BreadBreakers Lunch: Travel as a Lens to Different Worldviews

In a time of division and isolation, come be part of the community that's rebuilding the town square, one table at a time.

In BreadBreakers, we use the common space of the dining table to have conversations where neighbors can hear, be heard, and know one another. If you're hungry for good discourse and deeper community, join us for lunch and a conversation on World’s Diversity on the Table: How Traveling Helps Us Understand Different Worldviews.

Here’s how it works: For just two hours, a table of people set aside the need to "convince" or "win" and instead focus on sharing, listening, and connecting. Guided by an experienced table host, we'll tell our stories, try to understand each other, and practice being in community with those with different views or backgrounds. In a world of disconnection and surface-level interaction, we'll carve out some time just to be humans together and have a meaningful conversation.

We'll be meeting at Wegmans, Upper Level Dining Area - look for your hosts, Albert and Todd. This will be a "bring your own lunch" gathering (or "buy your own", from Wegmans' great self-serve cafe!)

BreadBreakers, an initiative by Restoration United Methodist Church in Reston, VA, is a religiously inclusive community where all beliefs, faiths, and stripes are welcomed. Our leadership and volunteer team includes people who attend Restoration and people who don't.

So - why talk about travel? Here's a word from this event's lead host, Albert:

Travel is more than movement across geography, visiting cities, viewing landscapes and counting distances. Travel is also an inward movement: an encounter with difference that rearranges how we see the world and ourselves.

When we travel, we are exposed to other ways of organizing life: different assumptions about time and values, family and belonging, work and dignity, authority and trust, hospitality and faith. Even brief encounters can unsettle what we once considered “normal” or self-evident, sometimes gently, sometimes harshly, not too much differently as we may encounter on the other side of our divided country.

Some of us travel seeking beauty, rest, or novelty. Others travel to escape the noise, to understand, to remember, or simply to feel less confined by familiar routines. And when we return, we often carry more than we expected: stories, questions, discomforts, changed perceptions, or a renewed sense of home. The focus of our discussion is not destinations or expertise. It is about meaning. How encounters with different worldviews leave traces in us—and how those traces shape the way we interpret our own world once we return.

Each experience is partial, each perspective incomplete, and yet, together, we can see more of the whole. Shared at the table, such diversity becomes something lived rather than abstract.

This conversation shall prompt us to reflect on two simple questions:

1. What do we look for when we travel to other places and cultures?
2. And what do we bring back—beyond souvenirs and photographs?

We look forward to breaking bread and stories with you.