Hospitality Is Inconvenient

To embrace the worth in the other, even when their actions don’t meet our needs, is a radical notion. It’s the kind of idea that could change the world. In fact, it might change not only the world, but your world. It might change your world into one in which you don't have to be smart or witty, deep or cultured, beautiful, young, healthy, enlightened, or handy with a glue gun. All you have to do is open the window of your heart and let the outer light in -- and let the inner light out. In that light, you can see and be seen; love and be loved. It is revolutionary, risky, and world-rattling.

Radical hospitality isn't safe or cozy. Commitment to radical hospitality is challenging. Take the story of Tanya and Tracey Thornbury of Montevido, Minnesota. When Hurricane Katrina slammed New Orleans in August 2005, the Thornburys were among many Americans who opened their hearts, felt it was their duty to do something to help. Over the Internet they made an offer to open their home to hurricane refugees and were put in touch with Nicole Singleton, an impoverished 33-year-old single mother of six children, ranging from age 3 to 16, and Nicole’s mother, Dot. The Thornburys, with three children of their own, welcomed Nicole and her children into their home. Tanya Thornbury bought Nicole a bathrobe, pajamas, sandals, helped her find a fob, offered to help make financial decisions about the federal aid. The Thornburys accepted the doubling of their electricity costs and tripling of the natural gas bill.

There were problems. Nicole’s mother, Dot, refused to live by the rules of the house, allowed her grandchildren to watch violent, inappropriate movies in the presence of the Thornbury kids. The guests wanted to download rap and hip-hop music on the internet, and Tanya said no. Nicole had a boyfriend just released from prison that she was surreptitiously corresponding with – and she revealed to him her new address, which made the Thornburys nervous. Tensions and quarrels began.

Six weeks after it began, the merger was over when the Singleton family moved to a donated house in Minneapolis. From the Thornburys’ perspective, they felt keenly the sting of ingratitude. Tracey Thornbury vowed, “I won’t help anyone again for the rest of my life.” (from Robert Emmons, Thanks!)

Sometimes gifts bring joy, at other times they come with pride, and, the gifts can evoke envy, jealousy, and thus greed, and even hatred. Receiving a gift can place one in a position of inferiority. If a recipient believes that a motive for a gift is to make the giver feel generous and munificent or that the gift was intended to put him in his place, resentment will be more likely than gratitude.

Hospitality requires our humility – and it also requires knowing our limits. I’m not asking you to take strangers into your individual homes – not right away. Warm up the hospitality muscles by welcoming them more graciously into this, our collective home. Even if they are different from us. Even though, If we were to make them feel at home, they might, you know, actually, feel at home. And stay.

We would have to change to be hospitable – to meet their comfort needs. I might have to preach differently. They might like different music. We might have to involve an electric guitar more than once a year. Or maybe instruments I like even less than electric guitars. They might have different ideas about child-rearing. It might call us out to social justice projects that aren’t very convenient in our busy lives. It’ll take our time.

Hospitality is inconvenient. Transformation is always inconvenient to the interests of the person that you were. It’s also what we’re here for. Hospitality is job one. This being human is a guest house.

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This is part 5 of 5 of "Radical Hospitality"
Previous: Part 4: "The Question at the Center of Your Life"
Beginning: Part 1: "William Ellery Channing's Radical Hospitality"

The Question at the Center of Your Life

Our message to visitors, first-time or any-time, is: We belong to you. Maybe you only need us for one day, one hour. Or maybe for a couple weeks. Or maybe for the rest of your life. Doesn’t matter. We belong to you.

One way of putting that is to say, the church is not ours, it is God’s. Some of us have a hard time being hospitable to that sort of language – the possibilities of a charitable naturalistic interpretation elude some of us – and I wouldn’t be a very good host if I insisted on that language. I don’t. We can say instead that we are not here for our own self-interests. There is something beyond, or deeper, or higher, or wider, than gratification of our own passing impulses. There is a love not encapsulated within our own tastes and pleasures, and we are here to serve love.

The congregation belongs not its members but to the family of belonging in which we members aspire to be nurturing stewards.

In a manner of speaking, it is a fee for service deal after all -- only, the service we're talking about is not the service you get. It's the service you give, the service we give which your financial contribution helps enable this congregation to offer to others.

I have said that the members belong to the visitors. I have to acknowledge, though, that we haven't always been as hospitable as we could be. To get ourselves into that welcoming state of being requires making time, making space, slowing down, and listening to one another. Listening is a healing art. There are books you can read, seminars and trainings you can go to, skills to build for the practice of the healing art of listening. And they’re great. For right now, though, I just want to ask you simply breathe into those words for a moment.

Listening is a healing art.

Do you feel the opening, the spaciousness that comes from that orientation? Go to the need, go to the other, the stranger, the visitor, the guest, ask, “what happened?” – or just “how are you?” “What is your quest?” – and listen. That’s giving the gift of hospitality.

The stranger helps us discover our favorite lies. We might learn that we are fearful primates, and that we don’t even really like people, or even ourselves. Hospitality to others helps make ourselves whole, free from the self-preoccupation and narcissism that flesh is heir to.

Hospitality then is to change the deepest parts of ourselves, to ask, “May I know you better and break down my judgment and categorization of you so that my tight little heart stretches a bit?”

In the stretching we make room for the deep longing of our hearts, to build and live in a world where no one is excluded and no tear goes unnoticed. A heart that remains open to the suffering of others might just lead to some unexpected dinner and houseguests.

The risk is that you might get taken advantage of. Or you might be unwittingly facilitating someone’s self-destruction: there’s a time for offering someone a beer, and a time refusing it, and we don’t always know which is which. We risk getting it wrong.

I'm asking you to imagine that at the center of your life is the question, “What does this guest need?” I'm asking Unitarian Universalist congregations to put that question at the center of congregational life. "What does this guest need?" Putting that question at the center doesn’t mean we will always know the right answer to that question. But to live in the space of that question – always having our radar up for where the need is, and going toward the need we discern – is a life of healing. The payback is the growing, softening heart.

The risks are worth it. Deep down, we humans don’t crave safety. What we ache for is acceptance, and acknowledgment of our worth. Therefore, embrace others as worthy guests, even if they don’t meet our needs or scare us.

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This is part 4 of 5 of "Radical Hospitality"
Next: Part 5: "Hospitality Is Inconvient"
Previous: Part 3: "We Belong to Those Who Need Us"
Beginning: Part 1: "William Ellery Channing's Radical Hospitality"

We Belong to Those Who Need Us

"Radical hospitality" means hospitality that goes to the root, hospitality that transforms everything we do, hospitality as Job One -- and as the foundation of every other job.

The radical goes beyond social norms. Radical hospitality goes beyond social norms to love others into the family of belonging.

Radical hospitality is a spiritual practice, and spiritual practices need a group. Like prayer or meditation, a true practice includes doing it by yourself, and also doing it with others. Your individual work to be hospitable supports and strengthens our collective, congregational practice of hospitality, and the shared collective practice supports and strengthens the individual hospitality you carry with you out into all aspects of your life. My Job One – what I believe is your Job One – is also our Job One. Every time we gather in these walls, we gather to practice, to teach by example and to learn, the gentle art of hospitality.

If you are brand new to Unitarian Universalism, bring your hospitality. If you have been a member of your UU congregation for forty years, you have a special responsibility to demonstrate hospitality for the newer folk.

Radical hospitality is not coffee and donuts. It is not a greeter at the door. It is an orientation of our being that sees everyone as a valued guest.

In Luke 14, Jesus says: when we are to have a dinner, do not invite your friends or the rich folk. Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. We are here to serve.

I was at a talk once by Sharon Salzberg. She's a spiritual leader and teacher who, in the course of her training and travels, has had occasion to spend a fair amount of time with the Dalai Lama. They’ve gotten to know each other. She spoke of how the Dalai Lama seems to have an almost-magical radar for suffering – and he goes to it. Once, she said, she had had an accident and broken her leg, and was attending an event on crutches and cast. She reported that the room was full of a hundred or two people gnoshing and talking. The Dalai Lama entered, paused just a moment, then made his way straight to her. He was drawn as if by a magnet to wherever the need for care was greatest. So with a room full of various dignitaries and spiritual leaders, he went right to where the injury was. He holds her in the embrace of his gentle attention, and said, “What happened?”

Hospitality is responding to the need: it can start with seeing that coffee cup needs refilling. In its radical form, hospitality goes to the greatest needs. So Jesus, being the radical he was, told us that it’s not about tending to your friends, tending to the wealthy who can help you get or remain wealthy. It’s about the the poor, the crippled, the blind, the hurt, the outcast.

Go to the need. Go to be with it in care. Love the stranger into the family of belonging.

This is a radically anti-consumerist approach to congregational life. On the consumerist model, the members of a congregation are essentially customers. They pay a percentage of their income – ten percent or so – and get a product, a service, in return. They get to see a nice show on Sunday morning, nice classes for the kids, a minister to talk to when you’re troubled. Fee for service.

The radical hospitality perspective is completely opposite. The building and grounds might legally belong to the membership, but spiritually a congregation belongs not to its present members. Legal ownership is not really ownership -- it just means "have assumed responsibility for the stewardship of the institution." The spiritual truth -- the heart-truth -- is that a radically hospitable congregation belongs to the people who need it. Its true owners are the ones who aren’t members – not yet, and maybe never will be. It belongs to those who need it.

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This is part 3 of 5 of "Radical Hospitality"
Next: Part 4: "The Question at the Center of Your Life"
Previous: Part 2: "Being Human is a Guest House"
Beginning: Part 1: "William Ellery Channing's Radical Hospitality"

Being Human is a Guest House

This being human is a guest house. I love that line. It’s from the 13th-century Persian Sufi Muslim poet Jalal ad-Din Rumi. Here's his poem, as translated by Coleman Barks:

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Have you ever thought it might be fun to be the proprietor of a cute little Bed and Breakfast place, maybe out in the country? Rumi is telling us: we are. Visitors come. Our job – our only job – is to be a good host. At any given time, wherever you are, the space around you is a house. You’re the host for whatever enters yours space. Some of the visitors are pleasant – charming even. Others might seem obnoxious.

Rumi’s examples are feelings: Be welcoming and hospitable when joy arrives. I don’t always do that. How about you? I’m too busy to pay her any attention. Or I’m so distracted I don’t notice her in the distance headed my direction, and I don't unlock the door, turn on the vacancy sign, and get some cookies in the oven with a wafting aroma to entice her in. So all I get is a glance at my closed front door as she passes by. Or she does come into the parlor, but I don’t relax and enjoy my ebullient guest: I don’t en-joy. Maybe I think my house – my life, my being – is too shabby an accommodation for such an exalted guest. If I subtly or secretly believe I don’t deserve a grand visitor, I probably won’t be very good at making her feel comfortable.

Be welcoming and hospitable when sadness arrives. I don’t always do that, either. You? I don’t want him moping around the place in his drab gray overcoat, out of season and out of fashion. I offer coffee – whatever stimulant is at hand – and I fish for a compliment: “How is that coffee?” I ask.
He says, “meh.”
I don’t need this. “Maybe you’d be more comfortable at an accommodation down the road,” I say.

Or anger comes knocking. When anger comes for a visit, I find it hard to maintain a good host's balance. A good host is interested and engaged, but not too interested -- attentive while also self-defined, comfortable in his own skin, nonanxious. Anger storms in the door, marches over to the thermostat and turns up the heat. I might try ignoring her -- pretending that it's not getting hot. If another guest were to ask, "Is it getting hot in here?" I'd say “No, not at all. I’m not hot.” That's not being attentive to the reality.

Or, alternatively, I might try indulging her. If she asks to change the soft background music to some raucous station, I say "Fine." If she then asks to turn the volume way up, I say "Yes, yes." I join her is some arm-waving, head-banging dance of wrath. You know that dance? That's not being self-defined and nonanxious.

Good hosts know not to ignore the spoiled children guests, and know not to indulge them either.

This being human is a guest house. The essential skill – the one skill that sums up everything important in life – is hospitality: the skill of knowing how to be attentive and interested and engaged while also not indulging. It’s being a nonanxious presence: Fully present, yet without taking on the anxiety or reactivity of your guest. Nonanxious, yet without being detached and withdrawn.

Often, we are neither nonanxious nor present. There are two main strategies for this. One is detachment. This is my usual mode of inhospitality. I appear to be nonanxious by being withdrawn. I'm trying to achieve nonanxiousness by not being present. The reality is that withdrawal is a strategy for dealing with my anxiety. I'm not present, but I'm not really nonanxious either.

The other main strategy is to go the opposite direction and take on and display, perhaps even magnify, the anxiety of your guests. Perhaps this is your usual mode of inhospitality. You're trying to achieve presence by being anxious. The reality is that taking on the guest's anxiety is a strategy for dealing with your fear of simply being present to their condition. You're anxious, but you're not really present either. What our guests most need is our gracious, calm attention.

This being human is a guest house. My job – really, ultimately, my only job – and yours, too, as best you’re able – is hospitality to whoever comes. Hospitality to the visiting emotions prepares us for hospitality to experience generally -- any experience, including the hospitality to other people.

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This is part 2 of 5 of "Radical Hospitality"
Next: Part 3: "We Belong to Those Who Need Us"
Previous: Part 1: "William Ellery Channing's Radical Hospitality"

William Ellery Channing's Radical Hospitality

The Unitarians emerged in the late 1700s as a more liberal form of the New England Puritan Congregational church. The Universalists were starting up their own more liberal version of Christianity at about the same time. When the Unitarians and Universalists consolidated in 1961, they each brought more than 150 years of history as distinct denominations. The differences between the Unitarians and the Universalists were more cultural than doctrinal. The Unitarians carried the air of Boston upper-crust high society, howsoever far from Boston some of their churches were. The Universalists were a more blue-color church, less educated, more plain-spoken, and had a more emotional worship style. On matters of belief, the Unitarian and Universalists largely agreed – though they each had their own particular spin. For instance, the Universalists, who got their name from “Universal Salvation,” held that there was no hell; and the Unitarians, by and large, agreed. According to the old joke, the Universalists believed that God was too good to condemn them to hell, and the Unitarians believed they were too good to be condemned to hell.

That image of early Unitarians as hoity-toity sophisticates convinced of their own superiority does not do them justice to them. William Ellery Channing (1780 - 1842) was a "founding father" of North American Unitarianism, the most influential of the first generation of Unitarian ministers, and as "Boston elite" as they come. He was also renowned for his hospitality.

At Reverend Doctor Channing’s home, the rule was to keep every room filled with guests during the "bright season" (starts early April). When the family mansion overflowed, lodging for friends was found in the immediate neighborhood. Visitors from around New England and strangers from abroad sought his society. Every pleasant evening was sure to find circles of folks in engaging conversations in the parlor, piazza, and garden. Channing’s nephew would later recollect that his uncle, with

“gracious dignity, tolerance of all forms of character and opinion, and simple frankness, welcomed those who sought him to participation in his truth and peace.” 

Channing was known for his

“perfect sincerity, his cordial reception, his politeness and courtesy, his habitual attention to the wants and habits of others, the warm pressure of his hand.”

We carry on today the legacy of a man so thoroughly devoted to hospitality.

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This is part 1 of 5 of "Radical Hospitality"
Next: Part 2: "Being Human Is a Guest House"