Providing Stable Hospitality

It has become increasingly clear to me with the passing of the years that in one sense, I can do very little for another person.  If he or she is troubled, bewildered or confused, I cannot clear up that trouble or confusion.  No matter how clearly I think I see his or her state, and no matter how much I long to clear up that person’s situation, I simply cannot do it.  If a person is anxious, I cannot make that anxiety go away.  No matter how much I long to do it, no matter how much I care, I cannot make that person’s anxiety go away.  If a person is blocked by fear or circumstance and unable to move forward, or if a person is adamant about this or that political or societal issue, there is nothing I can do, until he or she is ready to move forward or to change.  No argument, no discussion of facts, no evidence will dissuade.  If a person feels that he is not loved, I cannot make him  feel that he is, no matter how many times I affirm this for him.  He or she will not know until they are given the mysterious power of making their own faith assumption that they are loved.  In most of the needs and problems people are up against in life, there is little or nothing that I can do.  I feel powerless and helpless in the face of this reality.  

There is, however, one thing I can do.  I can create a friendly space in which a person can “eat and drink and rest and recover from his fatigue.”  I can be a host.  I can offer hospitality to those who come my way, friends, strangers, neighbors, and enemies, providing them a friendly space to talk freely about, and to work out their needs, whatever they may be.  This  friendly space will be one in which they are given time to look at their issues, discover their own options, and find their own solutions.  It is a friendly place, a friendly space, where they can discover themselves, and be free to sing their own song, dance their own dance, free also, to follow the leadings of their own hearts.  It is not a space where I try to make the person into my image, or try to tell her what she should or should not be or what she should or should not do.  It is not a place or space where I get him in a corner and try to persuade him to come around to my opinions, my beliefs,  or my political agenda.  

In the Christmas narrative we read of that Innkeeper of Bethlehem, who turned away  a stranger—a young man and his pregnant wife—because there was no room for them in his Inn.    How we have denigrated him through the centuries!   Yet, that Innkeeper did that which we as individuals, society, nation and world refuse to do these days. He had no room in his Inn, but he provided them another place—a stable—a friendly space where they could “eat and drink and rest and recover from their fatigue” and give birth to their firstborn son.  He did more for the strangers at his door than we do for the strangers at our door.  He provided them a stable hospitality.