Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love by Lonni Collins Pratt & Father Daniel Homan

Author:Lonni Collins Pratt & Father Daniel Homan [Pratt, Lonni Collins & Homan, Father Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paraclete Press
Published: 2011-10-31T23:00:00+00:00

six

Preparing a Table

Uncle Stan dies in Cleveland and you find yourself sitting at a table with cousins you haven’t seen in years and great uncles you did not even remember. The death is a sad thing, but there at the tables during lunch you hear stories about your dad. You hear how your parents met. Someone remembers the time you visited cousin Linda and cried to go home to your mother, but Linda is gracious enough not to mention you were a big, strong boy of eleven at the time.

The table is a place where you connect and belong. It is a place where the past remains alive in the memory of the very old, and the future sparkles with possibility. It is enchanted. We lean close together, we share a glass, we tell a story. Through this simple human relating, the universe feels as though it is right again, even after Uncle Stan has gone on to whatever comes next.

We all have memories of tables prepared for us and those we have readied for others. Some of the memories are from childhood. Others are memories of good friends, of falling in love, or of deeply connecting with another human being. Meals are powerful symbols in our memory. But someone has to make a meal happen.

Someone must consider it important enough to give themselves to the work that goes into preparation. Setting a table and making ready for a meal involves preliminary thought and consideration for others. To do it right you have to think through your guest’s preferences and history; you need to know if they have allergies or chronic illnesses. If you invite more than one guest, you must consider which of them would enjoy sitting together and how they might relate. Preparing for another pulls us out of ourselves—that is one of the good gifts of hospitality.

The image of preparing a table, or preparing a place, is a good overall image for hospitality. In genuine hospitality we work to make our entire existence a welcoming table, a place prepared for others to be at ease, to receive from us comfort and strength. Hospitality teaches me to work at becoming someone who is easy to be with, as either guest or host.

Hospitality becomes a way of life as we become more open. It will not happen without preparation and unless you intend it to happen. When we speak of “preparing a table,” we refer to the intention and the work of making space for another human being. Preparing a table has sacramental meaning for Benedictines. Every meal, like every encounter with a human being, has the potential to reveal God present in Creation. The table represents the unknown yearning of every human heart for communion with the “something more” that infuses all that exists.

A lifetime of ignoring the sounds of the soul has deafened us to this universal desire, but some little part of us can’t forget and waits eagerly for the moment bread is broken, a hand

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.