who has a seat at your table?

My interest in raising children is on par with my interest in owning a dog, and anyone who knows me knows that I am not a dog person. (But that’s not where I am going with this blogpost.)

That being said, there is something that I envy that is very innate in the struggle of raising children, and what it all produces. Every time I go to Susan and Andy’s it becomes more and more difficult because I envy the love they have in their family. I envy it so much, it nearly brings me to tears, questioning my own human capacity to be capable of the day-to-day work required for raising children. They have two kids. Henry is five and Cal is two; I have been their weekly babysitter since I moved to Nashville. I am far from being a great babysitter, but they accept me anyway, even when I serve their kids garlic bread for dinner. They are members of the vast family that I have acquired on my life journey; it is a journey in which I have relied upon the loving and giving hearts of strangers who have evolved into forever friends.

Like Kathleen and her children. They have continued to provide for me, a sacred space for love, honesty, and understanding, and all without justification or trial. While the essential timing and unbelievably sincere and sacred efforts stand alone, the Harrington clan is not alone in having been welcoming to me. I have a long list of people to whom I should write heart-felt letters to about the grace, forgiveness, devotion and hospitality shown to me during my adult life everywhere from Jerusalem to Montana. If I knew I was going to die tomorrow, it is unlikely that I would sit around with my best friends or the people I see often. I would probably want to visit people like my friend Marcia in San Francisco, who offered me hospitality during a time of suffering and loneliness.

Patience and hospitality are the earthly things capable to create the welcoming conditions for the kingdom. If I have learned anything from divinity school, I have learned that hospitality is the heart of Christianity. As a liberation theologian, that specifies hospitality for the materially poor, - first and foremost. And parenthood seems to be baptism by fire about hospitality. The lines of mine and yours become less delineated. The thing, I believe, that separates parental love from eros (erotic love), agape (community love), or philos (fraternity), - is the willingness to engage is a particular type of kenosis if you will - - the willingness to empty yourself and die for your child. There is almost a joy in the thought of it.

St. Augustine might say that if we start acting hospitable, we will become hospitable. Choices can become our habits and our habits can become our nature.

Today, let us live with a spirit of hospitality.