|
By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
January 10, 2010
Reading from Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love
by Daniel Homan and Lonni Collins Pratt
One of the discount stores in our area makes a practice of hiring
many disabled persons. Some of them are physically disabled, others
are mentally disabled. These special employees tend to be given the
task of putting your new sweatshirt, socks, and cabbage into bags.
Watch the people in those lines. Some are comfortable with the
interesting and different people at the end of the line waiting to
bag their underwear. Others do everything they can to ignore them.
Imagine you are in line behind a very nice older woman who is
clearly uneasy with the young man bagging her purchases. It happened
to a friend the other day.
The guy bagging was probably thirty-five, but mentally closer to
twelve or thirteen. He was blonde and short with a wide smile. He
had a scar across the left temple that was at least three inches
long. He probably had not been born with his disability. He wore a
name badge that read, “Kevin.”
Kevin greeted the woman and said, “Are you in a hurry today?”
She did not look at Kevin. She looked at the woman ringing up her
order and managed a faint smile. She said, “The lines are rather
long this morning.” The woman nodded and kept dashing things through
the scanner.
Kevin tried again, “You have a lot of pop here. Are you going to
have company?”
The older woman turned toward the person behind her in line, as if
looking for help; she had a frantic look in her eye. She was not
mean-spirited; she simply had come of age in an era when such a
young man would have been institutionalized, rather than commenting
on her purchases.
Our friend standing behind her smiled and said, “You do have a lot
of pop.”
“My grandson is turning fourteen,” (the woman replied). “It’s for
his party.”
“My sister had a birthday party,” the disabled young man said. He
drooled and it landed on a liter-size bottle of green pop and rolled
off. The woman at the register glanced from the drool to the boy and
kept working.
“I’ll bet that was a lot of fun,” said our friend.
Then the woman buying pop for her grandson’s party did a courageous
thing. It was so brave you wanted to cry for her. She turned toward
Kevin, took a breath, and looked him in the eye. She said, “Did you
enjoy the party?”
Kevin nodded. “I like parties. My sister says she gets two birthdays
a year because I’m such a pain in the butt, so she gets mine.” He
grinned. “But she don’t mean it because she always takes me to the
show for my birthday and I get the biggest bag of popcorn.” He
looked up from his bagging and said, “I love my sister.”
The woman blinked back tears. Kevin was only twelve inches from her
and he was a real live human being now, and she didn’t even want to
escape him any longer. She touched his hand and said, “I am certain
that she loves you, too.”
“Yup, that’s why I get the biggest bag of popcorn,” he said.
Right there in the check out line, day after day, are encounters
between people like the old woman and Kevin...The result is magic.
Humans understanding other humans a little better. Hospitality
happens even at a discount store.
Sermon: Radical Hospitality: An Ethic of Welcoming
Let’s travel back in time about 1500 years: to Europe at the
beginning of what has become known as the Middle Ages. Specifically,
let’s go to Italy, about the year 500 CE. Here we find a young man
named Benedict who grew up in the central Italian region of Nursia.
Benedict was the son of a Roman noble and was expected to follow his
father’s career path. To that end, he was sent to school in what was
then considered the center of the civilized world, Rome.
But his heart wasn’t in it. The fast life of the city did not suit
him, and he felt no passion for a future as a prosperous Roman
official. Benedict abandoned his studies, left Rome, and journeyed
to a remote region where he took up residence in a cave. There he
lived alone, dedicating himself to a life of prayer, having little
interaction with others. And yet, even though he was isolated from
the city and from the centers of power, word spread that Benedict
was a man of unusual spiritual sensitivity and knowledge. Others
sought him out for advice, for instruction, or just to be close to
him.
Some of his visitors would come and go but others stayed, forming a
community that sought to follow the way of life practiced by
Benedict. These communities became monasteries. Eventually, twelve
monasteries were established by followers of Benedict, who is
regarded as the founder of Christian monasticism in the Western
world.
Monasteries played several key roles in society during the Middle
Ages, a period of about 1,000 years running from 600 to 1600 CE.
They were not only places where men withdrew from society to
undertake a life of prayer, monasteries also became centers of
learning. They amassed large libraries and protected those volumes
during a time when education was not widely respected. Some monks
became experts in specific realms and young people came to study
with them. And so monasteries evolved into the first universities.
The monasteries also became centers of service, with the monks
making themselves available to the wider community during times of
need. During the plagues, for example, when much of the population
was too sick to plant and tend the fields, monks took over and
supplied the surrounding towns with food.
Monasteries also became places where travelers paused after long
days on the road, for rest and renewal. This was a wild and wooly
era, particularly in remote regions, and travelers were subject to
many dangers. Many a voyager set off on a journey and was never
heard from again. The monasteries promised safety, a place of
protection from dangers of both the natural world as well as the
threats of robbery, kidnapping, murder. According to the rules of
the monasteries, monks were expected to offer hospitality, even to
the stranger. As the rule of hospitality was expressed, “Let
everyone who comes be received as Christ.”
This morning I would like to offer some thoughts on hospitality. In
our day, the term tends to be used mostly in the context of social
occasions. The person in charge of hospitality brings the cupcakes
and makes the coffee. But the roots of hospitality take us deeper.
The root word for “hospitality” also gives us “hospital” and
“hospice,” both of which offer healing and comfort. Hospitality is
about entertaining, but it also involves offering comfort and
safety, openness and acceptance.
The title of this sermon—as well as the title of the book from which
I am drawing—is “Radical Hospitality.” In our present-day usage,
“radical” usually means “extreme.” “Extreme hospitality” might
suggest opening doors to everybody, without boundaries, without
limits. But that’s not what this is about. If you trace the origins
of our term, radical, it means, “having roots,” or “going to
origins.” To be radical, then, means returning to the roots. This
morning, then, let’s think about what it might mean to practice a
hospitality that draws from its roots.
• • •
Let me suggest an image: a table—a long table where people gather to
eat. This doesn’t have go to be fancy, with expensive china and
chandeliers hanging above. In fact it’s better if it not be so
imposing. Maybe a picnic table outdoors on a warm day.
When I was growing up, we often had summer dinners outside. It gets
hot in central Illinois, and we didn’t have air conditioning. By the
approach of evening, the day’s heat was still trapped inside, but
outside, cooling breezes were beginning to set in. My mother and
father, sister and I, and my grandmother who lived upstairs: we
gathered at the picnic table outside for dinner.
Dinners outside were a little different than those inside. The air
was fresher, you could breath deeply, conversation came more easily,
and it often continued after the food was gone. Somehow, we could be
more ourselves.
Usually, it was just the five of us at the picnic table outside for
dinner but sometimes, there were visitors: relatives, a friend,
someone new to town that my parents thought to invite over. To
accommodate the visitors, we brought out more tables, set them in a
row, making room.
That’s what I’m envisioning for this imaginary meal I’m setting up:
a long table with plenty of room. We’ll set places for each person
we expect to join us. And we’ll put out a few more place settings
for those others who might arrive unannounced, without an
invitation, whose names might not appear on the official guest list.
Isn’t that a little frightening, to include strangers—those we don’t
know, who might be disruptive or dangerous or who might not share
the same social graces as we do?
Well, yes, it can be uncomfortable: strangers, at our table. In our
lives today, we are taught to fear strangers. All you have to do is
turn on the TV news or read the paper: strangers try to blow up
airplanes, strangers compete with us for our jobs, strangers want to
take our money and harm our children. We devote a lot of energy
trying to protect ourselves from those who aren’t like us. So here
we’re welcoming them to our table?
But remember, this is radical hospitality, hospitality that returns
us to the roots. And the roots of hospitality involve not just
inviting friends and family, and not just those who share our
outlook and values, but also strangers, outcasts. For those of you
from Christian backgrounds, you might recall that Jesus was accused
of inviting to his table people from the margins: sinners, tax
collectors, those who would normally not be welcome at a dinner
party. And in the monastic life, hospitality to the stranger has
been a crucial aspect of the disciple, a means of developing
spirituality. Because it teaches openness, forces us to stretch,
keeps us from getting stiff. If we wall ourselves off from the
stranger, Benedict taught, we also keep away God.
At the college I attended, there was an ethic of welcome. When you
encountered a stranger on campus, you offered a greeting—possibly a
simple “Hello”—but you didn’t just walk by. Partially we could do
this because it’s a small school; you pretty much knew everybody
there. Also, it reflected the Quaker roots of the college for the
Quakers make it a practice to extend welcome to strangers. Other
than that, I don’t know how this developed. We weren’t told to do
it; there were no rules dictating, “Thou shalt greet strangers.” It
just happened.
In radical hospitality, we greet the stranger, we invite him or her
to our table, even though it can be kind of scary. We honor that
person’s worth and dignity—and our own, as we seek to become open to
who he or she is, what this person’s stories are, how life looks
through his or her eyes. We stretch ourselves to accommodate this
stranger’s view of the world.
In offering hospitality to the stranger outside of ourselves, we
might also become open to the stranger inside ourselves. You know,
the stranger inside that does things you don’t quite recognize.
Maybe you find yourself becoming unexpectedly angry when the
specific cause doesn’t warrant it. Or you leap to conclusions about
another person with little evidence. Or there is that part of you
that is so so critical of yourself. And the part of you that does
things that, later upon looking back, you think, “That wasn’t really
me. That’s not who I am.” Rather than hiding that stranger in the
attic like a crazy relative no one wants to acknowledge, you bring
him or her to the table, invite that stranger into dialogue. Even
the stranger inside deserves to be heard, is worthy of hospitality.
• • •
What’s on the menu at our imaginary meal? Fancy and exotic foods,
expertly prepared? Possibly. Nothing wrong with that. But it could
just as easily be humbler fare. Serving bowls filled with soup at
the center of each table, bowls of bread positioned on either side.
Or rice and beans. Or a pot of stew from which all help themselves.
What’s important is not the expense of the meal but the care with
which it is prepared and how it is presented: as an offering to each
guest.
I expect everyone who has ever held a dinner party has had the
experience of getting so consumed with preparing the meal that by
the time the guests arrive, you’re done. You’ve used up your energy,
and you’ve used up your spirit so you aren’t altogether there for
the event itself.
Hospitality involves putting yourself into the proper state of mind
to receive your guests, to be open to them. In the monastic life,
there is emphasis upon the care with which you do little things.
Because this is what shapes our lives. In preparing a meal, for
example, it’s about how you cut the carrots. Are you present for
that moment or is your mind racing ahead to the next thing you must
do? Or putting out the place settings: do you arrange each
carefully, thinking about the person who will be sitting there. Or
do you rush through, getting this task over so that you can move on
to the next one—and the next—and the next?
If preparing for the meal is mostly a matter of getting it done,
then chances are the meal itself will be mostly a matter of getting
it done. You can’t offer hospitality because you are not fully
present. That’s another characteristic of radical
hospitality—hospitality that draws up from our roots: we are fully
present. What’s important is right here, right now, right in front
of us.
At the table we have set and where we have gathered guests—both
invited and uninvited, there will be a great deal of talking,
sharing stories, and laughter too. I hope there’s plenty of laughter
at this dinner we are creating. But there will also be listening. At
the heart of hospitality—of radical hospitality—is not talking but
listening. Offering the gift of attention. Creating a space for your
guests where they feel safe and accepted—in which they don’t have to
prove anything: not how smart they are or how accomplished or witty
or sophisticated or young. A space in which they can be who they
are.
We listen to each person’s story. We hear of the struggles, the good
times, the bad ones. We become acquainted with his spirit, her
strength, his uniqueness, her passions.
“A friend tells of his son Paul who was, at the age of eleven, taken
to meet his great-aunt in a nursing home where she had been moved
from out of state. Aunt Margaret was in the advanced stages of
dementia. She was, however, thrilled to see Paul. She touched his
face and stroked his hair and held his hands while she told him
stories that were eight-five years old, stories of being a girl
almost a century ago.
“As she talked and talked, the father grew concerned that his son’s
lesson in respect and kindness was going to be ruined by her endless
‘when I was a girl’ chattering. He interrupted with an excuse and
got Paul out of there. On the way to the car he tried to explain
dementia to his son. Paul stopped him and said, ‘Dad, you don’t have
to make excuses for Aunt Margaret. She was just remembering who she
is.’”
She was just remembering who she is. Isn’t that why any of us tell
our stories, sometimes over and over: to remember who we are? So by
listening, we offer the gift of this other person’s self. Maybe this
too is scary: we are afraid of being overwhelmed. Maybe we will be
captured by what that person asks of us. And certainly that happens,
which is why we have to set boundaries, sometimes say no. But
really, what most people want most deeply from us isn’t very much.
It’s simple caring, attention, assurance that they matter,
remembering who they are.
Which is why listening is the most important art of hospitality.
There is much in life that is dehumanizing, abusive, just plain
mean. Listening helps us overcome that because in offering your
attention, you value that person. Maybe that’s why, when someone
listens—really listens to us—we feel better. We feel better about
ourselves. We feel better about the world. As the authors of Radical
Hospitality put it, “There is nothing more human than our desire to
be heard. It is our cry for permission to live.”
And so the gathering at this table we have set comes to an end. The
guests bid each other farewell, they go their separate ways. We hope
that they have had a good time, that they have experienced at least
some of the benefits of hospitality. During our time together,
perhaps they feel a little less isolated, more whole. Maybe
someone’s life has been influenced for the better. And maybe in
gathering these people together and offering your hospitality, you
have helped, just a little, to change the world.
Because, of course, we’re not just talking about a meal here. We’re
talking about approaching our lives with attentiveness, openness,
care—and in so doing bringing change to our society, radical change,
change that comes up from the roots. Radical hospitality is about
creating a society of love and justice; it is about changing the
world.
• • •
I have one more story. Every major religion has a monastic
tradition, and these offer similar insights, similar truths. This is
a Jewish story from the Jewish monastic tradition.
“There was once a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. It had
been a great order, but now all its branch houses were lost and
there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the
abbot and four others, all over seventy in age. Clearly it was a
dying order.
“In the deep woods surrounding the monastery, there was a little hut
that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage.
Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks
had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi
was in his hermitage. ‘The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in
the woods again,’ they would whisper to each other. As he agonized
over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at
one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if he could
offer any advice that might save the monastery.
“The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot
explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate
with him. ‘I know how it is,’ he exclaimed. ‘The spirit has gone out
of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the
synagogue anymore.’ So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept
together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of
deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They
embraced each other. ‘It has been a wonderful thing that we should
meet after all these years,’ the abbot said, ‘but I have failed in
my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no
piece of advice that would help me save my dying order?’
“‘No, I am sorry,’ the rabbi responded. ‘I have no advice to give.
The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.’
“When the abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered
around him to ask, ‘Well, what did the rabbi say?’
“‘He couldn't help,’ the abbot answered. ‘We just wept and read the
Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving—it
was something cryptic—was that the Messiah is one of us. I don't
know what he meant.’
“In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks
pondered this and wondered whether there was any significance to the
rabbi’s words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have
meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that's the case,
which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant
anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for
more than a generation.
“On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Brother
Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that. Certainly he could not
have meant Brother Elred! Elred is crotchety. But come to think of
it, even though he is thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on
it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the
rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip.
Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously,
he has a gift for being there when you need him. He just appears by
your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't
mean me. He could not possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary
person. Yet, supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah?
“As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat
each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one
among them might be the Messiah. And on the off, off chance that
each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat
themselves with extraordinary respect.
“Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, people
still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny
lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go
into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did, without even
being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary
respect that now began to surround the old monks and seemed to
radiate from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There
was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it.
Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more
frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their
friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought
their friends.
“Then it happened that some of the younger people who came to visit
the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks.
After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And
another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a
thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of
spirituality in the realm.”
|
