Hospitality
“Hospitality
means primarily the creation of 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 to bring men and
women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.”
Henri
Nouwen (Reaching Out: The Three Movements of Spiritual Life, Doubleday, 1975)
Henri
Nouwen, Jesuit priest and prolific writer, covered the three movements of the
spiritual life in his book Reaching Out. First, from loneliness to
solitude; second, from hostility to hospitality; and third, from illusion to prayer.
Being alone can be
miserable or freeing, depending on how content one is with one’s own company.
It requires us to withdraw our dependence for both comfort and stimulation from
other human beings, and to fill that need ourselves. It is the most difficult
of these movements for me and the most essential one.
Until we become comfortable with being alone,
and content not interacting with other people, we will not be able to offer space
for other people to grow and change. We will want to fix them or advise them—in
other words, we will have a personal agenda to “help” them. If we are
self-contained, and comfortable in our own skin, we will allow them space to
change or not change according to their own dictates.
I don’t know about you,
but I entered marriage blind to the behaviors I came to dislike in my spouse. I
didn’t see them because I didn’t want to see them, and I’m sure he did the same
with me. Sometimes, we delude ourselves by thinking the power of our passion
will bring about the change we want. On the unlikely event this happens, we’ve
hit the jackpot, but to be honest, I haven’t seen it happen very often. And
being needled and softly manipulated to change creates hostility in both
people. When we enter relationships with an agenda to change them or to coopt
their personhood to enhance our own, there is no hospitality and no true intimacy.
There is only possession, and it stifles the relationship.
We may think that our relationships
are not part of our spirituality, but, in truth, they are the ultimate test.
Can we love someone who is different from us and different from who we want
them to be? Can we be true to ourselves and let them be true to themselves? Are
we grounded enough in our own solitude to allow them to be different and still offer
them hospitality? When our inner core is strong enough, we not only allow others
that space, but we celebrate our differences. It’s hard to do; but it is also the
most important task of a human lifetime.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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