Introduction

You may be one of those people seeking a more intensive spiritual life grounded in dynamics of reconciliation and restoration of self, community, and ecology. You may be especially longing for forms of prayer, nurture, and communal support that take seriously our need for equal participation in circular forms of communication and transformation. This little book may help you in that quest.

More than twenty years ago my wife Sylvia and I started gathering a few people together on occasional Sunday nights in Atlanta for singing, prayer, reflection, and the traditional elements of the Christian meal. We chewed on the bread and offered each other our crumbs of meditation. The small symbols of our gathering left us with a special satisfaction. We weren’t sure why we gathered in circle at a simple card table, but somehow it felt right and renewing. Over the years we continually felt pulled back to this simple form.  For me, there was decreasing power in the traditional forms of worship seated in fixed pews consuming sermons, anthems, and prayers. Worship shows with rock bands and backup singers quickened my pulse but not my spirit. I was tired of manipulation rather than genuine participation. The table gatherings remained a beckoning light.

It was in a Roman Catholic setting that I had first experienced the power of coming to table. After the Second Vatican Council, the Roman church was trying to recover the original meaning of the table. Altars that had been pushed against a wall were brought forward. Rails that had separated the people from the table were torn away. When I arrived at St. Francis Seminary in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1969, I was introduced to a form of Holy Communion that was table-centered and people-centered.  While priests still presided, the table was opened up as a power and authority of its own – even for people like me from the separated churches of the Reformation. The power of the table, framed in liturgies that shaped its enduring meaning, became a beacon for my future and for later gatherings at table.

In the year 2000 I felt a powerful urge to create a round communion table for Andover Newton Theological School, where I was teaching at the time. The power of the gathering at table protested against the pulpit wordiness, the pews, the altars fixed against the wall in Gothic Protestant churches. In addition, another experience had begun to reshape my intuitions. I had recently spent many months in South Africa doing research on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that had been created to enable victims of apartheid to gain a voice and the perpetrators of crimes to give account of their acts in public. It was a great national experiment in the work of reconciliation and restorative justice. Without it, the work of building a new republic on a democratic basis would have been much more difficult, if not impossible.

The connections came in a flood. I realized anew that the work of reconciliation is the heart of the Christian calling – our reconciliation with our Creator, with all other humans, our fellow creatures and plants, and with this precious earth, our only home. This work of reconciliation and restoration cannot take place without listening to the pain and hope of the other person, without acknowledging the equal dignity of the other, and without finding our own voice. This cannot happen without a nurturing grace symbolized in the simple food of the table. All of these elements come together at a round table whose wood recalls our bonding with the earth. I spent the next three months taking my woodworking skills to a new level and returned to Andover Newton with the table.

When I retired the following year at age sixty, people knew that I had to build more tables and continue wrestling with the work of reconciliation that the tables symbolize. Over the past seven years I have helped lead a small group that has gathered regularly at a round table to engage in a form of worship grounded in these basic elements of reconciliation. In our gatherings we are both inspired and strengthened in our efforts to live out this reconciliation in our communities. This little book is an effort to tell others about this Roundtable Worship and the Roundtable Ministries that it seeks to support. In telling the story I also want to set forth briefly the kind of faith and theology it expresses. I want to say what we do as well as why I think we do it.

These are definitely notes on a journey. Part of that journey has been inspired by my work with Tom Porter and the JustPeace group in the United Methodist Church. Out of their work came an earlier book, Conflict and Communion, in which various people reflected on the relationship between Holy Communion and restorative justice. This book is a successor to that one and a companion for Tom’s recent book, The Spirit and Art of Conflict Transformation: Creating a Culture of JustPeace (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2010), which sets out the practices of circle conversation and conflict transformation at the heart of the Roundtable’s understanding of reconciliation. There are many other similar initiatives that have emerged in our conflicted times. They speak of reconciliation, conflict transformation, and restoration. This is one voice to add to the conversation.

In the next chapters I will walk you through our typical gathering, sharing at each point my understanding of why we do this. While others in the group have commented on my report, this is my theological understanding, not necessarily theirs! I will then summarize some of the things we have discovered in this experience and the challenges we have encountered along the way. I conclude with some observations about the ancient traditions this practice retrieves and the possible future trajectory it might take. At the end are some sample liturgies that readers might find helpful.