A dozen and a half people gather in a church basement on a Saturday night to talk about wonder and the virtue of noticing. At first glance, they have little in common: an assorted collection of university students, professors, and members of the wider community, there is no obvious characteristic uniting them across generations, church backgrounds, fields of study, and other differences.
As everyone finds their way to plastic folding chairs at round tables, I call their attention to these dissimilarities. For the conversation we are about to have, I explain, differing perspectives and even disagreements are welcome—“a feature, not a bug,” as they say. I encourage the group to share when they do not see eye to eye and ask respectful questions to try to understand one another’s perspective. My hope is that by the end of the night, each of us will have seen the world through someone else’s eyes, even if we continue to disagree.
Students, professors, and local community members gather to discuss a Comment essay.
These dinner discussions, which take place several times a semester, embody all three elements of Pascal Study Center’s guiding vision: setting tables, building bridges, and planting trees. Setting tables refers not only to the abundant food that participants enjoy but also to the Comment essays that form the focus of the conversation. Bridge-building happens as participants receive the opportunity to listen to and learn from one another across various differences. And planting trees captures Pascal Study Center’s commitment to the importance of slow growth: no one’s life is expected to change in a single evening, but over time the conversations do bear fruit in the participants’ lives as they grow in love for God and neighbour.
Pascal Study Center, a member of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers, was formed as an outreach of Urbana Theological Seminary to the community of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. In addition to dinner discussions (a version of Comment Suppers), Pascal Study Center also hosts book studies for university students, summer novel discussions, and more. Through all its events, Pascal Study Center draws people together to fill their bellies with good food and their minds with thoughtful conversation. The essays and discussion questions provided by Comment are an essential component of this work.
