At Lutheran Day in May, LAMPa announced we would be seeding 10 “Love Anyway Feasts” as part of a grant to do peacebuilding in Pennsylvania. As a program designed to bring people from a diversity of backgrounds around a common table to share a meal and enter into deeper relationship with one another, it was an endeavor that reflected the sacramental foundation of the work LAMPa encourages Lutherans to do as a response to their baptism. In the weeks leading up to the November 5 election, those seeded feasts have taken place all over the Commonwealth, building new and renewed relationships that will hopefully ripple out to promote peace in ever-widening circles.
The first feast of this season was with LAMPa’s own Policy Council at their retreat at Camp Sequanota. “Often we get so focused on our business, we forget to connect with one another on an interpersonal level,” said Rev. Erin Jones, LAMPa’s Communications and Advocacy Engagement Manager. “Having the tools from the Love Anyway Feasts allowed us to create a new space for knowing one another and what drives us to do this work. It made our business and conversations after the feast richer because we had a deeper understanding of where everyone was coming from.”
On October 16, the Rev. Eric Damon coordinated the councils of Grace and Emmanuel Heilman Lutheran Churches near Ford City, to spend some time after their joint council meeting to “share a feast and talk about the sorts of things we don’t normally talk about in a council meeting.” While, as Damon says, “both councils are already decently acquainted with one another…members did come away knowing each other a little better and it was agreed that knowing each other was the best way to have difficult conversations in a peaceful way.”
The Rev. Beth Martini, Assistant to the Bishop in Lower Susquehanna Synod, held a feast in her new neighborhood, where she and her family had just moved in May. “Our neighborhood has a variety of political signs in front of homes, so it was a blessing to be able to join together as fellow neighbors, to laugh and talk and eat together and to see each other as friends and not enemies,” Martini reflected after the feast. “My 7-year-old hears bits and pieces of our political discourse and had started to think our neighbors with yard signs of the candidates we are not voting for were bad people. It was heartening to hear him describe after the meal how nice these neighbors are. If nothing else, this meal helped my child see our shared humanity!”
Rev. Jones held a feast at her home, with friends from different areas of her and her spouse’s life. “It was a great opportunity to connect people I have long thought should know each other,” she said. “I’m not a great party host, but Common Ground USA has put together enough resources that there was very little I had to do or worry about. Even their pre-made Spotify playlist set the perfect tone!”
More feasts will be happening with seed money from LAMPa until Election Day on November 5, after which Common Ground is coordinating more than 2,000 feasts between the election and Thanksgiving. Find out how you can host one here! Those in the Pittsburgh area can join a community-wide feast hosted by our friends at Christian Associates of Southwest Pennsylvania and the Center for Lovingkindness.