R.I.P., "At Table" (Or, "Things That Are No Fun Without Crosby")
One of the first casualties of Crosby's Camino has bitten the dust - for now. On Tuesday, The Rector sent out an e-mail giving everyone notice that Intersection would have its last next At Table in two weeks. "At Table" was originally meant to be a meal that was intertwined into the Intersection Mass. Everything was said or prayed while literally seated at a long row of dinner tables that would almost take the shape of a cross as one went down the center aisle and met a perpendicular row that stretched across the well of the sanctuary. Our last one was back in the early Spring and was the occasion for a lot of drama around who would do it and how it would be executed. One of the things The Rector cautioned against this time around was the incurring of out-of-pocket expenses. We would make do strictly with food that people brought on their own from home.
It was so much more fun being in the kitchen with Crosby and Huggy Bear while they prepared a back-up meal consisting of spaghetti and meat sauce than it was to coordinate who was going to bring a vegetable dish and who was going to bring a meat dish and who was going to bring dessert. It wasn't the expense that was so much the issue. It was that the "back-up" meal very quickly became the centerpiece of the entire occasion, thereby contradicting its purpose.
Still, I have no doubt that had Crosby been around, he would have brainstormed a way to pull things together that would have made everybody (including the guys) want to pitch in. Instead, I get the impression that what The Rector received back was a mailbox full of reasons why no one wanted to do it. There was no public dressing down of The Rector this time around, but I could almost hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth that must have taken place over the space of 24 hours. The result: another e-mail this morning saying At Table had been cancelled.
It was so much more fun being in the kitchen with Crosby and Huggy Bear while they prepared a back-up meal consisting of spaghetti and meat sauce than it was to coordinate who was going to bring a vegetable dish and who was going to bring a meat dish and who was going to bring dessert. It wasn't the expense that was so much the issue. It was that the "back-up" meal very quickly became the centerpiece of the entire occasion, thereby contradicting its purpose.
Still, I have no doubt that had Crosby been around, he would have brainstormed a way to pull things together that would have made everybody (including the guys) want to pitch in. Instead, I get the impression that what The Rector received back was a mailbox full of reasons why no one wanted to do it. There was no public dressing down of The Rector this time around, but I could almost hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth that must have taken place over the space of 24 hours. The result: another e-mail this morning saying At Table had been cancelled.