Why We Eat Together
The table does something that discussion cannot, and it does it to people who did not agree to be changed.
Essay · Naomi Whitlock · Steward of Orchard House · June 2022
Ask why a community eats together and you will be given reasons about fellowship. The reasons are true and they are not the mechanism. The mechanism is duration and constraint. You are seated. You will be there for an hour. You did not choose your neighbour. Somebody has to pass the water.
This is a very old technology and it is almost impossible to improve. In an hour at a table a person who intended to say nothing will say four things. Two of them will be nothing. The third will be a complaint about the weather. The fourth will be the reason they came.
We lay the table before anyone arrives[1]. This is not decoration. A room that is ready is a room that expects you, and people who feel expected sit down differently.
Feed people well and they will tell you the truth on the second evening. Feed them badly and they will tell you a different truth on the first.
One place is laid and left empty[2]. Visitors ask about it, and each house answers in its own way, which I have always thought was a failure of coordination that we have since agreed to describe as a tradition. At Orchard House we say it is for whoever could not come. This is the gentlest of the available explanations. It has the disadvantage of being the one I believe least.
Sources
Each numbered reference above is traceable to a document held in the Common Record or to a page preserved from an earlier system. Where a source is held in part, that is stated.
- [1]
PRO/1996/11
House Handbook: Order of a Weekly Observance
Procedure · 1996 · Stewardship
The laying of the table as set out for stewards.
Standing: HeldReturn to the passage
- [2]
DIS/standing
Matters in dispute
Register of dispute · As presently entered · Stewardship
The houses give different accounts of the empty place. The disagreement is entered, unresolved.
Entered without resolution. The Institute publishes disagreement in the same type as agreement.
Standing: HeldReturn to the passage
- [3]
MIN/1979/11
Open Table minutes, November 1979 — the absent chair
Minutes · November 1979 · North House
The first recorded use of the phrase 'the absent chair'.
The phrase is recorded in a footnote. The footnote does not explain it, and no earlier use has been found.
Standing: Held in partEntered without a reference in the textReturn to the passage
Journal of the Continuance Institute · revision 31.8 · this document has been reconciled with the Common Record