helped me feel a part of a community, something bigger than me (and, more specifically, the body). Still does.

And, of course, I love the functions that it serves--just as I suspected I would. From dinner parties to art projects to good conversations (I remember especially one with Charity while we were folding those crazy Christmas party invites a few years ago) to the mail piled on it today, it holds, literally and figuratively, much goodness and many memories.

Posted by Renae at November 1, 2006 05:42 PM