Long slow suppers

Hi there. Each week I will post an excerpt of one of the thousands of things I’ve written in the last 25 years, and then follow it up with some modern context or point of view. Today’s piece from the archives was from my newsletter, and was written in summer of 2019. Enjoy! – HH

One consequence to the amazing sort of life I have had the good fortune to lead is that I know, and have gotten to work with, a lot of all different sorts of people who live all over the world. And this last week, one of those people happened to be in Jackson, MS, where I live, and so we had him over for dinner.

Eating with people is one of my most important spiritual practices. When I say things like that, I know I risk losing some people, but it’s true. I believe the Divine, the Universe, God, whatever you want to use as a metaphor for the organizing principle of the universe, is known in a unique way when we share a meal with another person.

So, when I found out Melvin was in town, then of course we will have him over for dinner. After all, our house was picked out with that in mind. The meal wasn’t fancy – red beans and rice, with a simple cobbler and good vanilla ice cream for dessert – but the experience of a long, slow dinner with lots of laughter, plotting future goodness, and sharing our victories and failures since we last laid eyes on each other was priceless.

His coworker thanked us for inviting her, and for the meal. And then, as sometimes happens, I said something off the cuff that was the right thing, and true.

“I think that we all agree that in the better world we dream of, there would be lots of meals like this one was. But the thing is, we don’t have to wait for that better world to come about – we can have those meals now. And by doing that, we build the better world we dream of.”

Here is to more long, slow suppers, and to the building of a better world.

Six years later…

COVID was 9 months away from kicking our ass when I wrote this. We went three years where we didn’t have anyone who didn’t live here at our table. And we were much poorer for it.

It may just be me, but I think the pandemic broke something in our fabric. I don’t get invited to peoples houses for supper nearly as much as I did before the pandemic. I hear that from other people too. And I think we are poorer for it.

Living off the rage

The restaurant was quiet, despite its being the lunch hour. The rain came down outside, no doubt part of the reason for the low turnout.

We hadn’t seen each other for a while and were catching up in that meandering, slow way friends do. Here is what her son did, and here are the pictures. Here are pictures of our cats, and did you hear about so and so?

Like that.

Eventually, we got to the current political chaos. It feels like that is the subject of a lot of conversations I have these days. How did we get here? How do we fight back? What can we do?

This led to different people we know doing various kinds of work around this, including one person in particular I think of as The Instagram Activist.

They are at every protest. Their Instagram page is filled with the hashtag de jour. They have an instant opinion on every issue, despite their lack of knowledge of the issue. From matters as wide-ranging as labor policy to race to LGBT issues to food accessibility, they are out in front of the cameras, giving their solutions. They show up at city council and school board meetings with a camera, trying to play gotcha with board members. They have selfies with every significant Civil Rights personality.

And whenever I mention this person to anyone, all people talk about is how angry this person is. No local politician will take their call or trust them with a meeting. All they have is rage.

But here’s the thing—the whole anger thing is a public persona. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with them one on one, and they are not like that at all when the cameras are off.

“They are angry for a living,” I said to my friend at lunch that day.  

She laughed and said that was exactly it.

“They are so caught up in the way it is, they don’t have a plan for what it could be like. They are not giving birth to anything; they are just living off the rage,” she said.

I know lots of folks who are living off the rage. Their Facebook feed is filled with “I told you so” posts. Outrage at the current administration leads them to fat-shame people who disagree with them. They are so mad they call other people who disagree with them names or slurs. The world is broken up into two camps, with the dividing mark being whether you agree with them. They are right; you are wrong. No curiosity, no nuance. Just rage.

Some people just like to fight, and are so busy fighting they never stopped to ask what they are fighting for. What happens if you win?

In May of 1780, John Adams was in Paris, trying to get help from the French government for the American colonies, then in the middle of the Revolutionary War. In a letter to his wife Abigail, he said,   

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

I want to be clear: I hate war, and every war results from a failure of imagination. But at least Adams knew what he was fighting for. There was a larger vision at work than just “owning the [political party I oppose]”.

Don’t tell me what you are against: what are you for?

Don’t tell us what you want to destroy: what do you want to build?

I don’t want to know what you hate: let us know what you love.

Hugh's Blog

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