The Story
The mark is a gate in the medieval Walls of Ávila, a city in Spain's Castile and León region, roughly an hour northwest of Madrid.
In the summer of 2005, I had the privilege of living in Ávila with a host family. The city's medieval walls — built in the 11th century after the Christian reconquest to protect its people from future attacks during the Reconquista — still encircle its historic center today. They were designed to safeguard a community, creating a place where homes, churches, markets, and plazas could flourish together.
I came to love walking through those gates. I learned that the life of a walled city happens not because of the walls, but because of what they make possible: long dinners in family homes, entire evenings in the plaza, conversations that continue long after anyone has finished eating.
A wall sounds like the opposite of gathering until you realize what it was built to do.
Not divide.
Protect.
Protection creates the conditions for belonging.
The gate became my symbol because every meaningful gathering begins the same way:
Someone opens the door.
That is what Reunión is.
An invitation.
An open door.
The beginning of something we create together.
But I learned about gathering long before Spain.
When I was eight, on the hardest day of my young life, my family did what families do. Panamanian. Jamaican. New Orleanian. They came and filled the room around my mother, my two brothers, and me. One of my brothers already knew. The rest of us were hearing the news for the first time.
No one could change what had happened.
Everyone could help hold us.
That was the first lesson, and it has never left me:
A room full of your people can carry what no one can carry alone.
That is what gathering is for.
The lesson was rehearsed every night at my mother's table.
Whatever our schedules looked like, we ate together. And you did not eat and leave. You sat. You talked. You stayed.
Years later, Spain simply gave that practice a name: la sobremesa — the unhurried time after a meal, when the plates may be empty but the conversation is not, and no one reaches for their keys because the table is still doing its work.
That is the feeling every Reunión gathering is designed to create.
Stay as long as you wish.
You are welcome here.
Behind the scenes, my run of show is timed to the minute. That is my responsibility as your host. But you should never feel the clock.
The schedule belongs to me.
The table belongs to you.
Reunión lives at the intersection of that inheritance and two books I return to often.
From The Art of Gathering, I carry the belief that gatherings are never really about the food, the flowers, or the venue. They are about purpose. A host's real work is creating the conditions for people to connect with generosity and intention.
From Black Pearls, I am reminded that some of our greatest ideas were never meant to live only on a page. They were first spoken in sermons, speeches, lectures, and conversations — in rooms where people gathered to challenge one another, celebrate one another, grieve together, and imagine something better.
Before they became essays, they were gatherings.
That philosophy shapes every room I create.