(community reflections)

There is a couple at my weekly breakfast dining spot.

They sit across from one another at a small, square table with two empty chairs to the side of each of them. Those empty chairs do not remain empty for long, as people trickle in, they come to visit the couple. The diner’s regulars play musical chairs together with chitter chatter becoming the music we move to. And… it seems to revolve all around them.

While I do not sit at the table with them (I have company of my own), I greet the couple as I walk into the diner. Our congenial conversation is a beautiful beginning to the morning ritual, connecting me beyond my world and integrating me into their world. We exchange pleasantries and move on with the morning, but the warmth they provide to the space is undeniable.

They are hospitable in a place that is not even their own, yet the space is transformed by their stewardship of it. Every server has a name and story known by the couple, every day a new tale to be shared with their table-neighbors. They hug tightly, laugh loudly, and sit comfortably in the silence.

I believe this is community in a nutshell – stewarding a space with radical hospitality, intentionality, and love of one’s neighbor. The diner acts as a microcosm to how we are to act in the world. Loving the world starts with loving one’s neighbor, which happens in the places we go every day. This couple continues to bless me week in and week out, throughout the year their constancy is noticed. When they miss a week that I am there, the atmosphere shifts and it feels wrong not to have them in the room with us.

What a gift it is to know these sorts of people and be shaped by them. Ever since I was in college, I had a desire to be known within my rhythms – the cafe barista, the diner staff, the library attendants, and so on. We crave to be known, and this couple reveals ways I can be a part of the answer to that deep desire. They welcome in the outsider to make them family, and we leave forever changed.