February, 2012 ~ Hospitality

Spiritual Exercise:
When we think about the responsibilities associated with hospitality we often think of it from the host’s perspective (such as what the host should do to make their guest comfortable.) But there is also an etiquette to being a guest. For example, some people believe a guest should bring a gift for the host, or assist with chores such as dishes. Other people do not think these things are necessary. Sometimes these expectations are influenced by a person’s cultural identity such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Other times expectations vary widely within the same cultural group or even within the same family.

When you have guests in your home, what are your expectations of your guests? What about when you are a guest in another person’s home. Do you have certain expectations of yourself? How do you know what other people expect of you? Have you ever experienced a time (either as host or guest) when your expectations did not align with the other person’s? How did you know? What happened?

Exercise: Ask several friends or family members what expectations they have of themselves or others as a guest and what influences led them to form these expectations. How do their expectations differ from your own?

Chalice Lighting
Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our own fears and to open our houses to the stranger, with the intuition that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler. Hospitality makes anxious disciples into powerful witnesses, makes suspicious owners into generous givers, and makes close-minded sectarians into interested recipients of new ideas and insights. ~ Henri J. M. Nouwen in Ministry and Spirituality

Check In
Share briefly what’s been on your mind lately or your highs and lows since we last met.

Reading
Go around the circle and have each person read one stanza.
Today, let us be that stable,
           let us be the place
           that welcomes at last
           the weary and rejected,
           the pilgrim stranger,
           the coming life.

Let not the frigid winds that pierce
          our inadequate walls,
          or our mildewed hay,
          or the fetic leavings of our cattle
          shame us from our beckoning.

Let our outstretched arms
          be a manger
          so that the infant hope,
          swaddled in love,
          may have a place to lie.

Let a cold beacon
         shine down upon us
         from a solstice sky
         to guide to us
         the seekers who will come.

Let the lowly shepherd
         and all who abide
         in the fields of their labors
         lay down their crooks
         and come to us.

Let the seers, sages, and potentates
         of every land
         traverse the shifting dunes,
         the rushing rivers,
         and the stony crags
         to seek our rude frame.

Let herdsmen and high lords
         kneel together
         under our thatched roof
         to lay their gifts
         before Wonder.

Today, let us be that stable.
~From “We Build Temples in the Heart: side by side we gather”  by Patrick Murfin    

Sitting in Silence to reflect on reading.

Questions for Contemplation
Please read aloud the Spiritual Exercise (on the front cover)

Please read the questions below to help promote contemplation about Hospitality:

• Did you do the spiritual exercise?  What are your expectations of being a good guest and a good host?  Did your expectations match up to the other people you polled for this exercise?
• What experiences have you been a part of where you received hospitality and how did that make you feel?  Was there an experience that really stands out and what made that experience special?
• Some people find it difficult to accept the hospitality of others. Are you one of these people? Why?
• Do our expectations get in the way of making the meaningful connections that can/should come with gathering together?
• How does your socioeconomic status, ethnicity, race, disabilities, or sexuality influence your expectations of yourself or others as guests? Do any of these things change the dynamics and make it harder to be welcomed as guests?

Sitting in Silence
Let us pause for a moment to gather our thoughts about the topic of Hospitality.

Sharing/Deep Listening
Please share your thoughts on the topic of Hospitality.

Reflection This is a time to respond briefly to something another person said or to relate additional thoughts that may have occurred as others shared.

Singing
The Welcome Table, #407 in Singing the Living Tradition

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table.
We’re gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days, hallelujah!
We’re gonna sit at the welcome table, gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

All kinds of people around that table.
All kinds of people around that table one of these days, hallelujah!
All kinds of people around that table, gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

No fancy style at the welcome table.
No fancy style at the welcome table one of these days, hallelujah!
No fancy style at the welcome table, gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

Extinguishing the Chalice
Hospitality is essential to spiritual practice.
It reminds you that you are part of a greater whole....
Putting others first puts you in the midst of life
without the illusion of being the center of life.
~Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro

Additional Resources Related to Hospitality

 Organizations that foster hospitality through accommodation exchanges:

Couch Surfing:  Couch Surfing International Inc. is a corporation based in San Francisco that offers its users hospitality exchange and social networking services.

Hospitality Club:  Hospitality Club is an international, Internet-based hospitality service of appr. 300,000 members in 226 countries.  Its members coordinate accommodation and other services, such as guiding or regaling travelers.

Servas Open Doors:  Servas Open Doors is an international, non-governmental, interracial hospitality association present in over 125 countries and run mostly by volunteers. Founded in 1949 by Bob Luitweiler and his friends as a peace movement, Servas International is a non-profit, worldwide, cooperative, cultural exchange network bringing people together to build understanding, tolerance, mutual-respect, and world peace. Like other hospitality organizations, it promotes world peace by encouraging individual person-to-person contacts.

Hospitality through volunteering:

Interfaith Hospitality Network of Northwest Philadelphia (NPIHN):   NPIHN has moved 275 families—745 individuals— from homelessness to stability. The program provides assessment and referrals, emergency housing, supportive service and transitional housing. NPIHN offers a safe and child-friendly alternative to more chaotic public shelter settings, allowing families to remain intact.

Quotes:

“...the real challenge for us, the spiritual heavy lifting, comes in dealing with people who appear to be different. It is easy to be hospitable to someone who is a lot like us. It is people who are different that test our spiritual development – and who help us develop spiritually…You and I need to practice being open to people who might make us uncomfortable: people who come from a different ethnic group, people a lot older or younger, people who are gay, or straight, or conservative, or believe crazy things, or are mentally ill. When we welcome what is uncomfortable, we grow. When we open our hearts to those who seem strange at first, you and I come to understand what it means to be human.”           ~Peter Morales in Religious Hospitality

Hospitality is making your guests feel at home, even if you wish they were.  ~Author Unknown

“What do I mean "open to God"? I mean... a courageous and confident hospitality expressed in all directions.... I mean an openness which is in the deepest sense a creative and dynamic receptivity — the ability to receive, to accept, to become.”      ~Samuel H. Miller in Man the Believer

YouTube videos of the song, The Welcome Table

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNoBvVIGnD4
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG-YUbSHPtQ&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wxljWncd8k&feature=related