ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As a kid, one of my favorite stories was the one about stone soup. You

remember it. Travelers on a long journey stop in a village. They have
nothing but a hunger in their bellies and a good idea. It wasn’t just food
they were hungry for, it was a desire to create community. What if all the
very different people who live there could eat a meal together? At first,
they got some pushback to their idea. I think I know why. Perhaps some
people in the village had been raised to think food was scarce and they
should hang on to what they had. How could everybody actually be fed?
Others may have had disagreements with some of the villagers in the past
or didn’t understand why everybody needed to be invited. Can’t we just
invite the popular ones or the ones who are easy to get along with? Be
practical. How could we all sit at the same table together? Wouldn’t
there be arguments? Still others, I imagine, had burned the toast more
than once when they had tried to host a big meal. Or maybe when it was
tried in the past no one showed, so why try again? Or maybe instead of a
good meal, people thought they would get pressured to buy timeshares at
a rundown resort.
Unafraid of the voices who disagreed with them and undeterred by all
the reasons not to try, these travelers set up a pot in the middle of town.
They invited anyone who believed in the idea to throw in a couple of
carrots, some celery, onions—whatever they could offer. In the end,
everybody was fed, but they got a lot more than food that day; they got
each other.
Writing this book has been a feast, and there have been a lot of people
who have thrown in the pot what they had. They didn’t come with
radishes and tomatoes; they came with love. The Cordon Bleu couldn’t
have set a more beautiful table. These pages contain the stories of some