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.