Saturday, August 18, 2018

Genuine Hospitality found in "A Thread of Truth"

To experience genuine hospitality in real life requires real people living authentic and faithful lives.  People who know as much about the brokenness of humanity as they do the fullness of God.  People who themselves have experienced genuine hospitality.  Perhaps the most profound way we experience hospitality is as the stranger, the other.  Whether it's learning the ropes at a new job, finding your place in a new church, breaking into a new circle of friends, adjusting to a new marriage, being assimilated into new family, moving into a new country or community, we all know the feeling of being a stranger, of being the other.  Even more significantly, if we all know the feeling of being a stranger, we also all know the feeling of being welcome or unwelcome as a stranger.  Both of which can inform how we welcome others.  The following reflection is an example of how, as strangers, as the other, we can, as host and guest, experience both unwelcome and welcome.  Furthermore, the following reflection shows how genuine hospitality and living authentic lives can bring the beginnings of healing and love to even the most contentious and hate-filled communities.  

Please note, the following reflection is not mine but belongs to Reese Fullerton, and is a true story.  Fullerton is a professional facilitator, trainer and mediator.  He works to bring people together who have a variety of perspectives and roles in areas of environment, water and land use, education, health, and community development.  Fullerton's goal is to assist people in finding solutions to issues facing the public, local, state or federal decision makers.*  Fullerton's reflection appears and is taken from Wayne Muller's book A life of being, having, and doing enough and is entitled:  "A Thread of Truth"** 


When I was with the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, I worked with a team studying the dynamics and responses to busing and school desegregation in Louisville, Kentucky.  We interviewed everyone who had anything to do with the experience.

On the day I went to interview individual students - both African American and white - who were attending a previously all-white high school, the teacher who was coordinating my time sent me, to my surprise, not individuals one at a time, but a group of twelve white students.  I had already prepared my questions, but instead I asked them about their experience in the past and what had changed with busing and desegregation.  The answers were very clear:  Everything before was fine; now it was awful.  The description of the African American students was horrific - dumb, smelly, rude, uneducated, the n-word, as bad as you could possibly imagine.  One sophomore girl was particularly caustic in her hateful, racist comments and seemed to enjoy using every moment of her time to set the record straight about these terrible "lowlifes."

The mood in the room had reached a near-fever pitch, when a knock on the door was followed by my next group to be interviewed - twelve African American students.  The hush in the room was instant and palpable.  The white students all got up to leave; I said, "No, you can stay, please sit down," which they did.  I then proceeded to ask the newly arrived students the exact same questions I had asked the white students.

The stark reality of the answers - we had no books last year, our school was filled with litter and everything was broken, our teachers were not like the teachers here, the cafeteria was awful - corroborated the answers of the white students.  Except that instead of racial stereotypes, here was the very tender, human side of these new, grateful students.

I realized there was a stifled noise to my left.  I looked over and saw the sophomore girl - the same one who had been so filled with hate - crying, tears streaming down her cheeks.  She stood up and said there was something she needed to say.  Between her deep sobs, she told the African American students what she had just been saying about them - everything, word for word.  Everyone in the room started to engage in the conversation, with much of the support given to the sophomore girl coming from the African American students.

The discussion turned rigorously honest, courageous, and real, and it forever changed the hearts of each one of us.  It was enough to meet each other and tell the truth, to hear each others' stories, enough to learn how profoundly we are all so undeniably connected.  When the teacher came to reclaim her students, they sent her away, so they could continue talking until they felt they had reached a point where they were done, for now.  When they walked out to face the rest of their world, they walked out together.

Genuine hospitality rarely takes the form we expect, as evidenced by Reese Fullerton's experience.  He had gone into the classroom expecting to interview white and African Students about their experience with desegregation and instead witnessed what we can only call a form of abundant life.   I would have loved to have known what the sophomore girl was feeling as she left the classroom that day, having received support and been shown hospitality by the African American students.  The same students for which she had so much hate, the opposite of hospitality, as she entered the classroom earlier.  The humanity, including hers, on display both before and after the African American students entered the classroom, was the trigger that led to the girl's turning and the groups healing.  When we turn from our fragile and flawed view of the world and reorient ourselves towards the glorious vision of abundance God intends for all of creation, we begin to experience the hospitality of God's saving and redeeming work.  Work that gives us hope as it heals and welcomes us into abundant life.  Genuine hospitality is only possible when we engage real people living real lives.  That's why hospitality is such hard, messy, never-ending and thankless work.  Human beings are hard, messy, never-ending projects!  Fortunately, the work of love and mercy, of evangelism and justice, is work we do in partnership with God.  Work first modeled and shaped by Jesus Christ.  Work that is nurtured by the Holy Spirit in and through people of faith.  That's why we, if we're not known for anything else, should be known by our hospitality.  Imagine if every where we went, the people we encountered expected us to welcome them with Christ's love.  That's the glorious vision of God and it can only play out in real life, through the lives of real people.  


* Taken from www.strategicengagement.net/who-we-are-2.  Click to learn more about Reese.
**  Reflection taken from Wayne Muller, "A life of being, having, and doing enough" (New York, New York: Three Rivers Press ©2010) 38-39