“Come on in, take a seat,
Come on in, take a seat with Love”
“The presence of our love is here”
Our voluntaries this morning speak of a joyful, ecstatic welcome, welcoming that great Spirit of Love. And it is tangible. We can feel it in the atmosphere, right here and now, a presence for us to acknowledge and honor.
I was excited to learn that DeReau had chosen these songs for us this morning because they speak to us about the roots of an age-old hospitality tradition that I want us to explore together. Across the millennia, exhibited in cultures and expressed in religious traditions around the world, we can find a commitment to hospitality, because to invite in the stranger is an act of inviting in the holy.
The Bible is full of this stuff:
Hebrews 13:2 “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
Romans 15:7 “Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.”
And, from the Quran: “It is righteous to spend of your substance out of love for Allah. For your kin, for the needy, for the wayfarer, for those who ask”
In Buddhism–this is from a Theravada text I encountered–a guest is seen as a “field of merit” where planting seeds of care and generosity is seen as an investment in the spiritual growth and happiness of both parties.
I could go on for a whole sermon about the spiritual duty to hospitality, and indeed many have. Especially in this age of criminalizing immigration, sermons about radical hospitality proliferate. Marilyn Sewell, First Unitarian’s Minister Emeritus even has one from the early 2000s published on the UUA website.
Radical Hospitality is a virtue we should practice, and celebrate. But, as humans, we play many roles in our lifetimes, so we might want to develop philosophies and practices around not only hosting but also being guests.
Now, I fully believe that there are ways to embody hospitality that are deeply humble. But, I also see that, in many communities I’ve been a part of, we find it much easier to imagine ourselves into that host role, and I want to investigate it. On a conscious level, it could be that we know ourselves to be relatively stable, and stationary, people. We do not expect that we will ever need to be refugees, travelers to be received.
And, I also wonder, for those of us who inhabit dominant cultural identities, if we are used to being in positions of more power, used to folding in hospitality to models of “charity” that assume dominant roles.
So today, in the name of humility, let’s leave behind this narrow focus on hospitality. Let’s imagine ourselves into the role of guest, and explore together what that might look like as a spiritual practice.
I wanted to talk about this today because it is something that has been on my mind since moving to Portland to join you all. It is a strange experience to be invited to a new city, nearly 3,000 miles from home to join a community you have almost no prior relationship with. And then, to be asked to get to know people, take on an integral leadership role, and say your goodbyes in one year. At least I’ve found it strange. One thing that has made it more comfortable has been remembering that I am a guest here.
In doing so, I found out that I wish I approached life, and whatever place I receive mail at, with this “guest” mentality much earlier in my life. Don’t worry, this is not a sermon for people in one-off transitory periods of life, it is for us all.
So, what does it mean to be a good guest?
One of the readings that Reverend Tom shared starts us in a good direction thinking about this. In it, the author argues that there is an art to being a good guest. That you ask for little from those whose care you are in, and you appreciate everything you are given.
He says, “The good guest then simply allows the other person to be a good host–to share his gifts, to play her music, to tell his stories, to show her places, and to serve his foods.”
In this model, all that needs to be given in return is gratitude.
But there’s more to it than that, right? In many cultures, including my own, a good guest makes an effort not to show up empty-handed, in a literal way.
When I go over to someone’s house for dinner, I ask “what can I bring?” and even if my host says “nothing, don’t worry about it” I still offer something: a bottle of wine, a dessert, flowers. And, I bring ready hands, prepared to set the table and wash dishes, if my host needs that, right?
A good guest does not need to be quiet, meek, and receptive only. Rather, being a good guest is about letting our hosts take the lead. We trust them to offer us what they will, and show to us what they are ready to receive in return.
And certainly, it’s not only the host’s responsibility to tell stories and play music! To be a guest is to enter into a reciprocal relationship where we have a responsibility to share the gifts we have, to tell tales of the places, the worlds we know.
So how does this transfer to being a guest in a new community? A new city? This is something we get a chance to practice when we travel, or when we move somewhere for a short time.
An easy place to start is by doing our research. How did this community come to be? Who does it include? Is there anyone it has excluded? What are the cultural values it holds? How are these values expressed in daily life? In infrastructure?
We might start this work by looking online, or reading books. But ultimately, there will come a time when it is more useful to learn by getting to know the people who know that place, who call it home.
This guest mindset is about remembering that we have a lot to learn from others, that it is ok to encounter different cultural norms, different histories than we are familiar with. There will likely be different ways of doing things than we are used to, and there is so much value to learning from locals about this.
To arrive somewhere as a guest is to arrive humbly, ready to enter into a reciprocal relationship where we let those who host us take the lead, and show us what gifts of ours are needed.
It also feels important that we talk about our other reading this morning: First Unitarian’s Land Acknowledgement, written in the past decade as an attempt for this congregation to investigate its relationship to the land we occupy.
While I still believe there is a lot to be gained by thinking of oneself as a guest, there is also a dire need to complicate this narrative. To put it frankly, how can I call myself a guest on stolen land?
The notion of being a “guest” implies an invitation, a readiness on the part of the host, an assumption that the guest will not blunder in and take more than is given.
Especially for people, like myself, and like many of you, who have European settler ancestry, we cannot forget that so-called Oregon, as we know it, only exists because our forebears did not see themselves as guests.
It was only a few generations ago, not long before the founding of this congregation that the First Peoples of this land were displaced while white settlers swooped in to take that same land for homesteading. Further, the state of Oregon has a history of racist policies that have created more distinct boundaries around who could be allowed here as “guests” and under what conditions.
These include, but are not limited to the Oregon Exclusion laws with specific anti-Black rules and practices, policies of Chinese Exclusion, the rounding up of Japanese Americans into concentration camps, and racist housing policies like redlining to segregate people within our cities and prevent certain groups from building intergenerational wealth.
Within this context, I must admit that calling myself a “guest” feels like it is coming from a place of arrogance. Something I have learned in my time here is that I want to be very honest about the history and the context of this place that I am inhabiting. And to be honest, “guest” doesn’t fully feel like the right word anymore.
So is there a better word to use? In many ways, it would be more accurate for many of us to call ourselves settlers.
Ruth Koleszar-Green is a scholar of Haudenosaunee heritage who has written, in consultation with other traditional teachers, on this exact question. She asserts that “Being a Guest is just as much work as being a host” that “The Guest learns the history and current story of the land they are guests on! They politicize that understanding. [And] Finally, they listen to and learn protocols which do not appropriate, but [rather] unsettle the privilege of ignorance… [and they use their privilege] in a way that does not center themself but centers the community.”
In Koleszar-Green’s model, the work of becoming a Guest is a movement away from being a settler and into an active practice toward decolonization. I take this in as a real call-to-action, with a weightier responsibility than simply receiving what is given with gratitude.
In this light, it might be better to think of myself as “learning to be a guest” rather than simply already being one. It is not a mindset attitude, but a process of becoming.
Robin Wall Kimmerer has talked about this too, urging people of settler positioning to shift their relationship to the places they live.
Her essay “In the Footsteps of Nanabozho: Becoming Indigenous to a Place” is about just that. She writes about the figure of Nanabozho, the Anishinaabe Original Man and his model journey to figure out how to live as a human on the earth. We might do well to follow in his footsteps, as he was instructed to “walk so that each step is a greeting to Mother Earth.”
To do so would be to disrupt patterns of violence perpetuated by many of our ancestors, by many of our compatriots today. The destruction that settler colonialism has brought to this continent is an unfathomable loss. I learned recently at the Oregon Historical Society, that an estimated 90% of indigenous people in this region were lost to violence and disease in the time of European settlement. This amount of tragedy is nothing short of genocide, and this same scale of loss has occurred in many species throughout our ecosystem.
Kimmerer writes, “Had the new people learned what Original Man was taught at a council of animals–never damage Creation, and never interfere with the sacred purpose of another being–the eagle would look down on a different world. The salmon would be crowding up the rivers, and passenger pigeons would darken the sky. Wolves, cranes, Nehalem, cougars, Lenape, old-growth forests would still be here, each fulfilling their sacred purpose. I would be speaking Potawatomi. It does not bear too much imagining, for in that direction lies heartbreak…
“But I need to remember that the grief is the settlers’ as well. They too will never walk in a tallgrass prairie where sunflowers dance with goldfinches. Their children have also lost the chance to sing at the Maple Dance. They can’t drink the water either.”
It is true, to imagine it is to feel heartbreak. No matter how much we would like to turn back the clock, we cannot undo the past. But we, people alive here and now, have a responsibility, at the very least, to not perpetuate the same violence. For some of us, to call ourselves “settlers” may very well be historically accurate, but it is not somewhere we can rest.
The work is in learning to be a Guest, to be a good guest. Let’s learn to listen for where we are actually invited, to offer the gifts we have that are needed, to ask questions, share stories. And, we can also keep in mind those who will be here, after we are gone, by putting an effort into ensuring that this is a suitable place, a good place, for future generations.
Whatever identities we hold, whatever terminology we use, it is clear that the way things are going is not working. A part of the journey toward Beloved Community will be unsettling any white supremacy cultural forces that determine how we relate to the places we inhabit.
In the end, we are all guests in these body homes, on this earth home. Our spirits rest here for some time, and then move on. This truth is inescapable, and it is humbling.
We would do well to remember how impermanent, how short, this life is, and to move through it as though we really were guests.
How can we listen more? How can we be mindful of how much we consume? How can we offer, time and again, our gifts of service, art, and sustenance? How can we show our gratitude?
This may come more naturally to some of us, and for others of us, there may be habits and norms we need to unlearn. For there to be radical hospitality in the world, there must also be those of us who are ready, humble, and committed to the responsibility of being a good guest.
This practice is all of our work, and it is no small task. I hope we’ll keep at it, together.
Topics: Humility