The region of Castile in northern Spain has a unique and beautiful way to experience deep community. The countryside is littered with bodegas, handmade caves dating back to the time before refrigeration. Some of the bodegas are said to date back even before the birth of Christ. Each autumn, the harvest of grain, vegetables, cheese, and wine are brought to these caves so they can be accessed during the long winter and spring. Legend has it that the farmers would sit in a room built above the cave and inventory the items. This room became known as el contador, or the counting room.

As families built or inherited bodegas, they added these counting rooms, sometimes making a foyer and perhaps a cozy room with a fire place. Soon, people gathered at the contador to share meals around a table and pass the time. As refrigeration techniques improved, the room became more about friendship than about food storage. The room became a "telling room," the place where, on cold winter nights or endless hot summer days, friends and families traded their history and secrets and dreams. If you had something to get off your chest, or if you needed the intimate company of safe friends, you would head for the telling room. On weekends, these conversations among friends could last an entire day and night. In this way, the bodega, with its telling room, became a place of mystical communion between friends.

Possible Preaching Angles: Our hearts long for the kind of community reflected in these telling rooms, a safe place to linger with friends, opening our hearts, living in true intimacy and communion with one another.