Hospitality as Spiritual Practice

When I started my internship as a parish minister many years ago, I was nervous about the many things I would be doing for the first time, but I was most terrified of the social time after services. Oh the agony of standing on the patio trying not to look uncomfortable, hoping someone would talk with me. I decided, nonetheless, that this was my job now. People expected their minister to make them feel welcome, to play the host. I realized that it was important that I take the risk that visitors might leave saying “boy that Darcey was an odd duck” rather than wondering why no one had approached them, why they felt more lonely after coming to worship than before. And so that first day on the patio I screwed up my courage, deputized myself with the nametag reading “Darcey Laine, Intern Minister” and challenged myself to engage as many strangers as I could. I tried to imagine who might welcome that extra effort. Certainly newcomers deserved a warm welcome. Obviously those who had shared some pain or joy during “caring and sharing” might want a chance to talk further. The children and youth of the congregation needed to feel that the ministers of the congregation are their ministers too. And the list went on. Before long there were so many people I wanted to connect with, that I had hardly gotten started each week before the patio cleared out and I was left to turn out the lights and lock the doors. I understood that hospitality is one of the primary gifts of a community, one member to another. And by stepping boldly into the web of relationships as a host, I felt I truly belonged.

Hospitality is seen as an important spiritual practice in just about every religion I know. In his book “The World’s Religions” Huston Smith describes a noble quality of chun tzu. He writes

“Fully adequate, poised, the chun tzu has toward life as a whole the approach of an ideal hostess who is so at home in her surroundings that she is completely realized, and, being so, can turn full attention to putting others at ease…the chun tzu carries these qualities of the ideal host with him through life generally. Armed with a self-respect that generates respect for others, he approaches them wondering not, “What can I get from them” but “What can I do to accommodate them?”

How could a practice of hospitality change us? In order to risk extending ourselves, we must first know that we are at home in this world. I believe this logic is reversible as well; if we can act as a host wherever we go, perhaps it will remind us that this world is in fact our home. Our sense of self grows from the small, isolated individual to a larger Self connected in community.

Last weekend I attended a big family celebration full of people I don’t know, or see only occasionally. Truth be told these things still make me nervous, but practicing hospitality makes it easier. Instead of wondering “what do these people think of me” I wonder “what would help them feel welcome?” This allowed me to put my own ego aside for a moment. By offering an attitude of hospitality to people who’d traveled from far way, folks who knew even fewer people at the gathering than me, I was able to step out of my critical judging mind and into my heart. In those moments when I was centered in compassion I did feel truly at home.

As you move in the world this month, whether you are at a social gathering or at the grocery store, I encourage you to consider one of the oldest and most important spiritual practices- remembering this world is your home, and so making one another feel welcome in this world.