Dinner with Strangers

How do we each define our community? I’m sure that definition varies greatly, depending on the individual, depending on the day.

I was fascinated several years ago by an article I read about a company that was operating in New York City, setting up dinners for groups of eight strangers to dine together as a way to expand community. If you signed up for a membership, they’d put you into a dinner on a specific date at a specific location, you just showed up.

Over the summer, I saw that this idea had arrived in KC. Although a little concerned about the divisiveness that I see between people online, that somehow made the question even more interesting – are people really like that? How would strangers interact together over a shared meal? So, I signed up, and a few weeks later I joined my first table of strangers for dinner. We began with introductions – and immediately found commonalities – you do work in something tech-related, too? – we began to even think we might have been grouped together deliberately by our invisible “hosts”. Though the fact is – the grouping is almost completely random, based on your preferred conversation style (a few topics, more deeply discussed – or light conversation?) and restaurant style (really quiet- or really loud and active?).

A second dinner a few weeks later was entirely different, and entirely the same. Our group immediately found a common theme, but this time, it was one of loss and grieving and the process of moving forward through it all. (Could those that coordinated the dinner tell somehow that we had each just experienced a loss in some way?) In both groups, people were gracious, encouraging, polite, and engaged.

I walked away understanding that no one had put us together in significant groupings for dinners – but rather that our human instinct is one that wants to build community. Our instinct wants to find the ways that we each belong to each other and the community we find around us; to find the threads that weave our life experiences together and connect us to something bigger.

The truth is, our true community is larger than we would have ever claimed, and larger than we can imagine. The truth is, all we have to do is look.

Thank you, God, for bringing us together in communities that are as large as we can imagine them – as wide as you made them for us to discover. Amen

Diana is a founding member of Peace Church and is thankful for Peace Church, and all the joyful and meaningful Sundays that have come with it.