Gathering around an open table - A reflection on Body, Mind, Spirit by OTN Co-Chair Sarah Hobbs

FEBRUARY is LGBT+ History Month, an annual celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans & non-binary history. This year’s theme is Body, Mind, Spirit - We asked our Patrons and Trustees to share their thoughts on this theme. Our Co-Chair Sarah Hobbs reflects on what it means to be an ‘open table’.

Sarah Hobbs is the Managing Director of a consultancy which supports large organisations to identify and release the talents of their employees. She is an experienced conference speaker and Zoom webinar host with a passion for helping people to realise their potential. In 2017, she publicly came out as a transgender woman and began her transition process. In 2019 she co-facilitated an LGBT+ Christian retreat weekend at St Beuno’s Spirituality Centre in north Wales. In 2020 she became a Co-Chair of the Open Table Network.

WATCH Sarah’s video intro to the Open Table Network [2.5 mins}

Communion - an open table - is part of the DNA of the Open Table Network. 

I feel a deep affinity with this network because the act of Communion has always been special to me.  As a sacrament, it always brings me such closeness to God. I went for several years when I was younger, where I would take bread and wine most days on my own because it brought me such peace and reconciliation with God, often against a turbulent, profound sense of disconnect when I would be in the midst of grappling with yet another bout of gender dysphoria.

After I transitioned, I joined a new church. When I started there, Communion was the thing that made me feel like I had found the right place to be. If I’m honest, by background (and musical inclination), I’m a happy clappy Charismatic. Born in the 1970s, growing up in the 1980s and falling in love with the Spice Girls in 1996, pop music has a lot to answer for!

The music at my new church is very beautiful and accomplished. It’s there that I’ve learnt to appreciate choral music, liturgy, hymns and hushed tones, though I’m not sure I’ll ever love it. But the first time I took communion there, I was blown away! The sacredness and reverence with which it was held, brought me a taste of the presence of God that I’d not experienced for a very long time. It made me realise that everything else about worship I hold dear - all of the chirpy choruses and spontaneous praying to a melodic riff - was not nearly as important as I thought. What brought me into unity with my fellow church members, who have a very different church experience compared to me, was sharing time together around the Lord’s Table.

For me, this idea is the most important metaphor for our amazing Open Table Network - and what differentiates us as a group. When the first community met in Liverpool in 2008, someone asked ‘Will it be “open table?”’.  One of the original members, who is now our Network Co-ordinator, asked what that meant.  She explained, “It’s where Communion is open to anyone.  Everyone is welcome to join in, wherever they are on their journey of faith.  It’s a place where you come as you are, and everyone is welcome, without any judgement about belonging or worthiness.’  In that moment, it became the cornerstone of each Open Table community, and is still the basis of all our communities today.

Last week, we ran a Q&A session with one of our patrons, Padraig O Tuama. We asked him what ‘open table’ means for him.  He eloquently discussed the idea of the table as being somewhere people come together to eat, to talk, to reconcile and to laugh. But also it is a place where, in sitting behind it, with your legs folded underneath, you can feel cocooned, safe and somewhat protected.

Those wise words summed up what our network seeks to accomplish. We know that many places in the church are not welcoming for LGBTQIA+ people. The Open Table Network is the counterfoil to this injustice. We want to create and hold a space where people can come together and be reconciled, even if they have nothing in common with each other, except that they are somewhere on the LBGTQIA+ spectrum.

We seek to be a place where anyone can come together with others around a table to experience God together, without exception or exclusion, where everyone is more than welcome.

Hear members of the first Open Table community in Liverpool share how Open Table began and what it means to them. We made this video to help us share our story as we became a network [3 mins].