REsources for Living
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I admit it. I am a total flirt when it comes to babies and toddlers. I love coaxing a smile from the baby in front of me in a grocery line. I make faces at the two-year-old at the table behind me in the restaurant to make him laugh. There is nothing that will brighten up your day as quick as a grin that only has a couple of teeth in it, and I’m shameless about getting that grin wherever I can. (Don’t blame me. I have a teenager. I may not see that kind of totally open smile at home for years.)
But maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised when a little girl who I was trying to chat with at the bank instead turned to her mother and asked about me: “Is she a stranger?” That’s a really good question. We teach our kids about “stranger danger,” about how you should never get in a car with someone who you don’t know, about how someone who offers you candy or asks for help finding a lost dog is not to be trusted and could mean you harm. We teach our children to keep themselves safe.
But, strange to say, there’s a danger to this commitment to safety. Because a commitment to safety is exactly the opposite of a commitment to hospitality. Safety builds walls to make sure that nothing and no one who is dangerous can get in. Hospitality throws the doors wide open, making walls irrelevant. Hospitality, at its core, is about welcoming in the stranger, about creating space for the outsider to be at home.
This theme of hospitality is big in the Bible. In the Hebrew Scriptures, it is only after Abraham and Sarah have welcomed in three strangers, offering them the very best that their household has to give, that they discover the strangers are really angels.
In the Christian Scriptures, when Jesus talks about the people who will go to heaven, he describes those who offer hospitality:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me….
The importance of hospitality is equally present in Islam. The Prophet Muhammad declared, “He is not a believer who lets himself be filled while his neighbor goes hungry.”
For Sikhs, hospitality is so central to their religion that every gurdwara (their religious meeting space) has a large kitchen, and worship is always followed by a meal to which everyone —Sikh or not—is invited.
Sharing, generosity, welcome—hospitality—is at the heart of religious practice.
If hospitality were just about having nice parties for your friends, it wouldn’t be such a big religious deal. But true hospitality—religious hospitality— is about greeting the world with an open heart rather than fear. Abraham and Jesus and Muhammad weren’t naïve. Each of them had had terrible encounters with dangerous people. They knew by experience just how unsafe the world could be.
But their answer to the dangers of the world, their response to being surrounded by strangers, was to invite them in, and to insist that their followers do likewise. They understood that the way we become safe is not by building higher walls or installing stronger locks. The way we become safe is to create an ever larger circle of people who have been transformed from strangers into friends.
Now, I’m not saying that children should hop into cars with people they don’t know. But maybe the safety lesson could sound less like:
Watch out for strangers. The world is full of people who might hurt you! and more like: Look for the people you can turn to for help if you are lost or hurt or scared. Let’s get to know our neighbors so that we can be there for each other if anything happens. Let’s see how we can be a house where everyone feels safe, so that our neighborhood can be a safer place.
Do you want a spiritual practice? Try greeting strangers with the utterly open smile of a baby. Try offering the hospitality of complete delight in the presence of someone without regard to how they are dressed or who they are with or what they might be able to do for you, or even what they might be able to do to you. If only for that fleeting moment of connection, try welcoming the stranger.
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