From Le Pain Quotidien Cookbook |
I am someone who likes to surround myself with images which serve as reminders of what's important to me and what I want to bring into my life. I know that some people like to create vision boards. Those are great! I often like to put up greeting cards with inspirational messages and pictures.
Recently, I wanted to choose a new background image for my personal Facebook page. I decided to choose an illustration which caught my attention in the Le Pain Quotidien Cookbook. Le Pain is a chain of bakery restaurants which feature large, communal tables for patrons to sit around.
I chose this image because one of my goals this year is to keep creating opportunities to build community, friendship, and collaborative efforts with other individuals and groups. I think it's so important to have pictures that remind us of what it is we want to bring into our lives.
What's interesting is what happened after I posted this picture on my FB page. I found myself repeatedly sitting around large, communal tables to share meals with people, to make art, to have meetings that were highly collaborative in their nature.
Here are some examples:
- I sat at big, long tables with the neighbors to the apartments on either side of ours to make Valentine cards out of huge piles of fun arts and crafts supplies.
- After joining a Universalist Unitarian church, my husband and I were invited to a member's home where we sat around a big table to enjoy a home-cooked meal.
- I happened upon a neighborhood storefront which serves as a church. The service includes a shared meal, so the space features a bunch of long tables that people can gather around. Recently, the church decided to offer itself up as a co-working space. I went to a day to sample it out, and signed on for a month. I'm so excited; I've always wanted to be in a co-working space!
- I joined my church's membership committee. Every month, we gather around a table in the church office to brainstorm ideas and solutions.
I think I'm going to keep the Quotidien image up on my FB page for a while. Just so I can see what happens next. Images are such powerful things!
I love this post! The communal table can be a great place to tear down the walls that we put up around ourselves, especially in big towns like New York.
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