“Hospitality” is strange and risky. Periodically, I stop to remember that the linguistic root for “hospitality,” as well as “host,” “hospital,” and “hospice,” was the Indo-European word ghosti. The contemporary words “ghost” and even “hostile” come from the same root because ghosti also referred to “stranger” as well as “guest” and even a “host of enemies” (Helen Luke, “The Stranger Within,” Parabola, Winter, 1990, p. 17). Deep within the word “hospitality” is a hint of fear and danger, slipping back and forth between comfort and risk. The encounter Abraham and Sarah had with the three strangers by the Oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18) describes this slippery and risky phenomenon. Desert rules required that hospitality be extended to strangers who approached the tents of a nomad. Note how the language of the passage shifts: first Abraham and Sarah are the hosts offering comfort and blessings and then almost instantly they become God’s guests and recipients of a challenge, a call to a new realm and a blessing. Henri Nouwen, in his book Here and Now, describes hospitality as creating a space for the guest to explore and develop in her own unique way. In a seminary that means the teachers and administrators start out by playing hosts, providing a safe and welcoming environment conducive to personal and intellectual exploration, and providing stimulating resources such as readings, lectures, discussions, assignments. If the faculty and staff insist that their own familiar agendas for the students take precedence over the students’ own unique and sometimes strange personal, spiritual and intellectual development, they diminish hospitality and miss the blessing. In a truly safe and open space guests and hosts trade places and the learners also teach and guide faculty and staff into new challenges, new realms, and new blessings. The more “strange” the students are, the more the seminary needs to extend risky hospitality and thereby unknowingly entertain angels (Hebrews 12:2).
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Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Hospitality as the Way of Teaching and Learning in a Seminary
“Hospitality” is strange and risky. Periodically, I stop to remember that the linguistic root for “hospitality,” as well as “host,” “hospital,” and “hospice,” was the Indo-European word ghosti. The contemporary words “ghost” and even “hostile” come from the same root because ghosti also referred to “stranger” as well as “guest” and even a “host of enemies” (Helen Luke, “The Stranger Within,” Parabola, Winter, 1990, p. 17). Deep within the word “hospitality” is a hint of fear and danger, slipping back and forth between comfort and risk. The encounter Abraham and Sarah had with the three strangers by the Oaks of Mamre (Genesis 18) describes this slippery and risky phenomenon. Desert rules required that hospitality be extended to strangers who approached the tents of a nomad. Note how the language of the passage shifts: first Abraham and Sarah are the hosts offering comfort and blessings and then almost instantly they become God’s guests and recipients of a challenge, a call to a new realm and a blessing. Henri Nouwen, in his book Here and Now, describes hospitality as creating a space for the guest to explore and develop in her own unique way. In a seminary that means the teachers and administrators start out by playing hosts, providing a safe and welcoming environment conducive to personal and intellectual exploration, and providing stimulating resources such as readings, lectures, discussions, assignments. If the faculty and staff insist that their own familiar agendas for the students take precedence over the students’ own unique and sometimes strange personal, spiritual and intellectual development, they diminish hospitality and miss the blessing. In a truly safe and open space guests and hosts trade places and the learners also teach and guide faculty and staff into new challenges, new realms, and new blessings. The more “strange” the students are, the more the seminary needs to extend risky hospitality and thereby unknowingly entertain angels (Hebrews 12:2).
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With respect to the fear haunting the spirit of hospitality, it is worth looking at Jacques Derrida's little book On Hospitality, an extended conversation on the ambiguity of the concept.
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