Who Me? A Prophet??

As If by Magic...

Last Word or First…?

Choose your poison…
or not!

Darkness Giving
Way to Light...?

Time To Say Yes

Of Science, Oatmeal
and Meaning

The Cypress in the Garden:
A Koan Revisited…

Divine Hospitality
at Work...

For the Time Being...
Some Thoughts on the Stewardship of Time

Divine Hospitality at Work...

By Whitney Wherrett Roberson

I’ve been musing a fair amount lately about divine Hospitality. It’s a term I like quite a lot since it expresses for me something essential about my own experience of Divine Mystery. I can’t quite remember when I started using the expression or even whether I coined it or read it somewhere else, but it pushed to the forefront of my consciousness again a few months ago when I attended a workshop on how to write a personal mission statement. Laurie Beth Jones, the workshop leader, was encouraging us to articulate in a few words our core value, the thing about which we felt most passionate. She paused while we scribbled on our note pads and then added we shouldn’t use “love” since that was too broad. I looked down at my notes, perplexed; there it was: “love.”  I knew I felt strongly about divine love, but Laurie Beth was right: “love” has become too soft and vague in our culture. How could I articulate more precisely the aspect of love I find most compelling?

My private consternation was interrupted by a woman who was struggling to find just the right combination of words for her statement. Laurie Beth was helping her publicly while we all listened in. The woman had her core value: “compassion” but the verbs she’d picked to go with it didn’t quite work: “welcome,” “invite,” “nurture.”  I listened for a moment, then entered the conversation myself:  “Are you sure your core value isn’t ‘hospitality?’” I asked her. “All your verbs are hospitality words.”  It turned out the woman had always dreamt of opening a bed and breakfast inn; as soon as I said “hospitality” something clicked in her.

Something had clicked in me, too. I looked back down at my own pad and wrote “divine Hospitality.” Yep, I decided, that’s what I’m most passionate about, what I most want to experience, manifest and proclaim in my own life and work. 

Since the workshop I’ve found myself continuing to play with my “mission statement” and with this idea of divine Hospitality. What does it mean to trust and open myself to divine Hospitality, I wonder? Well, for one thing it seems to mean being more fully present to myself, all of myself. It’s as though Divine Mystery creates a wonderful, open place in which I can get meet myself more deeply. Now, of course, I’m well acquainted with the delightful parts of me (!) but like all of us, I suppose, there are other parts of myself I’d rather not welcome. But Divine Hospitality is like an irresistible, energetic little old lady who comes bustling through me, peering into closets and throwing open shutters: “What we need here is a little light...,” “Ah, some polish and paint and this would be charming...’” “Ooo, dearie, this needs airing out....” All of me: safely, warmly Known....

If trusting divine Hospitality begins with being more present to myself, it continues with being more present to everything outside of myself. It means recognizing that the world out there is a safe place. My world of working and relating is safe because it too is contained within a Love-Which-Cannot-Be-Extinguished. I can take risks; I can be vulnerable with others, for my risking and the opening are held in a greater, more gracious Wholeness, a Wholeness which contains, incidentally, even the political and social madness we sometimes see in our world.

But lest Divine Hospitality seem too cozy, let me hasten to add that I also experience this Hospitality as tough and challenging. Divine Mystery confronts me with my own growing edges, pushing me to see What Is and making complacency impossible. Yes, I am "safely and warmly Known” but in that Knowing, I am also invited, encouraged – well, yes, even compelled – to change. It’s a marvelous thing, really: safe, but not always comfortable!

So what does it mean to be an agent of Divine Hospitality at work?  It means being aware that all we do and all that happens at work is contained in Something Greater than what we see. It means holding to the greater Perspective and acting from it, knowing that – in the words of Julian of Norwich, quoted by T.S. Eliot in his Four Quartets – “All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”  It may mean owning up to our responsibility to act as agents of transformation (of ourselves and of the system!) Or it may mean becoming part of the “Container,” being the one who holds the difficult relationship, situation, dilemma Hospitably, not necessarily by saying or doing anything in particular, but simply by being present and staying ourselves in the Love.

Knowing, trusting, opening, risking, changing, holding: Divine Hospitality -- for us, in us, through us.