By Steven Norris
It’s dinnertime. Who is sitting at your table tonight? Who is breaking bread with you over homemade lasagna or pot roast? With whom are you sharing your hopes and dreams, your fears and anxieties?
During the five weeks I walked the Camino de Santiago, pilgrim meals became some of the most meaningful moments of my journey. Many hostels offered a common meal to everyone seeking shelter for the night. Again and again, I found myself sharing a table with people from around the world.
One evening, I stayed in an albergue hosted by Vincente, a playful Italian ball of energy. Entering his hostel felt like walking into a nightclub, complete with disco music and his boisterous cry of “Mamma mia!” filling the air.
Eight pilgrims gathered for dinner: a retired woman from the United Kingdom, a young man from Taiwan, an American woman from upstate New York, a Canadian mother and her college-aged son, a young woman from Ireland, a middle-aged Irish man unrelated to her, and me. Our cook was Spanish, and our host, as I mentioned, was Italian.
Meals like this gave us the opportunity to encounter perspectives far beyond our own. We told stories with a vulnerability and honesty that I found refreshing and deeply encouraging. Each of us explained why we were walking the Camino, and no one avoided the emotional burdens weighing heavily in our proverbial packs.
That night, I met a man I’ll call James. He was walking in honor of his wife, who had died from cancer nearly a year earlier. He had watched the disease ravage her body through several years of illness. Tenderly, he described cradling her head as she took her final breaths while their two children held her hands.
Only hours earlier, we had been complete strangers. Now tears streamed down my face as I entered his grief.
As the meal ended, I received a text saying that my mother had been taken to the hospital back home in Griffin. Because a bond had already formed around that table, James entered my uncertainty, worry, and fear. He paused and prayed with me for my mother’s healing. Over the next several days, whenever our paths crossed, he asked for updates and assured me that his prayers continued.
Throughout Scripture, shared meals become places of grace and transformation. In Luke’s Gospel especially, Jesus teaches at tables, welcomes outsiders, receives hospitality, and reveals himself in the breaking of bread. A meal is never merely about food. Around the table, strangers become neighbors, burdens are shared, and God’s care takes flesh through ordinary human presence. There, compassion can become a kind of communion, and listening can become a holy act.
Who is invited to sit at your table? How are you making room for others to tell the stories that have shaped them? Whose pain might God be asking you to enter? And how might God transform you through the company you keep?
Sometimes the gift of care is unwrapped one meal, one story, and one prayer at a time.