The brief video attached at the end of this post, which I recorded in January 2022, tells the story behind a poem I wrote in October 2021, "A Seat at the Table," along with a reading of the poem.
The poem explores that pervasive longing to find a place to belong, and the struggle of feeling like an outsider.
One of the images that kept returning to me while writing this poem was the biblical narrative of a dialog between Jesus and a Canaanite woman, a woman who would be considered an outsider due to her race and … well, being a woman in that era.
In the narrative, the woman is asking Jesus to heal her daughter and at first glance, it looks like he’s shutting her down, telling her she’s not from the house of Israel.
She offers a quick retort to Jesus’ comment and he tells her, “Great is your faith.”
This is remarkable because in several places Jesus tells his closest disciples, men who have been following him for years, that they don’t have enough faith.
And the woman’s daughter is healed.
The word picture that the woman and Jesus use in the narrative involves a table, and who is worthy to eat at the table.
The metaphor of tables and inviting others to one’s table is a powerful image, and one of the ideas I worked with in the poem.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Limning the Ordinary to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.