Gathering around the Table

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   November 23, 2025

I imagine God’s dream for us as abundant life for everyone, no exceptions. Before I moved to the Scranton area in 2010, I knew that Friends of the Poor (now joined with the Catherine McAuley Center) was sponsored by my Congregation of the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (Scranton), and founded by Sister Adrian Barrett, IHM in 1986. That the mission of Friends of the Poor (FOP) was to ease the burden and enhance the quality of life for all those living in poverty. That it brought together in friendship those who have the desire to give with those in need of assistance. Still, I was unprepared to imagine what that dream might actually look like in real life.

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving in 2010, I volunteered to be among hundreds of FOP volunteers. We assisted in ways great and small to bring to reality an annual Thanksgiving dinner planned, prepared, and served by Friends of the Poor, who, incredibly, had no RSVP to inform them of an expected number of guests. The Scranton Cultural Center opened its doors and over fifteen hundred (now many more) friends in need and friends alone for the holiday surged into a grand ballroom decorated for the season. Every table was draped with a white cloth and holding roses in a bud vase, along with a bowl of chocolates for sharing. Musicians on stage filled the hall with notes of hospitality and joy. Words of welcome, gratitude, and grace formed a prelude to the feast. As a volunteer server, I spent the afternoon squeezing between tables to carry plates heaped with a hot Thanksgiving meal to each guest, later ferrying a second meal boxed to go for our friends.

When there was finally a lull in serving, I climbed up to the balcony to survey the scene below. I gasped. Because looking out from this perch, I saw enfleshed in the hall below me the embodiment of the Holy One’s dream for our world. I saw strangers from differing backgrounds and experiences all brought together by the desire for a meal and the desire to belong to something greater than themselves. I saw a movement toward the deepening community and spaciousness of heart for which we all long.

So whatever table we might be gathering around this Thanksgiving holiday, wherever the conversation leads us, may we remember the significance of the table and its symbolism as Joy Harjo imagines in “Perhaps the World Ends Here”::

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children.
They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table.
It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Takeaway
Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
Imagine the kind of table gathering you hope to create not only for holidays, but for every day.
Ask the Holy One to help you set your table with patience, with gratitude, and with largeness of heart.
Then invite the Holy One to sit down and eat with all who are gathered.

Featured Images:  Stefan Vladimirov, Unsplash; Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash

NOTE:
Blessings of the Thanksgiving holiday to you, to those you love, and especially to those who are without safe gathering spaces or food or table or home at this time: the people of Gaza, of Ukraine, of South Sudan, and every area of our world struggling with food insecurity.

Please hold in your prayer all who will be part of:
December 4
Advent Evening
Women’s Cornerstone
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church
Ridgewood, NJ

May we meet the season of Advent ahead with openness of heart and a listening spirit.

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