Practicing hospitality means welcoming visitors and strangers as a holy guest. It means welcoming the Divine in the body of a love one or a stranger. Being a person who practices hospitality means living your life as though every day were an ‘open house’......
dismantling the barriers to welcome in our daily lives and creating a world where people choose to become a friend instead of remaining a stranger.
What barriers have I erected for safety and out of fear that I might consider dismantling in order to practice hospitality during this holiday season?
How can I use what I have to bless others?
What can I cut back on myself so that I have more resources to practice radical hospitality?
“In her book, The Lady in the Palazzo, Marlena De Blasi says, "It's not what's on the table, but who's in the chairs." Don't misunderstand; food and hospitality are intimately related, but sometimes we need to adjust our priorities. Great cooks and not-so-great cooks often share the same problem: pride and ego can get in the way of connecting with others.
And isn't connecting what it's all about?"
I hear these words about “the poor”and brush them into the corners of my mind.
I cannot think about them now
I am too preoccupied
with the choice of hors d’oeuvres for my party
and the color of my new shoes.
I am too anxious
about the impression I make
to decide for diminishing
or to question the givens.
I am too cautious
to risk the highway
that leads away from safe places.
Convenience blankets me,
stifles the clamor of a hungry world.
"When we speak of hospitality we are always addressing issues of inclusion and exclusion. Each of us makes choices about who will and who will not be included in our lives....It is instead a spiritual practice, a way of becoming more human, a way of understanding yourself.
Hospitality is both the answer to modern alienation and injustice and a path to a deeper spirituality."
Father Daniel Homan and Lonni Gollins Pratt in
No comments:
Post a Comment