The Community Table
A community dinner on Langdon Street outside Down Home Kitchen. (Montpelier, Vermont 2016)
BY MARY ALICE PROFFITT
It’s the day after Election 2024 and Americans, in a clear decision, have just sent Donald Trump back to the White House as our next president.
Are you feeling jubilant? Over the moon that sanity has returned to America, identity politics are subsiding, your value as a hard-working citizen has been validated and you can finally come out of the closet and say what you really believe in a voice louder than a whisper? Are you now standing proudly as a person of faith and traditional cultural values, perhaps without as much fear of getting cancelled, shamed, blamed, humiliated and erased?
Or are you strategizing which country to move to? Fearing for the loss of hard-fought social and civil rights: freedom of choice and abortion rights, transgendered rights, and the demise of the long-held vision of a country where all people are truly equal? Do you see this election as a warning sign of mass deportation and impending violence, of the end of democracy and democratic ideals, of the starting date of an inevitable civil war, of uncertainty and chaos and perhaps a fulfillment of your own vision of the end times?
Either way, you’re not alone. The instinct to go to one extreme scenario or the other in our minds is only human. We are, after all, animals who are competitive by design: tribal and fiercely loyal to our team and clan. The urge to win is the survival instinct, both engrained and trained into us. An instinct which enabled each and every one of our ancestors to stay alive long enough to find each other, mate, and produce offspring and descendants in the first place. And the desire to be right and protect ourselves and our clan is at the very heart of this instinct.
But as my brilliant and elegant cousin Catherine reminded me today, we also have the potential to be “so much more than animals”… King David’s description of us as “a little lower than the angels” in the Psalms reflects us being made in a divine image with the capacity for beauty and knowledge. Taking time for our brains and nervous systems to settle down, reflect, go inward, consume less news—not more—and stay in our own lanes allows us to open up to ask the big questions. And doing so, as my Buddhist friends say, allows us to feel our feelings—whether celebratory or angry—without harming ourselves or others. So slowing down, staying in our own lanes, and doing no harm is a smart way to process this election, at least in the immediate aftermath.
“Slowing down, staying in our own lanes, and doing no harm is a smart way to process this election.”
But the pragmatic reality on the ground is that regardless of whether Kamala Harris or Donald Trump was our choice for who would be measuring the drapes at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue between now and January, our country is in a critical moment of change and we don’t actually have all the time in the world to rest on our laurels and contemplate. Bills have to be paid. We have to get to work to take care of our daily business and to engage in the realities of adult life in our neighborhoods and communities. And we have to do this somehow, together. That necessity means that starting today, Wednesday, November 6, 2024, right this very moment, we are faced with a conundrum. We are about to get on a bus, onto a sidewalk or walk into a coffee shop with people who didn’t vote like us, who aren’t on our side’s team, and who we fear are the enemy who, in our minds, are out to destroy our way of life and the very dear values that define our essential selves.
Sound dramatic?
Fear of those who are out to get us—fear of “the other”—can consume us and cause us to make small, daily choices that counterproductively add to this climate of uncertainty and chaos rather than contributing towards a climate of equanimity, hope and possibility. In other words, the other person on the bus or in the store is not the only one responsible for what happens next. I am, you are, and ultimately, we are each individually responsible for our own future and our collective future.
America is changing. The world is changing. So we are feeling into our tribes for the safety and the belonging that is as important for our human survival as water, food, shelter and air. What is this change all around us? Why is it happening and what’s it all about? There are no simple answers and that can be unsettling. How do we move away from narratives surrounding individual public figures (like Donald Trump) and move into the reality of what we can actually do in our daily lives to weather the chaos? And how do we live together as one human family in the midst of it all?
Last year as a graduate student at Harvard I wrote an autoethnography and autotheology in anticipation of this moment…this election. I was very much predicting Trump’s return to power, and the book is now being edited for the general release. An Archive of Home, is a devotional exercise in which I explored the relationships between my inner life and forty years of spiritual journey; what I’ve learned as a Southern woman born into an educated, white, Christian, conservative family who organized and served in community as thought leaders, educators and visionaries. I explore my move to the opposite climate: a rural New England community where I chose to raise my three children which was in the non-religious, progressive, “smallest capitol in America” – Montpelier, Vermont.
In this book I reflected on my very real and personal experience of imagining, designing, and hosting a space where people of diverse backgrounds could gather to enjoy soul food at a long community table. There was a physical community table I created, but also a consistent and metaphorical gathering place. Down Home, as it was called, served conservative and progressive citizens alike with a motto of All People. I spent many years there in conversation with customers who flooded in the door from all walks of life. Seven days a week I tuned into their stories and deeply attuned to their values, hearing what was being communicated beneath the actual words. These intimate exchanges taught me how and why my guests identified politically and culturally, how and why they voted the way they did, and why they believed what they believed.
Down Home was not an isolated project or experience in my life. I was born into a large family with parents who valued intellectual curiosity, education and discourse. They showed me and my six siblings how to think critically about the world, how to ask good questions and how to listen. My life’s work and purpose has always been about these things.
“I hope to gather us all back together at our literal or metaphorical community tables in this post-election moment. I hope we can grow into a new community of Americans built on civility, fellowship and trust. ”
I’m looking forward to using this space to share with you some of the wisdom I have learned through a lifetime of sitting at that kind of community table. In my writings I hope to be a vessel for good and and to inspire you, my readers, with stories, wisdom, practical advice and food for thought. I hope to gather us all back together at our literal or metaphorical community tables in this post-election moment. I hope we can learn and practice how to speak directly to each other with humility and grace, how to ask questions of each other to better understand seemingly impossible differences, how to stay curious and open, and how to grow into a new community of Americans built on civility, fellowship and trust.
Sound idealistic? Impossible?
Fantastic. That’s what I’m going for.
My friend Rev. Byron Thomas self-identifies as a “Prisoner of Hope”, and being such a thing is exactly my jam. This kind of hope exists in the radical center of our differences; a place anyone can go if they have the practical skills, inspiration, desire and most importantly, the friends to walk alongside them on the journey.
Today, Donald Trump’s very name may bring your heart joy or despair. But ultimately, your life and mine and the way in which we choose to view this moment is going to be our own – not something determined by him or any other public figure. And speaking for myself, my life will certainly not be determined by the changing winds of dominant political parties. The choice, in my opinion, is very clear: at this moment, we build a future for our country and our world that we want to live in. And we do this using our own power and agency to practice civility in our day-to-day lives.
Let’s get to work at learning how to do this together.
Yours truly,
