Like many people, I’m choosing a word to guide me through this new year. Last year, it was heart. This year it is hospitality. Why? What does it mean to me?
The dictionary has this to say:
Hospitality: the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way.
It’s an important part of Benedictine spirituality; St Benedict says in his Rule:
All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, who said “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” … Once guests have been announced, the prioress or abbot and the community are to meet them with all the courtesy of love.
The welcoming of people into my life, and especially into my personal space, is not something I’ve been good at. I have kind of a push/pull relationship with others: I want intimate friendship and I love my friends, and I also value my own company and my solitude. That’s fine, but in recent years the balance has tipped too far into solitude. Subconsciously, I’ve put up all kinds of barriers, both physical: a house too messy and dirty to invite others into (I’m not exaggerating), and mental: cynicism, procrastination, hostility, depression, putting on a good “face”. I’ve become isolated.
So there’s definitely a selfish side to my choice of hospitality as both word and concept. But I’ve decided not to worry about that; a person could go crazy peeling away all the layers in this sort of thing, it’s enough for now to be aware that they exist.
But of course hospitality isn’t only about people. It’s about welcoming into my life all kinds of concepts, ideas and imaginings. And it’s about the less welcome guests, and what I can learn from them. All those negative emotions: what do they mean, what are they signposting?
There’s a poem by Rumi that many of you know, and that I first posted here back in 2007, which expresses this brilliantly:
This being human is a guesthouse;
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
Some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all.
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
Empty of its furniture.
Still treat each guest honourably.
She may be clearing you out for some new delight
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
Meet them all at the door laughing and invite them in
Be grateful for whatever comes
Because each has been sent as
A guide from beyond!
In my more flippant moments, I think of Rumi as an honorary Benedictine, but of course his words point us to the deep wisdom flowing beneath all faiths and all humanity. Christine uses the poem and writes beautifully of this same concept in one of her posts from 2008, Radical Hospitality. And I’ve just found this post by Jan Richardson which talks of the home as sacred space and describes the custom of blessing the house for Epiphany (on the 6th January). She then extrapolates this into thinking of the year we’ve just entered as a space to inhabit. It’s powerful stuff.
So a commitment to hospitality, to welcome, is what the space of this year will mean for me. What about you?
Image by Hamed Saber
Elsewhere:
Words of the year are flourishing everywhere, and I find myself a little envious of some, such as Roxanne’s “discipline”, which I need so badly. And Epiphany Girl’s “courage” was very nearly what I chose. Lucy’s flowing with a watery theme, and Christine is embracing “sovereignty”. I know there must be many I’ve left out, so let me know in the comments.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed
{ 31 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh wow, I’m going to have to check out that Epiphany house blessing. I’m always looking for something meaningful to do on Epiphany (other than celebrate my beloved’s birthday the next day.)
I love the Rumi poem; thanks for sharing it. It echoes what I’ve been recently reading in Anam Cara by John O’Donohue. The idea that we need to be aware of all our voices and parts, but then just simply allow them. I like the approach that he proposes of not analyzing and “working on” ourselves all the time. How would our guests feel if we were constantly doing that to them?
I feel like I’m finally beginning to get a handle on the hospitality thing. I’ve been to every extreme of this issue – from my home being a flophouse for anyone at all, to complete isolation, to trying to control every detail of a guest’s experience. I’m getting stronger in my boundaries while also looser in my need to have everything “perfect.”
I love cooking elaborate sit-down meals for people, and have been surprised that there are many who almost can’t handle this, and see it as making too much of a fuss. Which brings another aspect of this issue into the light for me – being a good guest, being able to actually RECEIVE hospitality. The way you’re talking about it here is a good (any maybe the only) way to develop both aspects together. If you start by being hospitable to yourself, you then come from a place of both graceful giving and graceful receiving.
Great word Tess and lovely post – thanks for the link as well. This kind of inner or “radical hospitality” is something we’ll be exploring a bit more in “Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist” and is one of the concepts I am exploring most deeply right now. (and yes, I will be exploring sovereignty a bit more at my blog too)
Happy New Year!
Yes, Tess, as I read your post, your Rumi poem reminded me of the house blessing I had just seen yesterday.
What strikes me about your choice for ‘hospitality’ is that you see it as something you want to nurture in your life as you feel that you may not always be hospitable to people and events. (If I read you correctly).
I chose another word for a similar reason: ‘lightness’, because I feel so heavy so often.
I am just coming back from the beach where I walked along the shore, my feet in the waves. This need for lightness came to me once again and I moved differently.
I have not explored yet the many facets of lightness as you have so well done with hospitality. I will probably give myself a year for that — going into it ‘lightly’ maybe, something I am not really accustomed to doing.
I will love reading your posts and discovering with you more about your adventures into hospitality.
Tess,
First of all you are one of the most gracious bloggers I know! The compassionate topics you take on, recently such as “Grief,” have helped me enormously.
Emily Dickinson has a wonderful piece on nature and hospitality. The entire poem speaks to divine nature or spirituality in harmony (undecayng cheer), with biological nature. In her time and ours, the natural world was seen as negative (Eden) and the spiritual realm (heaven) as positive in Judeo-Christianity. And I think she has a key there, in changing the way people view nature. This decade ahead will decide our survival as regards global warming. The question of accommodating ourselves to the needs of others environmentally is a question of hospitality.
These are the signs to Nature’s inns,
Her invitation broad
To whomsoever famishing
To taste her mystic bread.
These are the rites of Nature’s house,
The hospitality
That opens with an equal width
To beggar and to bee.
For sureties of her staunch estate,
Her undecaying cheer,
The purple in the East is set
And in the North, the star.
Kigen is right on your being one of the most gracious bloggers
Love the Rumi poem. What a gracious reminder to welcome even those guests that we find unpalatable.
That Rumi poem is close to my heart and is basically the way I have been approaching things lately. I feel like I am clearing out space to be more hospitable once again, now the depression and the slight nervous breakdown of the past several years seems to be passing.
It’s amazing to watch yourself go through different seasons. To see how little you see sometimes. To see how much you see when you are willing to admit those angers and depressions and all those other emotions and to learn from them.
Lovely post, Tess
I think this year for me shall mean something of the same. The extreme solitude of the past few years is sooo 2007. Time to move forward, back into the flow, to entertain hospitality. Yes 
Tess, I am one who has appreciated your hospitality here in blogland.
May your word see you entertaining angels unawares.
I have a word for the first time this year [being a word person, having to pick one has just freaked me out way too much] but one appeared in several ways over the past few weeks ~sanctuary~
@Pollinatrix: what a great point you make about being a good guest also. I wonder if the specific example you quote is something to do with expectation of return.
@Abbey: so looking forward to whatever explorations we take on your course!
@Claire: yes, nurturing of self and others is part of what I envisage. I like your use of the word lightness. We are tethered too often.
@kigen: thank you for sharing the poem by Emily Dickinson – “to beggar and to bee” is especially beautiful. And thank you (and Claire) for describing me as gracious, I suspect many who know me would roar with laughter at such a description, but I’m grateful.
@Roxanne: yes, it’s the unpalatable guests that are the problem – and perhaps the greatest growth.
@Sue: thanks for what you say about clearing space, that’s why I think that literal house-clearing can be so very helpful. And how little we see indeed!
@Kel: glad you plumped for a word, and yes I’m hopeful for angels, unaware or otherwise.
Tess your blog posting is so thought provoking and moving…and the Rumi poem really moving. You move are able to bring what I might have dismissed as my every day mundaneness to a profound focus.
I often ponder on how my flat feels like a fortess. My neighbours I make a point of avoiding ~ and this is practically speaking a necessity.
That you move from Heart to Hospitality so makes sense to me. As Heart is for me linked to Hearth. Our home is where our Heart is. And how much can I open my heart and home? Do I…can I feel at home in my heart or where I am housed?
Human beings have domesticated ourselves. For more of our ancestoral history we were nomadic and did not live in small or large fortresses. We are self-aware and yet has this led us to a healthy evolution and development?
I recently became interested in the Transition Town Movement because of this and other {for me} related concerns. I went to a local meeting but found that the community buidling there was still to far geographically for me to feel that I could connect with.
My flat is an exhibition of my life lived full of rocks, pieces of wood, feather, shell, pictures, books and musical instruments. This exhibition for the most part I have shared with others. But sometimes I feel it is a museum. Am I including Life? Am I living and embracing life?
Too much time is taken up in London for me and others in purchasing posesssions. I know that is how the world is constructed. How capitalism functions. Escapism from the now and being with as Rumi said all that is oneself and not being attached.
And yes I tidy up my flat before I let my friends in. And I mean this literally and metaphorically….for some reason my recycleable rubbish bag has been growing in my kitched.
This also leads me to pondering on the Homeless…how they do not have a house for their posessions so they take their possessions everywhere they go. Do we all need a private space?
So your post for me touches on fundamental questions on how I can be in this society. How to discover and make choices. To grow and change and so be with the cycles of life. Be with divinity which is Nature. Or as they say in Sweden THE Nature!
Elizabeth, I find the Transition Town Movement very attractive. I see it as a a real hope, a true solution for the future of all…
Claire….yes that is what TT is focusing on the solution and support we as a people/society will need for the Transition…really inspirational…there is so much out there about what is going wrong…global warming etc etc…TT gives us real hope I agree
)
Yes, a wonderful word and I understand your thinking in going into a new year with a new word as your intention. I have two words for this year ‘heaven and earth’ and the coming together of two within me . .. it makes sense to me!
@Elizabeth, thank you for this thoughtful response, and if you can believe it I had not myself made the connection between Heart and Home which is now so obvious having read your words! Speaking of Transition Towns, you may be interested in the website of my friend Sally Lever, who is a life coach specialising in downshifting and sustainable living. She has all sorts of interesting things on the site: http://www.sallylever.co.uk/
@Andy! You’re back!! So happy to see you and just sneaked a quick peek at your blog – glad you’re writing again. I love your two words which give me a vision of a kind of mystical rootedness.
Tess, Hospitality is a great word to have for your word of the year. How rich! I too love that poem by Rumi and once in a workshop I attended they read it and then told us that emotions were like guests: invite them in, entertain them, than let them go. It’s only when we try to keep them out that become unbearable! Wonderful post, Tess. Happy new Year!
xo
Tess, I very much appreciated the honesty of this post. The photo is wonderful and so are all the comments. But what really touched me was your admission about your isolation and the state of your house. I feel the same way about this old minka right now. We never do the end-of-the-year cleaning that is a Japanese custom and living deep in the mountains has made it far too easy to both push others away and pull myself farther and farther into solitude. Interestingly, the strong inner compulsion to emerge from this state was one of the reasons for starting up my website/blog. And last night we were invited to a friend’s house for a taste of Japanese hospitality – 12 people sitting on cushions at a heated table, eating, drinking, laughing. It was wonderful and made me realize again how important this sense is. Thank you so much for giving me the word hospitality to think about. To practice hospitality in our daily lives because hospitality welcomes all. Hospitality is about connecting with others, about sharing, about being both the welcome guest and the caring host. Happy New Year to you!
Once again, I find parallels of your life in mine. I would do more inviting of people in, if I could keep the place as tidy as I want it to be. I try to be hospitable in other ways because I find it a crucial Benedictine virtue.
I think I have my word, at last. I have selected joy. I need to focus on finding the joy in my life by cultivating a grateful heart.
tess – i can’t think of a more appropriate word for you. my hope, of course, is to be able to share U.S. hospitality with you in 2010. for now i will share a quote i have been using for awhile.
“Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place.” – Henri Nouwen
xoxoxoxo
Lucy, you posted that quote on your blog recently didn’t you? Or was that someone else? Anyway, ever since I read it I’ve been contemplating it.
And Tess, that ties in to your suggestion about “expectation of return.” That definitely is a factor for me. When I cook for people I deeply long for them to enjoy it, and it’s hard to let that go and just “create the space” for them to enjoy it, or not. My beloved is in the habit of putting oodles of salt and ranch dressing on everything before even tasting it – I have permanent scars on my tongue from biting it about that!
@diantha: thank you, I think it’s wonderful how this poem affects everyone.
@Catrien: there’s a deep suspicion in monastic life of those who want to be hermits. Benedict makes it clear in his first chapter that only those who have lived in a monastery for a long time and have had “the help and guidance of many” can go from community to the “single combat of the desert”. I think your (and my) compulsion to emerge is healthy. Thank you for sharing that image of you all around the heated table.
@Barbara: yes, I often sense those parallels. And “joy” says it all really – a word with wings.
@lucy: I share your hope, and must start plotting!
@Pollinatrix: I expressed myself badly – what I meant was that your guests may think you are setting such high standards of hospitality they may not be able to return it. You “making a fuss” means they feel they have to do so back and can’t just sit and enjoy it. Their problem! Oh dear, the salt – you have my sympathy and congratulations for the tongue-biting!
Oh, Tess, what magic! That Rumi poem speaks directly to me right now, as does your entire post. You are a beautiful welcome guest in the house of my heart this morning. I am about to step back into work and will be assaulted by a whole world of others’ energy. I so risk all of my new mommy furniture being overturned! But there is so much to be taken from each interaction. I may borrow that poem for my own post today.
And so excited to reading about the Epiphany home blessing. I do feel I should be a bit better educated seeing as I throw that word around an awful lot.
Blessings and thanks, Courage and Hospitality,
Marisa
Well, taking it a different way than you meant it helped me anyway. But what you DID mean makes me contemplate how easily gratitude get replaced with guilt and/or fear. It’s hard to keep hospitality pure either as a host or a guest because of that.
I particularly like what I read of the Desert Fathers & Mothers’ hospitality. Here they were, in the desert, fighting their own demons and plodding toward holiness, weaving baskets. Whenever someone happened to come to see them, they dropped their basket-weaving and their conversation with God to enter into a conversation with the person who was in front of them.
I can relate to this, because I usually live in a world of my own where sometimes somebody happens to look for me — or for someone-anyone for that matter. Leaving what I do for a while, I can face. My home is found as it is.
Ah, Tess, your hospitality word is working on all of us. What a gift
@Marisa: I just left a comment on your post – courage new mom!
@Pollinatrix: great observation about the purity (lack of) of hospitality.
@claire: and I’m sure those ancient people found God as often in the person in front of them.
Your blog gave me a jolt! I, too, have become more withdrawn, less outgoing, have found conversations (whether face to face, by letter, or e-mail) too demanding and requiring effort I couldn’t be asked to make. My yearly Christmas letter didn’t materialise because I felt there was ‘nothing to report’. Over the last year I gave all this a positive spin: ‘Maybe I was really meant to be a hermit/solitary? maybe I am just not as needy as I used to be? what’s wrong with being happy in your own company and in solitude? have some friendships just run their course?’ Of course, there may be some truth in all of this, but there seems to be a streak of ‘disengagement’ running through my life which makes it smaller, less exciting, and in the long-term empty.
I do think there is a clearing out process going on which is good and necessary, a focusing on what needs to go, and what needs to remain and be nurtured. I have a sneaking suspicion that my word for this year ought to be ‘effort’ but that does not feel good. And so I have settled for energy.
Energy for what counts – people, interests, prayer. Not dissipated energy which makes me run dry, but an energy that means presence. An openness to giving and receiving. And yes, the ‘de-cluttering’ has to continue, gently, life has to have focus. But it shouldn’t lead to an unwanted emptiness. It will be interesting to see how our journeys continue.
Syb: I could have written your phrases about positive spin (well I am a 3 after all!). I love what you say about types of energy and focus. It’s so interesting, this life business, isn’t it?
Peace be with you Tess,
A wonderful post. Thank you for sharing it with us. Hospitality is a wonderful word/theme/concept to explore through the course of a year, and for me, one that is heavily pregnant with meaning. In the Islamic tradition, hospitality is an integral part of prophetic teaching – indeed, you might almost say it was the entire way of the prophets (peace be upon them all). It is particularly connected to the figure of Abraham (peace be upon him) in Islamic thought. This short post I wrote a while ago might be of interest: http://thecorner.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/the-tent-of-adab/ The fact that this tent belongs to Abraham, the common father of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, is also significant.
Hospitality is also connected with wider ideas, and is subsumed under the interesting and rich term ‘adab’. Literally meaning ‘manners’ or ‘ettiquette’, it really describes ‘appropriate action’. It can also mean ‘education’ – someone with adab is well-educated and well-mannered – and thus is also the term in Arabic for literature.
Adab is VERY important in Sufi thought. One prominent master said: ‘the whole of the path is adab’. Mevlana Rumi has much to say on this topic. On a much lower level, I’ve written on various aspects of this idea myself in a number of places. Here’s a useful starting point if you are interested: http://thecorner.wordpress.com/2009/11/10/mevlana-and-me/
Thank you also for the lovely, and profound quote from Mevlana Rumi (God sanctify his noble soul).
Abdur Rahman
Sorry to go on, but I just wanted to add a couple of other references. The Quran attributes this beautiful prayer to Nuh/Noah (peace be upon him): ‘My Lord, forgive me and my parents and whoever enters my house in faith…’ (Surah Nuh 71:28), whilst Muhammad (peace be upon him) is reported to have said: ‘Whoever believes in Allah and the Last Day should be hospitable to his guest…’
Abdur, thank you so much for these thoughtful words and perspectives. I’ve just been reading the links you give with great interest, and am glad to know the extent of the Sufi emphasis on this point.
I’m conscious also of the extent to which Jesus/Yeshua/Isa’s life and ministry emphasises hospitality, as He tramps the dusty hot roads, finding shelter at various places along the way, and His teachings speak of it and demand it. And Paul says “Let hope keep you joyful; in trouble stand firm; persist in prayer; contribute to the needs of God’s people, and practise hospitality.” (Rm 12:12&13)
Tess–Happy (continued!) New Year! Your beautiful reflection on hospitality has lingered with me over the past month–there was so much in it that resonated for me and took me deeper in my own musings and questions about hospitality and how (and whether) I offer it. I continually live with the gifts and challenges of the dance between solitude and community, and how to move back and forth across that threshold.
Lovely to see “The Guest House” here; this poem was my introduction to Rumi, a bunch of years ago, and the beginning of a long love affair with his work.
I really want to lift up the way that you offer hospitality in cyberspace and to offer my gratitude for this. In the rather ethereal medium of cyberspace, your blog is a real space of beauty and power that offers sanctuary to those of us who need what you provide here. It is no small thing, the welcome you give us here.
So here, on the heels of the Feast of St. Brigid (who said, “Every guest is Christ”) and the Feast of Candlemas, know that I am thankful for the light that you continually leave burning in the window of this house named Anchors and Masts. Blessings to you in this season!
Jan: thank you, I’m really grateful for the warmth and kindness of your comment. I feel I should be spitting out some tobacco and saying Aw shucks, ma’am, ain’t nothin’.
{ 3 trackbacks }