The Practical Host

Hospitality can be a theological concept, an attitude, an experience.  It can also be a spiritual practice.  The Editorial Board, with the Synod Assembly theme in mind, has, over the course of a few months, collected random thoughts about Hospitality as Spiritual Practice. We offer them for your consideration and thought.          

• Hospitality and hostility are both derived from the same word root — but they couldn't be more different. Whereas hospitality is about welcoming all, hostility thrives on insider/outsider conflicts.
• The hunger for true religious community, for connection and commitment, is pervasive in our time. We are called to feed the spiritually hungry and to offer a home to the religiously homeless. And in the process, we are enriched in spirit.
• When we welcome what is uncomfortable, we grow.
• The best reason to reach out isn't to help another person; it is to make ourselves whole.
• Reaching out frees us from the prison of the self. Reaching out with love frees us from individualism and narcissism.
• Those who are naturally extroverted, or who enjoy conversing and learning from others, will find hospitality practice attractive. The struggle will not be so much the opening of the heart, but the closing of the mouth in order to hear the soft longings trying to be spoken from another’s soul.
• Those who are more interior and introverted may bristle at even the thought of engaging in this practice. The struggle for them will not be opening the heart or closing the mouth. It will be offering hospitality to those they don’t know or those with whom they have no comfortable relationship.
• Like any practice that pushes us in new directions, whether it be jogging around a track, or hanging around an unfamiliar cafe in order to meet new people, the most important step is the first one. If we simply remember how we felt when someone opened their heart to us, it won’t be so difficult to do it for someone else.
• As I approach welcoming as an expression of who I am, I realize that as I greet you, I also greet myself. I am not doing this act for your sake only. In fact I should be grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to move deeper into my life, to align my actions with my deepest values, and to encounter the mystery of life in this moment. In true hospitality, we are both giving and receiving at the same time. The traditional hierarchy dissolves into something more egalitarian, and the “duty” becomes an opportunity.
• In choosing this spiritual practice of hospitality, I live out the longing of my heart—creating a new reality for myself and the people around me. I reclaim my power to create the kind of world I want to live in. Gandhi was speaking of this kind of radical act when he said, “We must be the change we seek.”