Hospitality is not kindness.
It is openness to the unknown, trust of what frightens us, the expenditure of self on the unfamiliar, the merging of unlikes.
Hospitality binds the world together.
Hospitality means we take people into the space that is our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts.
Hospitality is the way we come out of ourselves.
It is the first step toward dismantling the barriers of the world.
Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.
+Sister Joan Chittister, OSB
IN LIGHT OFWHAT IS HAPPENING in our country and in our world on so many levels, I have been searching for a concept that will help me have a sense of hope in all this mire and muck, and I think I’ve found it in Sister Joan Chittister’s comments on the meaning of hospitality. I especially like what she writes as it brings the responsibility for my actions and reactions right back to me rather than judging and placing blame on others. It has been my understanding that welcoming others into my home, my workplace, my community is an act of kindness. I guess it is at first, and then what happens after the initial introductions and exchanges now seems to me to be what hospitality is all about. It requires an openness to people and events that I’m actually afraid of opening myself to. Sister Joan’s comments help me to see just how self-centered I may be in these circumstances.
Think about what has been happening to people who are coming to this country for safety, for an education, for health care, for jobs. I don’t see the immigration challenges ending any time soon, and I’m wondering what would happen if we as a free people could one by one, family by family, community by community, take in one such person or one family into the space of our lives and our minds and our hearts and our work and our efforts. This would certainly challenge us to come out of ourselves and be who we say we are, a people who believe in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people.” My religious community of Sisters, the Sylvania Franciscans, has been doing just that for a few years now, and it has been difficult, challenging, and rewarding as we see people from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Syria build new lives among us. It has required dismantling the barriers of language, culture, religion, rules, and prejudices that we all seem to bring to the process.
I have seen it in the eyes of the families, in the gratitude expressed so often, in the delight shared by the Sisters and many others who help to make this precious time with us a graced period in their lives.
Yes, I heartily agree with Sister Joan that “Hospitality is the way we turn a prejudiced world around, one heart at a time.” Do you think you can do it?
Just one heart at a time?
Sister Mary Thill is a Sylvania Franciscan Sister. She can be reached at mthill@sistersosf.org. ✲
What has impressed me the most about this offering hospitality to people we have never worked with before is the wonderful relationships that have emerged among those who have been deeply involved in the process.
