Radical Hospitality

This essay was originally written for the Sacramento News & Review

How would you describe the brokenness of our world? In what ways are we living lives too small for us? One way Christianity answers these questions is through language of separation. We are estranged, or separated from God, from one another and from our true selves. Separation within the human family is obvious when watching the news or listening to political rhetoric. Whether it’s Sunni vs. Shia, Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative, pro-life vs. pro-choice, people are estranged from one another in endless ways. And this separation is not usually benign. We all too often consider ourselves superior to those in the other group. This superiority allows us to demonize and belittle the other. And the world becomes more fractured.

I do not believe this is how God intends us to live our lives. We are created to be interdependent, not independent. We are designed to be in communion and community with one another, which is one reason why hospitality is such an important spiritual discipline. We exercise hospitality when we make room in our lives, in our homes, in our social circles for others, particularly those who are different.

One reason Trinity Cathedral hosted the Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala and the monks who created it was to model radical hospitality. We wanted to show the world how two different religious traditions could come together, not simply to have a discussion, but to share intimate worship space and spiritual practices. And the willingness of the Buddhists to bring their spiritual practice into a Christian cathedral modeled the same hospitality.

The results were spectacular. The mandala alone was radiant and the monks were gracious and spirit-filled. But the context, the mandala within the Christian cathedral, made it even more remarkable. I was enthralled. I found it difficult to focus on anything else. It felt like God’s Kingdom of Love was blossoming right there.

But the hosting of the mandala was not problem-free. Hostpitality can be messy. We often have to make accommodations for others. People have different ways of living, different cultural expectations. The Cathedral can be a very busy place and people have different expectations of what will go on in a church (talking/laughing vs. silence, eating vs. not eating.) Worship services and music rehearsals took place while the monks were working and visitors were passing through. There were collisions of sound and space.

One such collision happened at 9am on Friday. We celebrate communion every day at Trinity Cathedral. On Fridays, the communion is at 9 a.m., which is also when the monks began their work with prayer and chanting. On Friday, Canon Carey, an 80-year-old priest, was at the high altar blessing the bread and wine (a particularly holy moment in the service) when the monks began chanting in the East Transept, about 15 feet away.

Some people might have taken offense. After all, shouldn’t the guests be more sensitive to services that are happening in the Cathedral? When Canon Cary recounted this experience for me, he was not offended at all. In fact, he said he was so moved by the beauty of the chanting happening at such a holy moment in his service, that he was moved to tears. He told the small congregation gathered for communion that this was a communion they would never forget.
Isn’t that beautiful? Christian communion enriched by Buddhist chanting. Such beauty can become manifest when we open our lives to those who are different from us. And God’s Kingdom of Love draws nearer.

-Dean Baker