What Has Happened to Extended Hospitality?

 

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.  

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.  As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God's varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God; whoever serves, as one who serves by the strength that God supplies -- in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ...  

(1 Peter 4:8-11).

The thought trickled in a few months ago during a re-reading of Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder. 

Hospitality.

It was deep in the 1860s, going beyond a simple invite of the neighbors to tea, they lived it, they breathed it.

When the tin salesman came riding up in his wagon, the family put a hen in the oven and fresh sheets on the bed, naturally the man would stay in their home.

When the shoemaker came through their neck of the woods he was given free room and board for a week as well as payment to make their shoes. After all where would he go? There simply were no Super 8s back then.

But there are now...Super 8s I mean, and Hotel 6s and spas and resorts and that's where we stay. What have we lost because of this?

We've become closed off, living behind the walls of our homes rarely welcoming anyone in for a visit much less a long stay and even when we do they are likely to be close family, never would we dream of putting up a total stranger. 

But our grandparents and great-great grandparents did. 

When the tin salesman came each year he brought with him stories and news from his travels. The Wilder family sat down in the evenings and laughed so hard they cried as he spun his tales. 

Now we check our facebook status updates and see pictures of nieces, nephews, friends and grandchildren but do we really know them? Do we know the sound of their laugh, the wretch of their cry? Do we know how their brow creases when they are thinking or how their eye twinkles when they have an idea?

These are only things we learn by inviting people in and being with them. People we love as well as people we may not know as well. 

It's not always comfortable, I know that. You may have to wait to use the bathroom. They may see how untidy you keep your bedroom. They may not like your food. But do we remember what we gain? 

Love, connection, conversation, and community.

I thought about it even more. How did this start?

And that's when it felt political to me.

A lot of people talk these days about shrinking the government. Social welfare has made us dependent and the best thing you can do for people is foster independence. I don't completely disagree with that assertion in some cases but it's not just government programs that make people dependent - in fact, we have a worse offender, it's corporations.

Super 8, Best Western, Motel 6 and the like have talked the past few generations of traveling folk into the notion that they should fork out some cash and not impose on those around them. 

They've shifted the culture for their own benefit, and made us dependent on THEM to provide services we now think we all need. Like many corporations who have done a similar thing, they have detached us from our friends and family by providing a "service" that use to be provided by our family and community.

How do we take this back? Where does it start?

It starts in our homes and in our hearts. 

Will you make a commitment to be more hospitable in 2012? I know I am!