A Place on the Table: What the {Photograph} Could not Say (Half One)

Last 12 months, I used to be requested to guide a reside session as a part of the United Church’s 40 Days of Engagement on Anti-Racism training and motion program. The topic for my session was viewing A Place on the Table, the {photograph} taken for the United Church’s centennial, by way of an anti-racist lens. For me, the {photograph} was lifted up as a dwelling image of the church’s ongoing dedication to inclusion, justice, and the novel hospitality of Christ.

When I arrived in Loon Lake, British Columbia—the situation the place we gathered to take the picture—I used to be carrying far more than baggage. I had minor ear surgical procedure the day earlier than and had flown throughout the nation from my house in Prince Edward Island feeling drained, sore, nervous, and oddly excited. Something in me knew this gathering was going to form the months, and even years, forward.

The setting greeted me lengthy earlier than the individuals did. The log-cabin lodge, the fog rolling over the lake, the towering timber. It wasn’t simply secluded; it felt curated, like a scene lifted straight from a storybook, virtually suspended from unusual life. There was power within the room as acquainted faces and new ones met once more. I additionally felt the alertness that comes naturally to me in various identity-conscious areas.

At one level, a query about whether or not my ear bandage may sign political allegiance momentarily jolted me out of the dreamlike panorama I had been inhabiting. It jogged my memory that politics sits near the floor in gatherings like these. Still, the general tone was heat, pleasant, and high-spirited.

The first group gathering shocked me greater than something. Instead of watching myself from the surface, I felt myself settling in. There was a way of belonging that got here from the intersection of various identities within the room. I discovered myself leaning in, letting my guard drop a little bit. It felt like a spot the place I may very well be current moderately than interpret myself for others.

Every night we shared our tales. We named why we had come and what we carried.

When it was my flip, I spoke from part of myself that usually will get overshadowed. I lifted up my African descent, my Jamaican heritage, my accent, my migration story—my Blackness. I named the truth that in lots of areas, I’m welcomed for one a part of who I’m—being an out homosexual man— whereas additionally being ignored or erased due to the color of my pores and skin. The group acquired my story with compassion, shock, and real curiosity. I felt actually seen, not for what others anticipated, however for the half I do know myself to be—absolutely Black.

The week additionally pushed me past my consolation zone. There have been moments of pleasure too—breaking right into a dance, dropping to the bottom in sheer laughter. I watched as members of the group tried handstands. I used to be sensible sufficient to drag 4 chairs collectively, lie down, and benefit from the present. The complete room felt lighter. Those moments felt like grace arriving by way of humor.

Later within the week, I used to be requested to put in writing a poem on the spot impressed by a night sharing circle. I wrote “The Journey Worth Taking,” drawing from the power and feelings within the room (it’s obtainable to learn within the Downloads part beneath). I felt affirmed as a poet in a brand new means. I used to be carried by the spirit of the second and proud that I might craft one thing true with out time to analysis or refine. It was a second that confirmed me what we will create once we belief our personal voices.

When the week ended, I left with a deep sense of group and pleasure in what we completed collectively. I additionally left with curiosity, the identical feeling I arrived with.

Looking again now from the vantage level of Black History Month 2026, I discover that the general public dialog surrounding A Place on the Table has leaned closely towards 2S and LGBTQIA+ illustration. That focus just isn’t flawed; it displays a real and crucial starvation for visibility. But additionally it is incomplete.

As we mark Black History Month, I’m reminded that Black presence at tables continues to be too usually perceived as symbolic moderately than structural. My physique in that {photograph} carried greater than my very own particular person story. It carried the load of generations who have been denied seats on the desk, who constructed the tables, and who have been nonetheless informed to attend exterior.

At the start of this journey, the desk held a variety of identities. Diversity of race, tradition, language, incapacity, migration, rural and concrete expertise, era, and sexuality have been all current. The desk was by no means meant to highlight a single story. It was meant to carry many.

My concern just isn’t that queerness is being centered. I reside that identification. My concern is that race, language, accent, and cultural expertise can slide into the background until we talk about them with intention and readability. These identities mattered deeply at Loon Lake. They formed how individuals confirmed up, how tales have been informed, and the way we grew to become a group. They formed me.

If the story that reaches the broader church highlights solely sure identities, then it reshapes the which means of the desk. The desk turns into narrower with out anybody aspiring to slim it. That is the danger of illustration with out reflection.

This reflection might be continued in a second weblog publish subsequent week.

—Rev. Franklyn James, initially from Jamaica, is minister at West River United Church in Cornwall, Prince Edward Island. 

The views contained inside these blogs are private and don’t essentially mirror these of The United Church of Canada.