Summary: It's about this time of the year when I start reaching deeply into the kitchen cabinets--not the ones that get opened everyday for our daily dishes, silverware, or spices. These are the ones that go deeply enough to take me from the mundane of "the everyday" to the treasures of "once a year." I'm gathering the dishes and linens for the family feast, starting to polish the silver, gather the china and iron the linens for the Thanksgiving banquet. As I pull out the forgotten items that only make a showing once or twice a year, I'm connected again to the stories of these treasures from the experiences of table setting from the past. I remember how my grandmother taught me on which side the silverware goes and how china gets properly laid out. I recount the gifts given at special times that now rest on my family table. I'm thinking about how getting a table ready can even be a sacred heart-setting, preparing our lives for the Christ to enter and be our welcomed guest. In Lee Daniels' The Butler, a film released in August about a White House butler who served eight American presidents over three decades, there is a very different table-setting scene. The scene juxtaposes two different tables being set in the 1960's. The first is a dignified state dinner at the White House with African-American butlers serving the white DC elite and world leaders. The other table, a soda fountain counter like those all around the nation, where black college students endure the horror of being spit upon, bullied, physical abuse and unimaginable taunting.
