Description
The Long Table is a place where you’ll have the chance to cross paths with others who have been part of a series with a school called HOME and decided that they want to stick around. Gathering in this way, our hope is that we can deepen into community, becoming a place where it’s safe to show up honestly, and where we glimpse unexpected possibilities together.
The details
We hold a live monthly gathering over Zoom on the First Monday of each month, with two sessions at 10.00-12.00 and 20.15-22.15 (Swedish time). These tend to have a theme, often with one or two members sharing stories, questions or work-in-progress that leads us into a wider discussion. We often have break-out sessions during the calls.
We also have a weekly ‘Heartbeat’ session – a one-hour call with no fixed agenda, no recording, just a chance to show up and spend time with other members. These take place on Tuesdays at 14.30 Swedish time.
Some of us show up regularly, others drop in now and then, or follow along on the recordings of the First Monday sessions.
The Long Table also exists as an online network (using Mighty Networks) where we can make posts, start conversations and chat with each other in between the live sessions.
How to join
Membership of The Long Table is by invitation and there is no fixed membership fee. Rather, we invite you to set up a monthly donation.
Choose an amount that feels significant, but not uncomfortable. If it helps, then think of an amount that would feel natural to spend on an evening once a month with a group of friends, a night at a local pub or a place you go to eat.
There’s no right amount and no minimum. If your circumstances change, you can vary your contribution. And if you’re not in a position to set up a financial donation right now, just let us know, because we don’t want this to be a barrier to anyone joining us.
Your donations make it possible for us to dedicate time to the work of supporting the community that is growing around this school.
Want to know a bit more?
Like anything that has life in it, there’s a process of unfolding here, so we’ll learn more about how to hold this space as we go along. But based on the experience of our first year and a half, here’s how things seem to work.
On the monthly live sessions, we start by sharing news, including a round of ‘headlines’ in which everyone has a moment to offer something – large or small – that has been going on in their life since the last call.
Most months, we’ll have a theme with one or two members of the group sharing stories, speaking about a project they are working on or a question they are sitting with. The emphasis is on sharing work-in-progress, talking about what we’ve learned along the way, and seeing where the discussion takes us.
In the second half of the session, we’ll generally break into smaller groups for half an hour or so, then gather again for some final conversation.
The parts of the call where we are all together will be available afterwards as a video or audio download, so on months when you’re unable to join us, you can still catch up on those conversations.
The morning sessions will generally be hosted by Dougald, while the evening sessions are hosted by Dougald and Anna together, supported by other members of the HOME team.
There’s lots more going on, beside the monthly First Monday calls – we’ve had groups starting up around climate fiction, ‘the meaning crisis’, and a Hospicing Modernity reading group – and increasingly, we hear from members who are visiting each other or meeting up face-to-face in their corner of the world.
No doubt all of this will continue to branch in directions we can’t yet see, as we pay attention to where the life in this fellowship is moving.