Where Time Stops

The ear tests words as the tongue tastes food. Let us discern for ourselves what is right; let us learn together what is good.

—Job 34:3–4

Sit down at the table and offer the people you love something humble and nourishing, like soup and bread, like a story, like a hand holding another hand while you pray. We live in a world that values us for how fast we go, how much we accomplish, how much life we can pack into one day. But it’s in the in-between spaces that our lives change, and that the real beauty lies.

Most of the time, I eat like someone’s about to steal my plate, like I can’t be bothered to chew or taste or feel, but I’m coming to see that the table is about food, and it’s also about time. It’s about showing up in person, a whole and present person, instead of a fragmented, frantic person, phone in one hand and to-do list in the other. Put them down, both of them, twin symbols of the modern age, and pick up a knife and a fork. The table is where time stops. It’s where we look people in the eye, where we tell the truth about how hard it is, where we make space to listen to the whole story, not the textable sound bite.