I was deeply challenged recently by Kat Armas’ book Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength. She writes: “I don’t particularly agree with the saying, ‘we need to make space at the table for people on the margins.’ People on the margins have their own tables… Is it really loving to force someone to leave their own table – the one they have prepared – to sit at yours?… An abuelita faith calls for the dominant culture to leave its own tables and join the marginalized at theirs…regular guests at unfamiliar tables with only the motives of listening and learning.”[1]

Something shifted inside me as I read that because I confess I have been working hard at making space at tables, but barely thinking about what hospitality as a regular guest at unfamiliar tables means. I repent – an old-fashioned word meaning “I understand. Even if I was well intentioned (and was I truly?) I was still wrong. I choose to turn and walk towards the truth of that.”

We are in a season of relationship crushing polarization and escalating voices. Where are the listening voices at unfamiliar tables?

That’s all. Enough said. Perhaps you are already such a voice, if not, I invite you to seek out a table, and pull up a chair.

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[1] Kat Armas, Abuelita Faith: What Women on the Margins Teach us about Wisdom, Persistence, and Strength (Brazos Press, 2021), 137.