Tag Archives: hospitality

Daily Riches: A Modern “decalogue”(Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat)

Posted on by under awe and wonder, contemplative virtues, Forgiveness, hospitality, Humility, Hurry Sickness, Loving Listening, Loving Well, Mindfulness, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

First, let me hurry to say that the Brussats didn’t call this a “decalogue.” That’s on me. I use the term informally, simply to draw attention to this contemporary list of ten essentials–not inscribed on stone tablets, but important nevertheless. Rather than what not to do, these words suggest what to do. Rather than warning of danger, they invite to deep spirituality. Rather than issuing commands, they offer a compelling example. I hope you’ll take some time to “hover over” these beautiful intentions. This is how I mean to live . . . but, I need reminding!

1. I will live in the present moment. I will not obsess about the past or worry about the future.
2. I will cultivate the art of making connections. I will pay attention to how my life is intimately related to all life on the planet.
3. I will be thankful for all the blessings in my life. I will spell out my days with a grammar of gratitude.
4. I will practice hospitality in a world where too often strangers are feared, enemies are hated, and the “other” is shunned. I will welcome guests and alien ideas with graciousness.
5. I will seek liberty and justice for all. I will work for a free and a fair world.
6. I will add to the planet’s fund of good will by practicing little acts of kindness, brief words of encouragement, and manifold expressions of courtesy. [unconditional regard, exquisite tenderness]
7. I will cultivate the skill of deep listening. I will remember that all things in the world want to be heard, as do the many voices inside me.
8. I will practice reverence for life by seeing the sacred in, with, and under all things of the world.
9. I will give up trying to hide, deny, or escape from my imperfections. I will listen to what my shadow side has to say to me.
10. I will be willing to learn from the spiritual teachers all around me, however unlikely or unlike me they may be.” Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ Spirituality & Practice

“Joyful is the person who finds wisdom . . . . “
Proverbs 3:13 NLT

Moving From Head to Heart

*Are these reminders helpful to you? What emotions arise as you read them?

*What does that response say about you?

Abba, grant us a world of people whose intentions these are.

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Thanks for reading my blog! Please extend my reach by reposting on your social media platforms. If you like these topics and this approach, you’ll like my book Wisdom From the Margins.

Daily Riches: Giving Love a Rest (Richard Beck)

Posted on by under hospitality, Insiders and Outsiders, Jesus the Savior, Loving Well, the daily, the ordinary, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

“In 2016, a man boarded a subway in Vancouver, Canada. He became aggressive, shouting and cursing at the other passengers. He jerked around erratically. The man was either mentally ill or under the influence of drugs. Everyone on the train backed away. And then, suddenly, a seventy-year-old woman seated nearby reached out and held the hand of the shouting, cursing man. The gesture calmed him. The man quieted and then slumped to the ground, tears filling his eyes. The woman kept holding his hand. When he reached his stop, the man stood up and said, ‘Thanks, grandma.’ He exited and walked away. Ehab Taha was on that train, and he took a picture of the old woman and the crazed man holding hands. He posted the picture to social media, and it quickly went viral. ‘It was quite incredible how much he calmed down in a split moment,’ Taha later said. ‘It was the most touching thing I’ve ever seen.’ . . .

“I think it’s time for Christians to give the word love a rest. . . . Imagine what it would be like if Christians gave up trying to love the world for an entire year and instead committed ourselves to practicing kindness—kinder on social media, kinder with our coworkers, kinder with our family, kinder with our friends . . . . Kindness isn’t a spiritual ideal or aspiration; kindness is a behavior that causes you to lean in while others are leaning away. It’s a behavior like taking the hand of a scary man on a subway, or eating lunch with someone who is sitting alone, or welcoming a woman in a hijab to your playgroup. Kindness is what attracts us so much to Jesus. It’s Jesus’s kindness for those who have been treated meanly, cruelly, or dismissively. [These stories] . . . remind us of Jesus. We see that seventy-year-old woman take the hand of a screaming crazy man, and we think of Jesus’s kindness to those possessed by devils. We see the football player eating lunch with an autistic boy, and we think of Jesus touching lepers. We read these stories of kindness on social media, and our hearts leap in a flash of recognition: That is exactly the sort of thing Jesus would have done.” Richard Beck

“Jesus wept.” John 11:35

Moving From Head to Heart

*Who would you have been–the cursing man, the one who backed away, the man who took the photo, the “grandma”?

*If you began practicing kindness, what would that look like?

*Can you ditch the safe, noble, spiritual ideal for the sometimes difficult but more measurable, powerful, behavioral practice? Will you do what Jesus did?

Stranger God, teach me to lean in.

For More: Stranger God by Richard Beck

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Thanks for reading my blog! Please extend my reach by reposting on your social media platforms. If you like these topics and this approach, you’ll like my book Wisdom From the Margins.

Daily Riches: Expanding Your Bandwidth of Kindness (Richard Beck, Misoslav Volf)

Posted on by under hospitality, Insiders and Outsiders, Loving Well, neighbors & neighborhoods, Spiritual Disciplines, the ordinary


“The strangeness of strangers makes hospitality hard. As we’ve watched cable news and our social-media feeds, we’ve all witnessed our failures in extending hospitality to strangers, our unwillingness to welcome people into our nation, neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, churches, homes, and hearts. The refugee family stopped at our borders. The homeless person sleeping on our streets. . . . And far too often, Christians have been the worst offenders, the very first to greet strangers with Keep Out signs. . . . Like the goats in Matthew 25, we refuse to welcome Jesus in disguise. . . . But hearts aren’t easily changed. You can’t change hearts with pep talks, protests, podcasts, Facebook rants, tweets, or a really good sermon. Hearts require spiritual formation through habits and practices that directly address the social and psychological dynamics at work . . . . Hospitality  demands  more  than  good  will and  good  intentions.  Emotions,  including  social emotions, are not easily changed. You can’t fix depression by telling someone, “Cheer up!” You can’t get someone to become less angry just by admonishing, “Calm down” or less anxious by saying, “Don’t worry, be happy!” . . . If you find some people irritating, annoying, or revolting, a demand that you should feel differently isn’t practical. . . . There are two big missing pieces in our efforts to welcome the stranger God. The first missing piece is that hospitality, before it can be anything else, begins as the emotional battle to widen the circle of our affections. Theologian Miroslav Volf calls this “the will to embrace.” [And a] second missing piece: that hospitality begins as a spiritual discipline, as a habit-forming practice aimed at expanding the bandwidth of our kindness and compassion. . . . When we think of ‘spiritual disciplines,’ we think of practices like prayer, silence, solitude, Bible reading, Sabbath, and fasting. . . . Through spiritual disciplines, we seek a deeper intimacy with God, . . . an encounter with the sacred and divine. While these spiritual disciplines move us toward God, they routinely fail to move us toward each other. This is the genius of the Little Way, lost spiritual discipline [of Thérèse of Lisieux,] a habit-forming practice that moves us  toward  each  other  so  that  our  affections for each other expand and widen. The Little Way is a spiritual  discipline  of  hospitality  and  welcome. . . . a habit-forming discipline that enables us to en-counter the God who comes to us in disguise . . . in coworkers, neighbors, refugees, the homeless, and the people in the line with us at the grocery store.” Richard Beck


Moving From Head to Heart


*How often are you frightened, annoyed, or repulsed by strange people?
*Have others sometimes judged you for seeming strange?
*What new habit could you begin to practice that could begin to break down your aversion to those who seem strange? . . . to train you in kindness and compassion?


Abba, expand my bandwidth for kindness when it’s hard.


For More: Stranger God: Meeting Jesus in Disguise by Richard Beck

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Thanks for reading my blog! Please extend my reach by reposting on your social media platforms. If you like these topics and this approach, you’ll like my book Wisdom From the Margins.

“Indiscriminate Hospitality” (Dorothy Day and Robert Ellsberg)

Posted on by under Being and Doing, Contemplation and Activism, dissent and resistance, fixed-time prayers, hospitality, Insiders and Outsiders, Loving Well, the daily, the image of God and human dignity, The Poor and Disenfranchised

For Dorothy Day . . . “spirituality and her social witness were equally rooted in the radical implications of the Incarnation. In Christ God assumed our humanity. And we could not worship God without honoring God’s image in our fellow human beings. We should feed them when they were hungry; shelter them when they were homeless. We should not torture them; we should not kill them. In the 1950s Day and the Catholic Worker took on a more activist profile. She was repeatedly jailed for refusing to take shelter during compulsory civil defense drills in New York City. In the 1960s her activities reflected the turbulence of the times—protesting the Vietnam War, fasting in Rome during the Second Vatican Council to advance the cause of peace. She was last arrested while picketing with the United Farm Workers in 1973 at the age of seventy-five. By this time she was widely honored as the radical conscience of the American Catholic church. But her life was not primarily occupied by activism or protest. She was a woman of prayer, beginning each day with meditation on scripture, attending daily Mass, and reciting the breviary [daily psalms, scripture readings, and prayers]. By and large, her life was spent in very ordinary ways, her sanctity expressed not just in heroic deeds but in the mundane duties of everyday life. Her ‘spirituality’ was rooted in a constant effort to be more charitable toward those closest at hand.” Robert Ellsberg

“May the God who gives endurance and encouragement
give you the same attitude of mind toward each other
that Christ Jesus had . . . .” Rom. 15:5 NIV

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Imagine the cognitive dissonance required to claim faith in God, while at the same time torturing or killing creatures made by God, loved by God, precious to God.
  • The simple daily life of Dorothy Day was both “ordinary” and “heroic” because she practiced something “ordinary” (hospitality) in a “heroic” manner (indiscriminately). Can you be indiscriminate when it comes to hospitality?
  • Is there a quiet, prayerful side of your life that enables you to rise to the mundane duties of everyday life in a simple, and perhaps even sometimes, heroic way?

God, help me to honor those you love without any preconditions.

For More: Modern Spiritual Masters: Writings on Contemplation and Compassion. Ed. Robert Ellsberg. New York: Maryknoll: 2008.

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Thanks for reading my blog. Please extend my reach by reposting on your social media platforms. If you like these topics and this approach, you’ll like my book Wisdom From the Margins.

Daily Riches: Following His Majestic Lead (Walter Brueggemann)

Posted on by under God's Grace, hospitality, Insiders and Outsiders, Jesus the Savior, Loving Well, Social Justice, the image of God and human dignity, The Love of God, The Poor and Disenfranchised
“Jesus–crucified and risen–draws us into his presence again,

the one who had nowhere to lay his head,
no safe place,
no secure home,
no passport or visa,
no certified citizenship.

We gather around him in our safety, security, and well-being,
and fret about ‘illegal immigrants.’
We fret because they are not like us
and refuse our language.
We worry that there are so many of them
and their crossings do not stop.
We are unsettled because it is our tax
dollars that sustain them and provide services.
We feel the hype about closing borders and heavy fines,
because we imagine that our life is under threat.

And yet, as you know very well,
we, all of us–early or late–are immigrants
from elsewhere;
we are glad for cheap labor
and seasonal workers
who do tomatoes and apples and oranges
to our savoring delight.

And beyond that, even while we are beset by fears
and aware of pragmatic costs,
we know very well that you are the God
who welcomes strangers,
who loves aliens and protects sojourners.

As always, we feel the tension and the slippage
between the deep truth of our faith
and the easier settlements of our society.

We do not ask for an easy way out,
but for courage and honesty and faithfulness.
Give us ease in the presence of those unlike us;
give us generously amid demands of those in need,
help us to honor those who trespass
as you forgive our trespasses.

You are the God of all forgiveness.
By your gracious forgiveness transpose us
into agents of your will,
that our habits and inclinations may more closely
follow your majestic lead, that our lives may
joyously conform to your vision of a new world.

We pray in the name of your holy Son, even Jesus.”

Walter Brueggemann

“He ensures that orphans and widows receive justice.
He shows love to the foreigners living among you
and gives them food and clothing.”
Deuteronomy 10:18

Moving From the Head to the Heart
  • Is your God one “who welcomes strangers, who loves aliens, and protects sojourners?” Has God welcomed you in this way?
  • How, do you suppose, God “gave food and clothing” to foreigners living among Israel (Dt. 18) or ensured “that orphans and widows receive justice?”
  • Helping those in need can be a discomforting, even dangerous act. It’s also not always easy to know how to help. As one who belongs to God, how can you be an “agent of his will”, following God’s majestic lead?

God of the helpless–help me follow your majestic lead.

For More: Prayers for A Privileged People by Walter Brueggemann (2010)

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek God and he seeks you. Thanks so much for following and sharing my blog! – Bill

Daily Riches: The Chief Wounds of the Minister (Henri Nouwen)

Posted on by under Asceticism, Change Yourself First, Desolation's Gift, Embracing Losses and Limits, Emotions and Spirituality, God's Grace, hospitality, Solitude, Spiritual Formation, Suffering and Grace, Waiting on God, Wholeness and Brokenness

“When loneliness is among the chief wounds of the minister, hospitality can convert that wound into a source of healing. Concentration prevents the minister from burdening others with his pain and allows him to accept his wounds as helpful teachers of his own and his neighbor’s condition. Community arises where the sharing of pain takes place, not as a stifling form of self-complaint, but as a recognition of God’s saving promises. Our loneliness and isolation have become so much a part of our daily experience, that we cry out for a liberator who will take us away from our misery and bring us justice and peace. To announce, however, that the Liberator is sitting among the poor and that the wounds are signs of hope and that today is the day of liberation, is a step that very few can take. But this is exactly the announcement of the wounded healer: ‘The Master is coming–not tomorrow, but today, not next year, but this year, not after all our misery has passed, but in the middle of it, not in another place but right here where we are standing.'” Henri Nouwen

“I lie awake,
lonely as a solitary bird on the roof.”
Psalm 102:7
.
Moving From the Head to the Heart
.
  • Can you relate to problem of loneliness in ministry, and the temptation to turn to others rather than God to sooth your pain?
  • Have you tried to accept your “wounds as helpful teachers of your own and your neighbor’s condition” – inviting God into that place of anguish, staying there with Him, receiving and learning from God?
  • In your own loneliness, have you learned that “the Liberator is sitting among the poor” (with you), so that you can testify to others that Jesus will care for the wounded, not when the misery has passed, not “in another place” but here and now?

Abba, help me take the difficult steps to seek you and find you in the midst of my woundedness and need.

For More: The Wounded Healer by Henri Nouwen

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: The Crucible of Interruptions (Mark Buchanan and Walter Rauschenbusch)

Posted on by under Awareness, awe and wonder, Hurry Sickness, Jesus the Savior, Mindfulness, Striving and drivenness, Success, The Sacrament of the Present Moment

“Jesus … lived life with the clearest and highest purpose. Yet he veered and strayed from one interruption to the next, with no apparent plan in hand other than his single, overarching one: Get to Jerusalem and die. Otherwise, his days, as far as we can figure, were a series of zigzags and detours, apparent whims and second thoughts, interruptions and delays, off-the-cuff plans, spur-of-the-moment decisions, leisurely meals, serendipitous rounds of storytelling. …Purposefulness requires paying attention, and paying attention means … that we make room for surprise. We become hospitable to interruption. I doubt we can notice for long without this hospitality. And to sustain it we need … a conviction in our bones that God is Lord of our days and years, and that his purposes and his presence often come disguised as detours, messes, defeats. ‘I came to you naked,’ Jesus says. ‘I came to you thirsty.’ ‘When, Lord?’ we ask, startled. When He wore the disguise of an interruption. Think a moment of all the events and encounters that have shaped you most deeply and lastingly. How many did you see coming? How many did you engineer, manufacture, chase down? And how many were interruptions? The span between life as we intend it and life as we receive it is vast. Our true purpose is worked out in that gap. It is fashioned in the crucible of interruptions.” Mark Buchanan

“Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro … and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness … and he looked, and behold, [a] bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, ‘I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.’” Exodus 3:1-3

Moving From Head to Heart

  • What if Moses hadn’t “turned aside?”
  • Imagine yourself living as Jesus did, with “zigzags and detours …” etc. How would that feel?
  • Can you become more hospitable to what happens in “the [vast] span between life as you intend it and life as you receive it?”

Abba, “Grant us, we pray you, a heart wide open to all this joy and beauty, and save our souls from being so steeped in care or so darkened by passion that we pass heedless and unseeeing when even the thornbush by the wayside is aflame with the glory of God.” Walter Rauschenbusch

For More: The Rest of God by Mark Buchanan

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: No Outsiders, No “Others” (James Martin and Frederick Buechner)

Posted on by under hospitality, Insiders and Outsiders, Jesus the Savior, Loving Well, Social Justice, The Poor and Disenfranchised

“The movement of Jesus is always from the outside-in: welcoming, inviting, including. Jesus was always including people, bringing them in from the outside.  As James Alison has noted, for Jesus there was no “other.” All were welcome members of his community. By speaking to ‘outsiders,’ healing those who were not part of the Jewish community, as well as his ‘table fellowship’ with the outcasts, Jesus was embodying God’s hospitality. Jesus’s hospitality was the foundation of later patterns of Christian hospitality. In the Middle Ages, St. Benedict, in his set of rules for his religious order gave his monks the dictum, Hospes venit, Christus venit. ‘The guest comes, Christ comes.’ That is, for the Benedictines all guests were to be welcomed as Christ. In the 17th century, St. Alphonsus Rodríguez, a humble Jesuit brother, worked as a porter, or doorkeeper, at the Jesuit college of Majorca, in Spain. His job was to greet all the students, faculty and visitors who rapped on the great wooden door. The humble Jesuit brother had a wonderful way of reminding himself to be cheerful and hospitable to all visitors, and … welcome them as if they were Jesus himself. Upon hearing someone knocking on the door, he would say, ‘I’m coming, Lord!’” James Martin

“Jesus is apt to come, into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable moments. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon, not in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but … at supper time, or walking along a road. …He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.” Frederick Buechner

  “I was a stranger and you invited me in.”
Jesus in Matthew 25:35

“you are no longer foreigners and strangers….”
Ephesians 2:19

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Who are the “foreigners and strangers” in your world? Do you think of them as treasured and loved by Jesus?
  • Do you have elevated expectations of how Jesus would appear, should he appear to you? Would you expect it to be obvious?
  • In Sunday morning church, do you have the attitude, “The guest comes. Christ comes.”?

Abba, don’t let me forget when I was a stranger. Don’t ever let me forget that feeling.

For More: Between Heaven and Mirth by James Martin

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These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”

Daily Riches: No Outsiders, No “Others” (James Martin and Frederick Buechner)

Posted on by under The Poor and Disenfranchised

“The movement of Jesus is always from the outside-in: welcoming, inviting, including. Jesus was always including people, bringing them in from the outside.  As James Alison has noted, for Jesus there was no “other.” All were welcome members of his community. By speaking to ‘outsiders,’ healing those who were not part of the Jewish community, as well as his ‘table fellowship’ with the outcasts, Jesus was embodying God’s hospitality. Jesus’s hospitality was the foundation of later patterns of Christian hospitality. In the Middle Ages, St. Benedict, in his set of rules for his religious order gave his monks the dictum, Hospes venit, Christus venit. ‘The guest comes, Christ comes.’ That is, for the Benedictines all guests were to be welcomed as Christ. In the 17th century, St. Alphonsus Rodríguez, a humble Jesuit brother, worked as a porter, or doorkeeper, at the Jesuit college of Majorca, in Spain. His job was to greet all the students, faculty and visitors who rapped on the great wooden door. The humble Jesuit brother had a wonderful way of reminding himself to be cheerful and hospitable to all visitors, and … welcome them as if they were Jesus himself. Upon hearing someone knocking on the door, he would say, ‘I’m coming, Lord!'” James Martin

“Jesus is apt to come, into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable moments. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon, not in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but … at supper time, or walking along a road. …He never approached from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.” Frederick Buechner

  “I was a stranger and you invited me in,”
Jesus in Matthew 25:35

“you are no longer foreigners and strangers….”
Ephesians 2:19

Moving From the Head to the Heart

  • Who are the “foreigners and strangers” in your life? Do you think of them as treasured and loved by Jesus?
  • Do you have elevated expectations of how Jesus would appear, should he appear to you? Would you expect it to be obvious?
  • In Sunday morning church, do you have the attitude, “The guest comes. Christ comes.”?

Abba, don’t let me forget when I was a stranger. Don’t ever let me forget that feeling.

For More: Between Heaven and Mirth by James Martin

_________________________________________________

These “Daily Riches” are for your encouragement as you seek after God and he seeks after you. I hope you’ll follow my blog, and share it. My goal is to share something of unique value with you daily in 400 words or less. I appreciate your interest!  –  Bill (Psalm 90:14)

“I practice daily what I believe; everything else is religious talk.”