Tell a story, ask a question

Our church started down its bicultural path in the kitchen of the community meal. We recognized our need for cooks who spoke English and Spanish and could help us reach out to the Spanish-speaking community beyond our boundaries. Even though a few of the English-speaking cooks spoke Spanish, this wasn’t the same as having someone who could help us bridge cultural divides, divides we only barely understood. We found the people we needed, and their coming was one of the early transformative moments for our community. 

We English-speaking cooks had been working together for many years. Our philosophy of the meal had become so integrated into what we did every day that we had forgotten to articulate it.

One crucial piece was that we always ate with the people who came to the meals. We believed in this principle passionately. We had all worked in soup kitchens where the line between volunteers and guests was rigidly policed and crossing that boundary was a deep social taboo. Instead, we wanted to put an emphasis on the community in "community meal": we are all one. We share one table and one bread.