Yesterday, a girlfriend of mine, mother, a feminist, a career girl turned home school mother (for a season) invited our daughters to attend what she called "An Edible Etiquette". She was the hostess for 12 young ladies ranging in age from nine years old (my youngest) to almost seventeen years old, driving, (her oldest) and every age in-between. It seemed the perfect number and guest list. Some of these girls had never met. Some were just acquaintances. In other words, these were not 'best friends' in the cultural vernacular. Nor did they truly share a common interest (sports, fashion, school, church, fine arts, family, etc.). I'm guessing the hostess carefully controlled the guest list, though. And, it worked. What a delightful afternoon. What delicious time well spent. I won't dwell on the details of the event, just to suffice it to say, it was a teachable moment and learning opportunity for all of us to share proper mealtime etiquette at a dinner party or restaurant from soup to nuts.
I felt it was especially appropriate and timely, because our girls and I have been actively talking about Downton Abbey's (Season 6) dinner table conversations, especially those comments and conversations going around the table between Lord Grantham, the village schoolteacher, Sarah Bunting, and Lord Grantham's Irish by birth, son-in-law, Tom Branson. I might add, how those conversations are affecting, Lady Grantham, her marriage, the Dowager Countess Grantham, Violet, Lady Mary, and don't get me started with the Below Staff Dramas unfolding as a result of these conversations. Dinner table conversations in the manor houses of England in the late 1920s started the conversations to class struggle, educational reforms, child labour laws, emancipation, a Woman's Right to Vote, The Land Acts, Free and Equal Pay equality, so many topics in the conventions of Post-Victorian Society. But, Primarily, we are talking about what classical education prior to 1979 (some say, even before that as early as pre-WWI) used to teach: Joining in and Participating in The Great Conversation. The Blue Print on how to do that. Our girls have been dialoguing back and forth what they think about village schoolteacher, Sarah Bunsing, pursing conversations--whilst worthy--she is going about them in all the wrong ways. And, the havoc that they wreak once baited. Specifically, when one is invited to one's house (manor or hovel), one does not attack, bully or aggressively seek out a wrong. Especially at the host's dinner table when one is 'invited' to sup or dine. Regardless of how, one is 'invited', there are rules of engagement to that dinner table. And, they are, or should be, universal. Not survival of the fittest. One reaches out in love, truth, integrity. One practices and employs one of the Ten Commandments: Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself....it is a journey worth taking and a journey, I fear, my be sadly lost. The Fine Art of Dinner Table Etiquette.
I will follow up that, prior to "Edible Etiquette" 101, our girls have grown up around our dinner table in the European or French way, where every member is respected and expected to pursue the Art of Table Manners. The older two girls regularly attend The Great Dance (a program of social dancing, etiquette and modern day social rules for young ladies and young men ages 11 - 19 alternate Fridays for three or four hours),so they are well-versed in dinner table conversations and etiquette. But, our daughters enjoyed the very real fact that other girls and adult women (who were once girls and perhaps may draw on their own adolescent experiences) may need 'toolbox skills and coping mechanisms' on how to carry on polite, respectful conversations without marginalizing or 'taking down another human being'. That was, I think, their BIG takeaway moment yesterday when the hostess interceded and talked about "Deflecting Rude Behavior" ['without honouring, condoning or supporting it, either,] without the girl allowing herself to be a doormat or becoming a shrew. That is so hard to teach, let alone model (if it's not in place: how can we model the behavior; or more, accurately, if the 'socialization' taking place does not support appropriate behaviors as the majority behavior (there's your classical Greek, Socratic thought carried through to our 21st digital technical age). My friend skillfully wove this thread through the dinner table as seamlessly as she explained the proper etiquette to butter one's bread, so-to-speak--literally--teaching that smearing community butter from any individual's knife directly to the bread and back again and again (crumbs...germs...saliva...unsanitary...disease) is a faux-pas. But, the bigger faux-pas, remains, how we treat each other. And, that was really what the dinner table etiquette was all about for these girls.
Perhaps even more important in our little domestic churches for our tweener and teenage brains, (apologies for succumbing to materialistic, consumer and advertising labels) regardless of gender or role, is to know that it does happen. Rude behavior, does and will happen, every day at every moment. And, Rude Behavior Hurts. Marginalizes. Destroys. Breeds, Fosters...Misunderstandings. Dr. Seuss knew that. He wrote about it when he explained The Butter War in The Butter Battle Book (1984). His theme, similar to the war between Lilliput and Blefusca in my countryman's, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels which was nominally based on the correct end to crack an egg. Butter side up/Butter side down. Really! War? The song, "Butter Side Up" from "Seusical, The Musical", says it all (look it up) about our petty, human squabbles. It's hard to imagine.It's toast, folks. But, if one thinks about it with intention. It's easy to see how a war, or minor skirmish, could and often, does start at the dinner table, especially the dinner table of everyday life. One only needs to come from a family to know that. It is up to each individual to draw the boundary, boundaries, in appropriateness and even harder still, to do so in such a Universal way that is not-offensive to anyone group or individual but respects the whole-hearted human being without regard to other dynamics. And, to teach and do and continue to learn before the Line of Scrimmage is drawn. To take a seat at the table of every Great Conversation and to know before you go, what is expected of you. Not high expectations, as our culture lies to us, but appropriate, right, just, expectations. I don't think, I KNOW, that our hostess accomplished THAT "Little Way"at least for and in our household yesterday. And, it's up to me, as their mother, and my husband, as their father, to carry it out in a logical, consistent, appropriate, lasting way. Day by Day. Because the culture doesn't want whats right for our girls (as Matthew Kelly continually points out). The Culture wants to sell them, us, something. I'm a mom. I Can Do This. I Can Do The Right Thing. Today. At my own dinner table. Everyday. Every day. Every. Day. That's it. That's the secret: Nobody but a family. Nobody but a mother. And, a father, can do THAT. Everyday. Consistently consistent. Consistency. No other institution even can try. And, they secretly know this. Build Me Up Here. Support me./Support Them. 'Cause I need your help. I have little or no support system. No raft. No gondola. Throw me a line. I got Jesus. He's Got me. But, I still need a few good peeps. God's Dream Team. And, believe it or not, it's really not about building me up. It's all about Building Us Up. Together. 'Cause consumer culture wants to make sure they have multiple families to peddle their products. And, around 1979, they decided that they could 'split' a nuclear family, divide it, manipulate and feed the hurt, multiply the hurt, quantify the hurt, and build an algorithm on those wounded, bleeding needs and wants and push their products onto us in massive quantities.
It helped to know that our girls were not alone. Those rude conversations, inquiries, comments, thoughts, snips, snide remarks are felt by a plethora of people, and NOT JUST THEM PERSONALLY. What to do when it's not about you, kinda things. As STING, Gordon Sumptner, says in one of his lyrics, "You're Never Alone". Those God moments for the atheists and agnostics around us that Sting attempts to capture and lasso in through pop culture. And, I have to thank that hostess-with-the-mostest because very often, mothers need other mothers, women need other women, to model that behavior to our own girls.
On Super Bowl Sunday (which we will NOT partake with 40 million people around the globe this year), I pray for the day(s) when we all reach an understanding that competition, worthy competition, has its place, but Cooperation is what builds, strengthens, maintains, and endows, a healthy, firmly planted, rooted whole-hearted human race. You and I have already started the process through our 'little ways' . So let the Dinner Table Games Begin!
United in Christ's Ways
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