DVD Review: The Family Meal Table
Wednesday, Jun 21, 2006
When my husband and I married, we began the habit of sitting down together for meals. As soon as the children arrived, the temptation arose to do what was expedient at the dinner table instead of what was better (separate meal times, not sitting down together, etc.). Sometimes it’s crazy. But we’ve pressed on, and every evening, with rare exception, we eat dinner as a family. All seven of us, and sometimes more, gather to be nourished in body and spirit. It is loud, for sure, but it is a place to connect, be fed, and a time to try to get a word in edgewise. We enjoy our table and usually linger there for awhile afterward.
The nightly ritual of cooking dinner, getting the table set, and sitting down can be somewhat of a chore. I enjoy the eating and talking part, but I don’t always enjoy the preparations. But today when I watched The Family Meal Table (produced by Franklin Springs Media), I was inspired to continue the tradition, and to approach it with joy and flair.
Many of you might be familiar with Nancy Campbell, editor of Above Rubies. I’ve been reading Nancy for years, but I’ve never seen or heard her. In this presentation, she talks about the family meal table being the heart of the home. (In her sing-song accent, the word “heart” is pronounced “hot.” I smiled every time she said the word.) In this one hour video, she inspires, encourages, and equips women to make the family meal table a priority. Never legalistic or condescending, Nancy reminds us that the enemy of the best is sometimes those things that are good. Too much running around and misplaced priorities take away from nurturing our bodies and souls around the table. Her husband, Colin, also speaks to men about nourishing your family’s souls with God’s Word.
This is the stuff of life. When my children look back on their childhoods, I imagine that they will remember the “way things were.” With fondness I hope they will relish the comfortable traditions we found in the dailyness of life. The family dinner table is one of those things that people are homesick for, but they don’t realize that it’s what they are missing.
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Our family cherishes this daily time as well. We are moving into a new house in a week, and one of the things I look forward to most is enjoying dinners with our family and guests every night at our dining room table
Last year I wrote some mealtime prayers to help us thank God together in a creative way that would honor God and be unique to our family. I had never thought to do that until I read Noel Piper’s “Treasuring God in Our Traditions” (a great book to read on being intentionally Jesus-saturated in our daily and occassional traditions). It’s amazing what even the smallest children will memorize, and I pray that these kinds of things will be vivid in their hearts and minds for a long time to come.
Comment by Kristi (June 22, 2006 @ 5:28 am )
Excellent encouragement to stay the course, even when it takes extra time.
This is one of the areas I mentioned when extolling the lessons I learned from my mother
Comment by Dana (June 22, 2006 @ 9:07 am )
We too try to eat together at least once a day as a family, my husband works wierd shifts and isn’t always home for an evening meal on those days we have our ‘big’ meal at noon and just a light meal while daddy is at work. I have really enjoyed being able to include my school age son at this meal now that we are homeschooling.
My husband and I both grew up in homes where we ate together as families and so I think it is easier for us to do this as it seems normal, but it is so easy to slip into bad habits, thanks for the encouragement to stay the course, even when it hard.
In Him
Shari
Comment by Shari (June 22, 2006 @ 10:29 am )
Wonderful post! I can think of few things more lovely for a child to hear daily than “Come to the table!”
Comment by Carol in Oregon (June 22, 2006 @ 11:16 am )
Just want to say that, even with older kids at home, we still eat dinner together, and have an expectation that it is normal life.
If I were starting over with little kids I might work harder at:
~ having everyone work together at cleaning up. That is, making clean-up part of the meal, rather than a separate, later function.
~ getting up earlier and having breakfast with dad. Double the fun, right?
Comment by Rebecca (June 22, 2006 @ 12:20 pm )
My husband works three 12 hour shifts and one 4 hour shift, so those 12 hours days, we don’t eat with him at all. And the 4hour day, we only miss lunch with him. Otherwise, we always eat together. I’ve never thought that this was a weird or “un”norml thing for familes to do. Aparently it is. The older my girls get (5 and 3), the more they are able to help me. And once my boys get older (20 mths and the other due Tuesday!
), they will help me as well. Some families have only the females do the cooking and the males don’t learn. But with my husband being a chef, that won’t be happening here. Everyone will take turns in the kitchen, both with the fixing and with the cleainging up of a meal.
Jennifer
Comment by Jennifer D (June 22, 2006 @ 2:11 pm )
My second son is now 26 years old and though he doesn’t live with us anymore he is often here for meals. He says one of the best things in the world is to walk into my house and smell supper cooking. I am so glad I have helped to make those memories for our grown children. It was tough sometimes but it was worth wll the work.
Lynn
Comment by lynn (June 22, 2006 @ 2:56 pm )
It’s so funny that you wrote about this
Just this week, I have begun working diligently to make dinner at our house more of an event. It’s called project “civilize the 5 men” and it was hatched to cut down on the burping, standing in chairs, and loud singing at the table. (Does that lady address that kind of stuff in her video?) I bought placemats and cloth napkins and the kids made napkin rings out of wooden beads and wire. All 4 boys have been practicing their manners all week and are very excited to show off for Daddy tonight. (He has been working late and this will be his first night home this week). My 7 year old remembered that tonight was the night and wispered in 8 year old’s ear “we have to show our manners to Daddy today” and 8 year old, in true first born fashion said, “oh,yeah…ALL RIGHT BOYS, GET READY!” and whipped out his cloth napkin and stuck it in his lap. 7 year old whispered (loudly) “not yet!, tonight!” and 8 year old said “oh yeah, NEVER MIND, BOYS!”. Hubby was sitting right there at the table paying bills and didn’t notice a thing so maybe he will still get his surprise tonight.
Comment by tonya (June 22, 2006 @ 3:25 pm )
Oooo! (waving hand) I just got back from an Above Rubies retreat last weekend with Nancy Campbell. Lovely, lovely lady! I wept to hear a Titus Two woman say all the things I’ve been longing to hear from a real, live Titus Two woman. I bought this DVD and we’ll watch it tonight!
Comment by Charlotte (June 22, 2006 @ 4:49 pm )
Homeliving Helper just had a post on the family meal.
This is the link -
http://homeliving.blogspot.com/2006/06/communion-of-dining.html
And this was my brief Anonymous comment there, a link to an article -
“Start a Revolution–Eat Dinner With Your Family”
http://www.albertmohler.com/commentary_print.php?cdate=2005-09-12
————
These are excerpts from articles by British atheist/psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple (Anthony Daniels):
“The Starving Criminal”
“In fact, he told me that he had never once eaten at a table with others in the last 15 years. Eating was for him a solitary vice, something done almost furtively, with no pleasure attached to it and certainly not as a social event. The street was his principal dining room, as well as his trash can: and as far as food was concerned, he was more a hunter-gatherer than a man living in a highly evolved society.
Far from being unique, his story was typical of those that I have heard hundreds—no, thousands—of times…
It is the breakdown of the family structure—a breakdown so complete that mothers do not consider it part of their duty to feed their own children once they have reached the age at which they can forage for themselves in a refrigerator—that promotes modern malnutrition in Britain. Such malnutrition, according to the public health establishment, now affects millions of British households. And it is hardly surprising if young people who have not learned to socialize within the walls of their own homes, who have not learned even the minimal social disciplines required by people who eat together, should be completely antisocial in other respects.
http://www.city-journal.org/html/12_4_oh_to_be.html
“Litter and the A55″
“The old disciplines of social eating have been lost; and I suspect, though of course I cannot prove, that they were very important in the general socialisation of children.
A child would once have had to learn that he must wait till mealtimes to eat. The discipline of mealtimes led to apparently absurd paradoxes: often the child would not be able to eat when he was most hungry, and sometimes he would be required to eat most when he was not hungry. The reason for this was that eating was above all a social activity, and the state of his stomach was therefore not the only thing to be considered in the decision whether or not to eat. In other words, he had to consult something other than his own inclinations of the moment when deciding whether to do something or not.
In large numbers of households now, however, meals, let alone mealtimes, can scarcely be said to exist. The refrigerator and the microwave and the purveyors of snacks and fast foods are the prairies upon which people graze like ruminants. Only their inclination of the moment counts; and frustrations and dissatisfactions often find their comfort in food. Obesity is to our physique what litter is to our roads.”
http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000930.php
Comment by Donna (June 23, 2006 @ 8:52 am )
My husband and I both grew up in homes where we had many (if not all) meals together as a family. Especially dinner. It’s very important to us to have that with our family as well.
We, too, love our dinners together where we can laugh at the five year olds attempts to join in the deeper discussions between my husband and eight year old. We also get to add that as another time the family prays together. We learn lessons at the table (patience when the glasses spill….and generoisty when Mom didn’t make quite as many rolls as the family would have liked!)
I always feel sorry for my peers who have dinner in front of the television or feed the kids early and dad late when he rolls in from work. Or that eat every meal out at McDonald’s ….
We don’t have every meal at our dining room table but I bet we have over 95% of them there. And I wouldn’t change that for anything.
Comment by Bethany (June 23, 2006 @ 10:14 am )
There are so many important lessons to be learned around the dinner table. Primary lessons. When we pray we recognize that God is the provider of all of our needs, starting with the basics–food. We learn to value it and share it. We learn to serve one another. Young children learn to say please and thank you and your welcome at the table.
I’m glad we have the opportunity to eat (at least) three times a day. I’ve found–and I don’t always do this–that if I treat breakfast and lunch like I do dinner, the kids eat better and we have more opportunities to practice being generous and kind.
On another note, the church we are visiting here in Australia has made the dinner table a central part of their Sunday service. At the beginning of the service everyone sits around tables and eats. I love that!
Comment by Leslie (June 24, 2006 @ 8:13 am )
Yes, in a roundabout way.
Donna, thank you for those links. I intend to repost some of it when I have more time.
Kristi, I’ve been meaning to get Noel Piper’s book for awhile. Actually, I want to read both of them. Thanks for bringing it up.
Comment by Amy Scott (June 24, 2006 @ 11:44 am )
Thanks so much for this reviwe. I have the book and was thining about getting the DVD.
Comment by lvg4him (June 26, 2006 @ 4:56 pm )