When I encountered the writings of Ivan Illich in the early 1990s, I felt an immediate connection with the author. Here was a guy who shared my sense of dis-ease and who was trying to understand how this epoch had come into being. As I studied Illich’s work, I came to believe that he, more than anyone else I knew about, had exposed how “out of whack” the dominant Western ways of living had become, both for our home places and for our souls.

His series of “pamphlets,” as he called them, published in the 1970s drew attention to the “counter-productivity” of modern institutions. Later, he examined critically the assumptions of modern “economics,” which had strayed a long way from the “management of households” as the etymology of the word implies. As a historian, he sought to reveal the origins of these institutions and the unexamined assumptions he called “modern certainties.”

All along, he tried to practice the vocation of friendship symbolized by the “hospitable table” he offered his interlocutors wherever he lived. He hosted symposia where common investigation was accompanied by food and some of the “ordinary but decent wine” a good lawyer had persuaded the IRS was Illich’s major teaching tool and therefore tax deductible. He became a master of the art of conviviality.

In this meditation, I invite you to join me in imagining what it would have been like to sit at Illich’s table, to share food and wine with him, and to participate in the conversations his search for truth inspired.