“Sitting Around Your Table”
by Madeleine L’Engle from The Ordering of Love

Sitting around your table
as we did, able
to laugh, argue, share
bread and wine and companionship, care
about what someone else is saying, even
if we disagreed passionately: Heaven,
we’re told, is not unlike this, the banquet celestial,
eternal convivium.  So the praegustum terrestrium
partakes – for me, at least – of sacrament.
(Whereas the devil, ever intent
on competition, invented the cocktail party where
one becomes un-named, un-manned, de-personned.) Dare
we come together, then, vulnerable, open, free?
Yes! Around your table we
knew the Holy Spirit, come to bless
the food, the host, the hour, the willing guest.