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The Table Makers Will Overcome The Wall Builders

The table makers are winning.

Yes, the wall builders will always get the attention.

Discord sells.
Bitterness makes the news.
Hatred garners clicks.

Acts of violence and expressions of enmity and movements of malice so easily trend.

Those who build walls know this.

Right now it can seem like the wall builders are winning, because they are so loud and so prominent—but we table makers know better.

We’re here on the ground every day, shoulder to shoulder with other disparate human beings, wooden planks and hammers in hand. We’re here doing the difficult, messy work of making something beautiful; something that is not exclusionary, not generated by fear, not intend to divide—something motivated by a sense of abundance and not of lack.

We are in our local communities, expanding the table there, so that weary people can come and rest, so that terrified people can find refuge, so they can be fed, so they can be seen and heard and loved—so that they know they are worth welcoming.

Every day, we are listening to stories of people whose experience of the world or America or Church or religion are different from our own, and doing so without fanfare or news coverage.

And the table expands.

We are reaching across the imagined divides and manufactured crises of the wall builders, and finding the greatest commonalities on which to base our days and expend our energies.

And the table expands.

We are transcending faith tradition and political affiliation, and we are becoming something far more expansive and much deeper than those things could ever be; building on the elemental bedrock of our shared humanity.

And the table expands.

And as we collaborate and make and build, there is joy and revelation and beauty all around.

This weekend I visited Rochester, Minnesota, and on a brutal sub-zero stretch of weather, hundreds of people gathered together to remind one another of what we’re all building together; that even though we may be geographically separated, we are a single community, despite what the wall builders say.

We shared stories and affirmed one another’s humanity, and we mined hope in the truth that diversity is always going to make us better, that compassion is always going to be the better path—that tables, not walls are our most pressing need.

At one point in our gathering, a young man named Abdi stood with the mic and said. “I wasn’t sure I wanted to come here tonight. I’m Muslim, and I just want to say ‘thank you, man. Thank you for your message. I’m Muslim and you’re Christian and we have a lot in common, we’re not so different, and I appreciate you. Thank you.”

Abdi is a table maker. In days when the wall builders so often tend to be white Christian pastors, he walked into a Christian church to listen to a white pastor, and he affirmed the humanity that he saw there. He expanded the table with his presence.

The wall builders don’t want you to know about young men like Abdi, or about organizations like Project Legacy that he participates in, or about faith communities like Peace United Church of Christ who hosted us, or about the thousands upon thousands of groups contributing to the barrier breaking movements taking place all over this country every single day.

They don’t want you to see just how many people are building the tables here in America, because that is the perfect love that casts out fear—and fear is all they have to broker in and build upon.

Today, look around you.
See the builders in your community, take note of the beautiful acts of collaboration and inclusion, and let that news be the thing that trends in your head.

Build a better newsfeed to motivate you and encourage you; one that reminds you that the table makers are winning.

They will continue to build, in the face of those who would destroy.

They will always overcome the walls.

 

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