THE RECIPROCITY OF HOSPITALITY

Concerning hospitality, I am still processing...

In last Wednesday's post, I concluded that true hospitality requires both a generous heart and great courage, because true hospitality means inviting others into our world to commune with us not as visitors, but as intimates. (Read full post HERE.)

But hospitality is not a one-way transaction: hospitality is a dialogue. True hospitality entails bold, sacrificial action, and that action in turn necessitates a re-action. One person extends hospitality; another person receives that hospitality.

Post Japan, I have been trying to make sense of my experience of hospitality here at home in the hills of Tennessee. While I feel that many of us good ol' Southern folk have traded big, brave, genuine hospitality for its pale, timid, weaker little sister - Good Manners - I fear that many of us have also forgotten the art of reciprocity: we have forgotten how to truly receive. We have lost the gift of genuine "Thank you."

Like hospitality, the genuine "Thank you!" is a big, bold, courageous, sacrificial thing, too. It means laying aside my expectations and preferences, and actively choosing to be content with - no, to even delight in - that which I have been given. It means celebrating with my host, instead of just nodding and smiling politely from the sidelines. It means eating the octopus balls when what I really want is pork chops and gravy...and then realizing that the octopus balls are, yes, actually quite delicious.

Oh, how prone I am to "What I'd really prefer is..." - and - "Can I please have ---- instead?" - and - "Do you have anything else?" But true hospitality means meeting the light in my hostess's eyes as she offers me her holiday best with a reciprocal light in my own eyes that says, "Oh, how lovely!"

Alas! I find that I am prone to be DOUBLY inhospitable - how often I fail at hospitality in both directions!

Extending true hospitality requires a generous and courageous heart. Receiving hospitality requires a generous and courageous heart, too.

I want to be that big and that brave, after Japan.

NOW THAT FALL HAS OFFICIALLY ARRIVED...

Pumpkins. Pumpkins to eat, pumpkins to paint, pumpkins to carve...so many pumpkins!

Autumn in West Tennessee:  the weather alternates between summer-winter-summer-winter-summer-..., until it finally decides to let go of summer altogether and stay chilly for more than three days in succession. I am enjoying the cooler weather.

Other signs of fall in our neck of the woods include:

Hot spiced tea. My daughter says it smells like autumn in a cup.

Soup! Soups, chili, and stews are on the menu at least once a week, if not more. This week: "Hot Pot," made with smoked sausage, cabbage, onions, potatoes, and chicken stock. Mmmmm!

Pumpkin bread. My mom's recipe, made into sandwiches filled with pineapple-cream cheese spread.

Chex mix. I'm not sure why, but here at Kendallville, we only make this in the fall.

Our baking project for this weekend.

Real hot chocolate. Whole milk, cocoa, and sugar, simmered on the stove until steamy, then ladeled into mugs and topped with whipped cream. Yum!

Marshmallows. Toasted over a fire outside or inside in the fireplace. I don't stock marshmallows any other time of the year. Fall and on into winter, we sometimes go through a bag or more a week.

(Hmmmm, why do so many of our autumn traditions involve FOOD?)

Mums. My daughter just called to say she picked up several on clearance. We're having a planting party when she gets home from work this afternoon.

FIRE! Helen is planning our first conflagration of the season, hoping a special someone will be back home in Tennessee in time to enjoy a chilly October evening sitting around the fire with family and friends.

Fall weather means: time for a bonfire!

How does YOUR family celebrate the arrival of fall?

AFTER JAPAN: HOSPITALITY

Life presents relationships, challenges, and experiences that are best described as before-&-after events.

They create clear lines of demarcation in how we think, feel, relate, and engage - who we were before, who we are after.

Before Christ. After Christ.
Before children. After children.
Before cancer. After cancer.
Before Japan. After Japan.

Two completely different worlds.

So, how am I different, after Japan?

I am still processing, so my answer to that question is not yet fully formed. I do know, however, that I am not the same person I was a month ago. I do not want to be the same person.

While in Japan, my thinking was challenged significantly in two important areas: 1.) hospitality, and 2.) the visible church.

I was born and raised in the South. Hospitality is as much a part of my heritage as grits and cornbread. Everyone's heard of "Southern hospitality," right? We Southerners speak Hospitality fluently - it's our native tongue.

That's what I thought before Japan.

After Japan, I'm not so sure. I'm afraid many of us Southerners have traded true hospitality for a weak impostor: good manners.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for good manners and polite discourse. We should endeavor to always treat others with courtesy, respect, and kindness.

But good manners - does not equal - hospitality. Let me try to explain with an illustration...

Good manners is greeting the visitor at church on Sunday with a smile and a handshake: "Good morning! Welcome! We are so glad you are here. I hope you enjoyed the service, and that you'll come back again soon."

Hospitality is...

The young woman invited us to her house for the weekend. "Please! Come and stay! I want you to be my guests!" After the six of us arrived at her tiny abode, the woman confided to my daughter, "I am so glad you are here! But I wonder...where will everyone sleep?"

The houses I visited in Japan were small: a compact kitchen/living area, a bathroom/washroom, a sleeping room. Many single college students in America live in apartments that in Japan would accommodate a family of four.

A well-mannered Southern hostess would know better than to invite overnight guests to her house if she did not have space to accommodate them. Better to just smile, shake hands, say "So nice to meet you!" - and leave it at that. Be polite...but don't get all crazy!

But for my young Japanese friend, love for others trumped everything else. Her great concern was not - Do I have enough beds/bowls/cups for everyone? Rather, her great desire was fellowship, conversation around a common table, shared stories and laughter. She raced past "So nice to meet you" and pressed right on into "Please, come into my world, such as it is. I want to share my life with you!"

I visited many beautiful places while I was in Japan: ancient temples, fabulous gardens, parks and restaurants. Nothing was as beautiful as my young friend's home and the hospitality she and her family extended to us there.

After our visit, my daughter commented that true hospitality requires courage, because it demands that we be vulnerable. True hospitality means inviting others into our world, to commune with us not as visitors, but as family.

Politeness, good manners - those, while good, generally require neither courage nor vulnerability. They also don't require much heart. I can be polite even if I don't feel like it, even if I don't like you.

True hospitality requires a generous heart, and, yes, Martha, it requires courage.

I want to be that big and that brave, after Japan.

LIFE OUTSIDE OF TIME

My internal clock is all out of whack.

I am not sure what day of the week it is, nor am I confident of today's date. I do know we are in the month of October now - yay, me!

My daily rhythms are off. My weekly rhythms are off. I feel like I am living life outside of time.

This time confusion is not without its advantages, though.

Life here in Japan is lived fourteen hours ahead of life in West Tennessee. It is six o'clock in the evening here. Martha is cooking dinner.

It is four o'clock in the morning in West Tennessee - four o'clock this morning, the one already past here in Japan - and it is four o'clock in Mississippi...and four o'clock in the morning is a wonderful time to pray for the day ahead for those I love back home.

My prayer sisters pray throughout the day back in Tennessee. And then, as their day ends, my day begins, and the baton is passed. It is pretty cool to know that we are praying for one another around the clock.

Before I adjust to day and night on the far side of the world, it will be time to head home, time to throw another wrench into the gears of my already malfunctioning internal clock.

I anticipate another season of time confusion. I wonder what blessings it will bring?

WEDNESDAY IN JAPAN

I can't think of anything that makes a person feel more like a near-goddess than bathing outdoors in the middle of a forest in a pool fed by a steaming hot river...

Sainokawara Open Air Bath

...except maybe bathing with your daughter and granddaughter after hiking up a mountain in brisk fall air.

Observations from a day of adventuring in Gunma Prefecture, Japan:

I always heard the Garden of Eden was located somewhere over in the Fertile Crescent, on the Sinai Peninsula. Perhaps whoever made that claim had never visited Japan.

On the train, on the bus, in a restaurant, on the street, in the shops...the Japanese people have overwhelmed me with their friendliness, helpfulness, and hospitality. The people here are beautiful.

I have an awesome son-in-law. Thank you, Justin, for this opportunity to not only enjoy time with your family, but to also explore your new home. It is lovely!

THIS BIG, BEAUTIFUL BRIDE

When you attend a very small church in a rural community that has little interaction with the world beyond the county line, it is easy to develop a small, narrow understanding of how Jesus's people look and talk and how they worship together.

It is good, sometimes, to step outside the bounds of one's normal routines of interaction, to see Christ's church with fresh eyes, to listen with fresh ears.

Sunday, I was blessed to attend the International Church in Takasaki with my daughter and her family. Among the small group of worshipers were representatives from five continents. The sermon was presented in two different languages. Believers from Italy, Zimbabwe, and Japan raised their voices together in songs of praise to our Redeemer.

It was a long service. Translating a sermon into multiple languages takes time. Singing a hymn in first one language, then in another, takes time. It was a long service; but reluctant to part after the closing prayer, those gathered lingered late into the evening for conversation and fellowship.

I was a visitor, an outsider...and yet I was made to feel very much at home. I, too, was loathe to part company with these precious believers.

I wonder: would these sweet brothers and sisters have been welcomed as warmly and made to feel as much at home if they attended my little church in the hills of Tennessee? Or would they have been too different?

* * *

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, "Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb." - Revelation 7:9-10