What is Spirituality? Part IX: Hospitality

The final movement of the spiritual life is to focus on the Hearts of Others, as we move from hostility to hospitality. Now this is not inviting someone over for tea and cookies, although it may include that. It is the movement from the Latin hostis which means “enemy, stranger, foreigner,” to the Latin hostes which means being a “host” who welcomes the other as a “guest.”

We are living in a time of great confusion, anger, fear, misunderstanding, defensiveness and hurt feelings. We live in a time where nearly everyone seems to have an opinion and a need to express it. So much of our conversation, however, is talking past each other. As such, there seems to be no lack of hostility that continues to grow as we each feel misunderstood and unheard.

And so how do we turn that hostility into hospitality? If Nouwen is correct, it is through trying to suspend our own needs and convictions long enough to really listen to the other, not in order to convince them of the truth of what we believe, but so that we can come to a deeper understanding and appreciation of what the other person believes and needs.

For example, can we come to a deeper understanding of the fear of parents right now, whether it be the fear of sending their children to school in the midst of this pandemic, or the fear of parents of children of color who realize daily that they cannot protect their children from violence, including death.

James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates 

The late Toni Morrison said Ta-Nehisi Coates was the intellectual who for her filled the void left after James Baldwin died, and she describes his Between the World and Me as "visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory. This is required reading."

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s powerful book is a letter to his son:

Now at night, I held you and a great fear, wide as all our American generations, took me. . . . . Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and you come to us as endangered. [We are] a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over them. . . . It was only after you that I understood this love, that I understood the grip of my mother’s hand. She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon the curb like bum wine. [82-83]

The first step in learning how to really listen to each other is to create a “safe space.”

Hospitality, therefore, means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. 

It is not a method of making our God and our way into the criteria of happiness, but the opening of an opportunity to others to find their God and their way. [Nouwen, Reaching Out, 51]

We may find this kind of hospitality difficult to offer, because we are so used to our relationships being transactional: that is, each party is in it for themselves and there is the assumption that if I give you something, you will give me something in return. 

We cannot change other people by our convictions, stories, advice and proposals, but we can offer a space where people are encouraged to disarm themselves, to lay aside their occupations and preoccupations and to listen with attention and care to the voices speaking in their own center. [54]

And so, a first step is to be able to empty ourselves so that we can be a good host. Nouwen continues:

Someone who is filled with ideas, concepts, opinions and convictions cannot be a good host. There is no inner space to listen, no openness to discover the gift of the other. Poverty of mind as a spiritual attitude is a growing willingness to recognize the incomprehensibility of the mystery of life. Poverty of mind demands the continuing refusal to identify God with any concept, theory, document or event.

A good host not only has to be poor in mind but also poor in heart. When our heart is filled with prejudices, worries, jealousies, there is little room for a stranger. In a fearful environment it is not easy to keep our hearts open to the wide range of human experiences. Real hospitality, however, is not exclusive but inclusive, and creates space for a large variety of human experiences. [74, 75]

In countless ways and places around our nation we have the opportunity to really listen to what people of color are trying to tell us about the pain and suffering they have been enduring for over 400 years. Is it possible that we might have some unique opportunities right now to really connect at a deep level?  Can we use this time to try to understand more deeply that there is experience and history beyond what we have each experienced, but which, if we are willing to listen, can teach us about the other and help us work together to transform the world into a place of greater equality, justice, peace and hope?

In these days when we may not be able to sit down across the table from someone whose experiences have been different than ours, we can still open ourselves to the unique experiences of others by reading their first-hand accounts of suffering, whether that be because of racism, coronavirus, poverty, sexism, inadequate health care, poor schools, or any of the multitude of ways in which people suffer today. 

As Nouwen writes, “When we are willing to detach ourselves from making our own limited experience the criterion for our approach to others, we may be able to see that life is greater than our life, history is greater than our history, experience greater than our experience and God greater than our God." [76]

Recent March in Selma, Alabama

We can then merge our own history and experience into the history and experience of others, and finally experience true community and solidarity. Such solidarity and deeper appreciation and understanding is what can transform the problems and challenges of our world, and at the same time fill our own lives with deeper meaning and purpose.