O Hospitality
Guest rooms, speed bumps, and a tiny prayer for little shelters everywhere
We have been away from home the last five weeks, spending extended time with family in the Midwest.
It’s been an experience of generous hospitality! Not only have we been allowed to take over guest rooms, but our goofy black dog has been welcomed too. Not only have we eaten more than our share of the shortbread chocolate chunk cookies, but the trees have been flowering and the hedges have been bursting into green as if they were glad we’re here too!
As part of our travels and family time, I’m also spending a lot of time with kids. For all their busy wiggles, it turns out, they are slowing me down. Their sparks of energy are so often directed deeply and intensely and simply. Whether they are discovering their toes, trying new foods, peering into aquariums, noticing all the speed bumps, reading books or carefully decorating Ukranian Easter eggs, these kids have a super power of being fully absorbed in is right in front of them.
They dare me to be just as absorbed. They invite me to be fascinated with them, if I’ll just slow down.
The kids aren’t the only ones summoning me to fascination. The changing seasons, my aging body, the tides of creativity are some of the other party-givers sending me exciting invitations…
And as these offers arrive, it’s dawning on me that accepting invitations is actually pretty essential to hospitality…
Being an open-hearted guest is just as important as being an open-hearted host.
Hospitality isn’t defacto cozy — slices of homemade pie and hot cups of coffee. We live in inhospitable times. It can be risky to invite; it can be exposing to accept. Hostility is always possible. Rejection is a very real threat. The goodwill of both guests and hosts is necessary if we’re going to build little shelters everywhere.
And little shelters everywhere? Isn’t that the point? And isn’t that the work of a shrine keeper?
So, I’m taking the risk, accepting many of these invitations — to slow down, to listen longer, to linger, to be silly, to improvise, to take naps, take walks, read more stories and take the winding paths to write some.
This is where I’m going, and you’re invited. I hope you’ll come too.
O Hospitality (a prayer of the Real with soundtrack)
This was so dear and rich. I laid on my back in the sunlight in the grass and listened at the end and it was just right. Love you!
Deeply moving! Thank you.