RHYTHMS | PRAYER, PRACTICE, PLACE
Vol 3. Issue 24
Friends,
This week is Thanksgiving, a time when our tables become a place of belonging. This issue includes a Prayer of Thanksgiving, the Practice of Friendsgiving, and a beautiful reflection from our friend Cari Jenkins on the Dining Room Table as a sacred Place.
Our hope is that these rhythms ground your love for both the people and place you encounter this Thanksgiving.
All blessings.
Jared Mackey
P.S. Read our Year End Report for a glimpse of our work in 2025 and the goals we invite you to help us reach in 2026.
PRAYER | Thanksgiving
By Jared Mackey
Father in Heaven,
Holy is Your hospitality.
May Your Kingdom come today,
To our table, our home, and our neighborhood
As it is in Heaven.
Give us this day the gift of enough:
Enough courage to invite,
Enough vulnerability to inquire,
Enough margin to share,
Enough gratitude to see Your goodness,
Enough honesty to share our unmet hopes.
Forgive us when fear enslaves us
From opening our tables to others
And opening our hearts to You.
May we forgive those who’s past and pain
Have kept them absent from our table
And led them away from Your love.
Lead and guide us away from what divides
Our hearts and our homes.
Deepen our trust in Your grace
That is always welcoming the prodigal home.
Deliver us from the evils of illusion and isolation
That keep us hiding
From ourselves, from each other, and from You.
May we experience Your presence this day
As a safe and secure place of peace.
You are the One who welcomes,
You are the One we offer our awe and wonder,
You are One on this day of thanksgiving
We give thanks for every gift in this world.
Amen.
PRACTICE | FRIENDSGIVING
By Jared Mackey
“Friendsgiving is magical mayhem.”
Practice
Select a date with a few friends. Look for a date the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Provide a main dish. Ask guests to bring a side or dessert from their family tradition or culture.
Set up a simple buffet. Have clear places for food, drinks, and desserts.
Provide a few casual and kind details. Provide coloring pages for kids or a brief welcome for new friends.
Friendsgiving is an invitation to a shared meal and a shared sense of belonging. It is a way to enter the holidays with a sense of presence in the present, and a gracious opportunity to set down any heavy expectations of family past or ideal futures. For Alyssa and Andraé Alexander, it has become as much an expression of Thanksgiving as the day itself. Friendsgiving is a generous and gracious invitation to hospitality, food, and friendship.
For Alyssa and Andraé, Friendsgiving began with an idea of hosting a Thanksgiving meal while at a friend’s cabin the week before Thanksgiving. It allowed friends to gather before many of them traveled. That tradition lasted for several years, but as families grew and schedules changed, the practice evolved to an invitation to gather on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. From Alyssa’s perspective, "Hosting Friendsgiving before the holiday sets a tone for the season.” It offers a space to breathe and belong. She shares the truth that many people experience. “The holidays are fraught with tension for some people. Every holiday meal feels like you're holding your breath, waiting for “Uncle Bob” to say something uncouth, and then the whole thing devolves.” She continues, “We host Friendsgiving on a Sunday, there's football in the background. We're eating traditional foods, but there is no tension. People can relax and enjoy the day and each other.” For many, Friendsgiving might hold more of the meaning of Thanksgiving than Thanksgiving.
The practice of Friendsgiving is a gift to those who may not have somewhere to go on Thanksgiving Day itself. “Sharing food is deeply personal and universal,” Alyssa said, “To be left out of shared meals is felt on a cellular level.” Friendsgiving expands the circle of belonging. It is an invitation to a new tradition without the weight of old expectations. It is a ritual shaped by the unique people and place around you.
Alyssa’s experience has taught her a few helpful keys to hosting Friendsgiving. First, Friendsgiving is informal on purpose. Folding tables and paper plates are welcome. The point is presence, not perfection. Because of Andraé’s love of smoked meats and ease, they provide the meat. Friends are invited to bring side dishes or desserts that carry with them a memory from family traditions. Others choose to bring new recipes to express their culinary creativity. She encourages a little planning to create a place for everyone to relax. Arrange a buffet and name where things go: “Sides go on the bar, desserts on this counter, drinks by the coffee maker.” Keeping it casual helps people feel comfortable.
Alyssa acknowledges there is a vulnerability in inviting people into your home. “You never know what people are going to bring—what dish they're going to bring, and what emotional energy about the holiday they're going to bring.” There is courage required in any act of holiday hospitality. For Alyssa, the unknown is adventure, including how many people they can fit in their home. “The bigger it is, the more energy it holds. Friendsgiving is magical mayhem.”
Thank you to Alyssa Alexander for her conversation and contribution to this article. Thank you to Alyssa and Andraé for the way they extend creative expressions of holiday hospitality to their friends and neighbors through their home-based church Integrated Faith.
PLACE | DINING ROOM TABLE
By Cari Jenkins
“I like to think my love for the table was formed by Jesus and Nebraska.”
The dining room table is the center of my home. It holds the constant reminder of the centrality of provision, welcome, and belonging nestled into the presence of God who is with me.
The table holds a significant place in the history of Judeo-Christian thought. In the Old Testament, the table was a place of blessing, a mini tabernacle. A meeting place with God and others, a place where all who gather around are seen as equal. This posture is why Jesus’ freedom to invite anyone to join him at a table was so controversial. When Jesus ate with someone, he was acknowledging that they had a place with him, in the mini tabernacle. This ideology did not go over well with the watching religious world. And, it set a trajectory for the table as a meeting place for all those who follow the way of Jesus.
My dining room table was built by a friend. He had made it as a wedding gift for his bride, and the two ended up being my neighbors after their wedding. When they moved out of the country, they gave this treasured piece to me. It is long, holds 10-12 people, and has story built into its imperfections. I love it! This table is the prominent piece in my home. I have a goal of having 500 people at my table annually for well over a decade. 2020 withstanding, I have met that goal.
I like to think my love for the table was formed by Jesus and Nebraska. I spent my early childhood in Nebraska, where family ate together nightly, often extending invitations to neighbors, friends, teachers, and the co-workers of my parents. The table was a place to host, connect, eat, and be with others. Though my family had little financially, our table was extended generously. The table held no romantic notion; it simply was a place of being and inviting others to be with us. I learned the embodiment of the Old Testament understanding of the table simply by practicing hospitality around a table.
I deeply believe the dining room table is a place of invitation to relationship. And, every Thanksgiving, we have the opportunity to accept or extend the invitation to gather with gratitude. The Thanksgiving Table is a table unlike any other; it comes with all kinds of baggage, hopes, mixed company, and is pregnant with opportunity for great tumult or great blessing.
I believe the very first thing we must do when preparing to gather around this particular table is release our expectations for every person who will be present and to openly welcome each person, right where they are, as they are. The second thing is to let guests know your hope or intention for the time, “I’d love for you to join us, my hope is that we will be able to focus on the good of this last year together. Would you come prepared to share one story of how you experienced good together. It’s been a bit of a wild year, and I want to celebrate and be grateful for the good together,” might be a good way to extend an invitation and set expectations.
Thankfulness is not limited to a table or a particular date, rather it is a posture that is nurtured over time, in the context of relationship. Consider taking some time before Thanksgiving arrives to write a thank you note to each person invited to share this meal together. What are you truly thankful for about them? Inviting guests to a home where they know they are welcomed, as they are, and you are grateful for them, sets the table before any person’s arrival.
And, one truth I’ve learned from both Jesus and Nebraska, is that the table is simply an ordinary piece of furniture made extraordinary by the intention and love with which it’s set, in every host and guest’s heart. The dining room table is a sacred place.
Cari Jenkins is the founder of The Host and The Guest. Through workshops, consulting, table scape building, and products for connection, The Host and The Guest is where hospitality grows.
RESOURCES | ADVENT
SEASONS | RESOURCES
The season of Advent begins Sunday, November 30. There are rhythms, recommended reading, and resources available at sacredplace.co/advent to encourage your love for your neighbors and neighborhood in this season.
More rhythms to root your faith in place.
Sacred Place provides a beautiful bi-weekly publication to share the rhythms of a Prayer, Practice, and Place as simple ways to help cultivate love for our neighbors and neighborhoods.
