I grew up with church cover dish dinners...

 

Everywhere that I’ve lived I’ve found good company and shared good food.

 

For years now it’s been a mainstay. I landed myself in rural Portugal living a ‘simple and easy life’ where neighbors shared eggs and vegetables. Return the gift with some homemade bread and most likely you’d leave laden down yet again. Gatherings in the café, coming together for Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve to share company and food. 

 

My valley grew into a hub of transition and transformation minded journeyers looking for a place to rebuild old stone buildings and to grow gardens and kids and all that other wholesome kinda stuff. We gathered to work farms together and shared food. We gathered in circles and shared food. We gathered for festivals and open mics and meditations and Champagne Music and Story Sundays and film nights and shared food. Go to a wedding or a birthday party, bring food and enjoy the conversations.

 

Now I’m just back in the U.S.A.  Again in suburbia, surrounded by too much concrete for my liking, going to gatherings where, ‘hello, nice to meet you’ makes for a long conversation.  Returning to a society deep in a need to rediscover themselves and each other and the sharing of food.

 

Maybe you are already doing that and I just haven’t met you. Whether you are or haven’t yet, a little bit more is always good and here happens to be the perfect solution:

 

Sponsor a Story Night Social.  Extend your home beyond family and best friends.  Invite a few that you wish that you had the time to get to know.  When in doubt, invite some more.  More will be the variety of all that you’ll be sharing. Let the storyteller do her thing. Stories will be the bread to sandwich food, drink and the sharing of your own stories.