Sunday Supper

January 2021

“Don’t forget to pause and nourish yourself a bit along the way. When you’re born to help others sometimes you forget to help yourself.” — Paula Heller Garland

What is YOUR Sunday Supper?

There was a time when families gathering around a table to eat was the norm more than the exception. It marked the day’s ending, where conversation and nourishment fed both the body and the soul. Gathering around the table on Sunday took on even more significance because it meant respite before a new week was to begin.

For any number of reasons, it is a disappearing tradition, so much in fact that there is a movement called “National Sunday Supper Day” which encourages families to gather around the table on the second Sunday of each year, enjoy a meal and a conversation together, with the goal to turn one day a year into one day a week, becoming a way of life, bringing family and friends back together in the kitchen and around the dinner table.

That sounds lovely and doable, doesn’t it? Yes, if no one must work on Sunday, or have a ballgame Sunday afternoon, or perhaps finish up a school project. Or is it one more warm and fuzzy standard that we feel we must meet? Who gets to set that standard, anyway?

It also seems that if a movement is needed to recreate a tradition then perhaps it isn’t so doable at all, especially during a pandemic. The world is constantly shifting, and what seemed doable even yesterday might seem impossible today. This leads us then to ask:

What is YOUR Sunday Supper? Is it a Tuesday evening with pizza delivery and a Zoom call with family from around the country? How about meeting your daughter in a park during a lunch hour with sandwiches brought from home? Perhaps, facetiming with your supper club to cook together since that is not an in-person option right now? Maybe, just maybe, your Sunday Supper is spending time in quiet solitude with a book and a bag of cheese puffs.

Sunday Supper doesn’t have to be on a Sunday, and it doesn’t have to be dinner. It is an ideal, a concept, an intentional way to stay connected, even with yourself, during an incredibly challenging time. There is no doubt that we are starving.

One meal, just one. Then, perhaps another. And another.

It is something to ponder.

What is YOUR Sunday Supper?

Be Well …

Arkansas Hospice Employee Wellness Council (EWC) Keeping you Well – Mind, Body, & Spirit

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