A Little Different

Last week on Wednesday some of the young people who are our neighbors went out to interview another neighbor named Joe King. Joe is the founder and director of the Dirty Dozen Hunting & Fishing Club. Joe has lived in Indianapolis his whole life. He's worked in insurance. In his retirement he and his friends, all African-American men, have started this club. They spend time with young people and their families. They go on trips together, they fish together, they hunt together and they talk together.

Joe talks about how when he was growing up he used to go out to Fall Creek and watch the men fishing every evening after work. "That was my television," he says. He learned about life standing in the creek, watching his neighbors fish, hearing them swapping stories and jokes. He feels, he says, "an obligation," to the creek. He says, "I talk to the creek and I tell it that I will not forsake it." There is no one I have met who knows more about what has happened to Fall Creek. Back in those years -- over 60 years ago, people got a lot of meals out of Fall Creek. That doesn't happen too often anymore (some worry about the safety of the food coming out of those water).

But Joe wants to simply share with others the gift that he has received. The young people interviewed (on camera) Joe on the porch of his house. One of the young people interviewing him is named Cameron. Cameron lives just a couple of blocks from Joe, but they had never met before. During the interview Joe asked Cameron a question that resulted in Cameron telling Joe that he felt like he is "different" from other kids...that he doesn't feel like he belongs. After the interview, Joe put his arm around Cameron and walked him to the other end of the porch and told him that there was nothing in the world wrong with "being different." Joe told him that he himself is different and that this is a good and holy thing.

I thought later about how Cameron now has a friend, and neighbor, that knows that he feels he is a little different, and that this neighbor not only knows that but thinks that it's great. I hope that in those times when Cameron is feeling a little down that he can walk over to Joe's house and even if Joe isn't there he can remember that conversation and be encouraged. Such gifts are rarely counted and rarely known - but are infinitely valuable.

Our Practices Make Us Who We Are

"How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, Practice, Practice"—musicians saying

 I am a long time sober alcoholic. When I first stopped drinking, I learned a lot from Roz, who is a very direct fiery lady from L.A. We were in Oklahoma, a place not so direct. Roz said over and over, ”You can act your way into right thinking, but you can’t think your way into right acting.” She said, “ If you care then do something. Love is a verb not a noun. “

 I’ve traveled around a lot working with lots of groups. I have seen many organizations that are like dead zones while talking about community, and seen some organizations that feel completely alive with a beating heart you can hear. One place you feel like if you had a heart attack and died, people would step over you, and wait for someone to clean you up later. In another place you feel like a long lost brother? Why is a place one way and not the other way?  Lucky?

 I was once working with a congregation that was very welcoming to me, and I said to a lady who’d been a member there a longtime, ” You all are so kind to me. Its amazing.” Mary patted me on the shoulder and said, “Mike it has nothing to do with you.”  It stopped me... And after a few moments of silence, then we both laughed.

 Mary started to tell me about the commitments people make as members there. She called them ‘our practices’ that make us who we are.  One thing they do is to meet anyone they don’t know. Another is that any group has room for one more person. They don’t say you can’t play.  Another is that we go towards anyone we don’t like. I asked what that means? Mary said , “We know you can’t hold a negative label or stereotype about someone if you actually get to know them. If I think all teenage boys are dangerous and bad, then I make a special effort to know teenage boys as real people.  

 Whenever I find a group who is living hospitality I have been asking and looking for the practices that make them who they are. I ask; what are the practices you see?, what have you committed to do?, what could you commit to do? I think that groups who are welcoming have intention. People make commitments to practices. Practices are intentional actions we do over and over. They take our ideas into action to be fulfilled.  My meditation teacher said to me about commitments to practices , ”We don’t make decisions, so much as decisions make us.”  

Hospitable groups make commitments to practices to create a container for their experience that can hold water, the meaning and life of their shared experience.

  Hospitality is not helping someone but accompanying someone. The practice of hospitality turns strangers into friends, and transforms our lives in the process.

 

“Greater is an act of hospitality than an encounter of the divine presence”-The Talmud

 

Faux Radical Hospitality

Mike Green sent me a note today and said he was ready for us to get up and posting on this blog -- so I thought that I'd give it a "stream-of-consciousness" go, to help things get kicked off.

The words "Radical Hospitality" get tossed around really loosely these days. Since we began this blog I have heard many, many people in church circles talking about radical hospitality. Seems that the term makes an appearance in a popular book in some church circles (the book shall remain nameless here).

A couple of years ago a friend of mine was driving through a small northern Indiana town on Sunday morning and decided to attend the local United Methodist Church. The sermon that morning was on Radical Hospitality. The example offered that morning was that the church was going to start offering umbrellas to help ferry people back and forth to their cars in their parking lot on Sunday morning. Wow. What radical hospitality. I'm overwhelmed (which has obviously led to a bout of extreme sarcasm). A further irony was that when my friend pulled in the church parking lot that morning he had noticed a man who appeared to have had a very rough night stumbling around the outside of the church building. The folks going by him were ignoring him as they walked into the sanctuary (SANCTUARY!). Sounds like the umbrellas were arriving just in the nick of time.

In late 2007 I attended worship, while on sabbatical, at Broadway Christian Parish in South Bend. The particular Sunday we were there was one of those terrific days I used to call "Broadway Sundays" when I was there, because they were so special. The pastor, Rev. Nancy Nichols, did a great job. The focus on the day was talking about the chapter on Radical Hospitality in the aforementioned (but unnamed) book. The bishop had asked all the congregations in that conference to study the book. The people of Broadway were talking with each other that morning about how they could exemplify radical hospitality more deeply.

Now - like John Wesley -- I agree that we are working to move toward perfection (and that we'll not make it in this lifetime) - but those good people of Broadway Christian Parish have a lot more to teach about Radical Hospitality than most (if not all) of the United Methodist congregations in the whole Indiana area. I heard several people struggling with how they didn't feel like they were doing radical hospitality well enough. And that made me sad.

That morning in worship -- Prince was there. And Prince, like on most of the Sundays that I was there, got up and stomped out right at the beginning of the prayers, his curses ringing the congregation as he left. That congregation makes room for Prince and his family every Sunday - they know a lot about Radical Hospitality. Guy was there -- playing his guitar in the front row. While Guy would be welcome in many United Methodist congregations I guarantee you that he would not be welcome to play his guitar in most of them. Guy is labeled as a person with fragile x syndrome. But that congregation simply knows him as a brother - and makes room for his gifts in worship and in life together. That congregation knows about Radical Hospitality.

A few weeks earlier I had stopped by the church during the week and interrupted some pretty complicated work on the sound system in the sanctuary - that had not worked very well my entire 11 1/2 years there. The fellow working on the system was somebody who doesn't have a place to live, but who stops by Broadway every day for breakfast and company. He knows a lot about sound systems and it was sounding great. That congregation knows something about Radical Hospitality.

That Sunday we were visiting, as always, there was a Sunday Community Dinner after worship. Many neighbors, some who were at worship and some who weren't gathered around tables downstairs and shared a meal and laughter and stories. You couldn't tell, even during the clean up, who were the guests and who were the hosts and hostesses. That congregation knows something about Radical Hospitality.

I could go on and on...but this is the problem we face in the church - we don't recognize Radical Hospitality when it lives in our midst. Instead of reading this book the annual conference should be telling people to go visit Broadway Christian Parish and let them teach you about Radical Hospitality. But no - let's read it from a book and then keep people from getting wet as they go to their cars.

Many of the places who are "studying" Radical Hospitality wouldn't know what to do if a heavily tattooed and pierced young person (or old person) turned up on Sunday morning - much less one who cursed loudly during prayer or who played the guitar frantically and out of key, but joyously none the less. That little congregation of around 90 members provides lunch for nearly 100 plus people every week. I remember that a member of a 600 member church in town said "heck, we couldn't do that four times a year."

Radical Hospitality is not gained from a book....but from the heart and by the practice of making room for the stranger. I hope this blog will become a place where Radical Hospitality, real radical hospitality can be celebrated and perhaps copied and morphed and used as fodder for inspiration. Ride the wave!