The Fragile Art of Hospitality

Quest Monthly Magazine

Mechthild of Magdeburg, a thirteenth-century mystic, once asked, “How shall we live?” Her answer provides a mantra of hospitality: “Be welcoming to all.”

I make a habit out of attending high school football games. (My son is a coach for our local team.) One particular Saturday it was an away game, and after finishing up at a community action board meeting, I drove over to the next town. I pulled into the parking lot and trekked toward the ticket booth. All around the simple campus of this working-class, highly ethnically diverse institution there were handcrafted postings that gave notice that this was homecoming weekend. I carefully scoped out the scene for the visitor stands. You don’t ever want to head to the wrong side—embarrassing! It’s important to walk confidently to the right place.

I imagine you may not attend high school football games as often as I do, but you may still remember from your own school days how the visiting team’s bleachers are always the smaller stands. They’re usually positioned on the uncomfortable side, the one facing into the sun. They’re not as well built, and always seem to look somewhat pathetic. (It’s the first leg-up for the home team—make your opponent uncomfortable.)

Surprisingly, then, I found that this week our “away” visitor stands were decorated with bright, helium-filled balloons. Hundreds of them, made into one of those fancy twisted, braided frames that completely covered the railings of the visitor stands. Whoa! They were in our team’s colors. In front of our stands, there was a huge butcher-block sign painted with our school’s name and emblazoned with our team mascot. I looked around. There were no personnel here from our school. None of our leadership folks, nor our spirit squad. It became clear this had been done by the host school.

Never before (and remember, I’ve gone to a lot of games) have I visited a school and been welcomed this way. Students who were part of their leadership crew came into our stands and sold festive leis with our team colors. After the game, they invited us to take the sign home with us. When I left the stadium, I thanked one of the staff advisors for their gracious welcome. She responded, “Tell the community about us! This school is a great place once you come to know us.”

And yes, it’s obvious this school lacks funding. They sit right beside a wide, teeming freeway; there are no lights on their field for Friday night games; their football team has a losing record. But they taught me something big.

I like to notice moments and places where my heart is opened. I also pay attention to when and where it constricts. I want to ask you to create space in your heart, too. But as I’ve been paying closer attention to the nature of hospitality, I’m coming to terms with the fact that it’s not as easy to do as I would like to think it is.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. Our UU communities do well in a lot of ways. The congregation I serve in Colorado is actively engaged in working for the creation of living wages in our community, in faith development, in moving to year-round stewardship as an act of hospitality. It’s an active, life-affirming shared ministry.

But our communities are also places that allow for imperfection, which is much of what hospitality is. It allows the guest to be as they are, welcomed in just the way they come—fully authentic and imperfect.

We also offer hospitality to those who are suffering. We make efforts to reach out to provide comfort to those people lamenting losses. It helps them to know their grieving is acceptable and good.

But this hospitality doesn’t always come easily. It takes effort. Some areas are more fragile, placing us in a more vulnerable place, close to our own wounds—wounds we might not even recognize we have.

Wade H. McCree, Jr., the first African-American solicitor general of the U.S. and a vice-moderator of the Unitarian Universalist Association, conveyed his truth about how religion is most real: “To me, one’s religion is expressed in the manner in which one relates to other human beings. If one fights relentlessly against injustice, want, hate, and every form of exploitation, then one is a religious person. The love of God is not expressed by ritual or ceremony, but by loving.”

There are some places and moments where I feel like I’ve got it all wrapped up. It’s part of my charge as a minister to welcome the stranger. When I’m at church, it feels obvious in my core that I’m doing ministry. It feels inherent that I would want to speak to newcomers, to help make people feel welcome. I’ve got that part down. I have to delve more deeply to see my selfishness at other moments.

When I attend our ministers’ meetings a couple times per year, I want to get cozy and sit next to my closest friends. I might feel friendly to the newer folks, but my busy-ness makes it difficult for me to step out and put aside my own needs to look out for theirs.

Yet if I want to grow in spiritual depth, to move closer to creating my own wholeness, I need to remind myself that I’m not a member of a club or a spa. My tasks and needs don’t come first. I can grow when I make myself available to newcomers and those who might even seem arrogant, or whiffy as I’ve heard one friend call it. I have to practice and step outside of my own comfort to do it.

As a result of reaching out, for instance, I came to know the new campus minister at one of our congregations. She just moved to town and was still fighting her introvert tendencies. I also got to know a UU minister in Hawaii who has established a new ministry on the big island. Those felt like successful, if small, risks. But we can do more.

We’re often ready to stand with the oppressed. But what about when we’re all together at home, in places where we feel most relaxed? What about when people enter our midst? When we’re with each other? When we need to talk to our friends, or attend a meeting, or serve coffee? How are we then? Do we welcome the stranger? Do we step out to make a new person feel at home?

What exactly is the mission of our faith? This religion of ours is just a little bit complicated. We each have the freedom to determine our own beliefs. We affirm and promote the ability and responsibility of each of us to seek the truth and find meaning for ourselves. As we honor different paths, it’s easy to get off track and not think we have a shared mission.

But we do. The mission of this faith is to be welcoming and nurturing of spirits, to foster respect and compassion for all people and a reverence for the web of all existence. Our mission is hospitality.

As Rev. William Schulz puts it, it is the mission of our faith to teach the fragile art of hospitality. Yet it’s so easy to fall into the habit of sitting in our usual spot, to forget to seek out those we don’t know well, to skip an effort to begin again. It’s so natural to want to have our own needs met and forget about the needs of others. We need to practice hospitality so that we can teach it.

“This being human is a guest house,” the poet Rumi reports, as he goes on to name a variety of things we don’t usually imagine as invitations to be hospitable. “A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.” I can move out from under my cozy comforter—which actually means to try on different ways of being than the ones I am so used to. It’s then I feel the stretch. “Welcome and entertain them all!” says Rumi.

Hospitality is not a last minute decision. It takes preparation, commitment, agreement and action by all the members of a community. Everyone at that high school I visited behaved with that same attitude. The conduct of the players, the attitude of the coaches, the folks working the snack bar, the custodian charged with picking up the trash, the students welcoming us over the loudspeaker—all of them showed genuine conviviality. Organization and energy went into planning and carrying out their welcome. It wasn’t about their win-loss record. They were living a mission.

As Unitarian Universalists we have practiced the fragile art of hospitality on an even larger scale; our Standing on the Side of Love work with immigration justice is just one example. Complicated stuff. It makes the discomfort of striking up a conversation with a seatmate or being welcoming at a football game seem very small. Spiritual advisors Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat maintain, “To be hospitable, you need to accept pluralism as a natural condition in the world.”

I hope you’ll discover places and moments to create space in your heart. This thing we love is fragile. It must be held tenderly. But we must create it, in order to teach those still to come. Don’t think small things can’t make a difference. Indeed, they are the only things that ever do.