Radical Hospitality, Session One
UUCMP Covenant Groups
Created Feb. 22, 2007

OPENING WORDS

“We both want and fear connecting with each other. Our resistance to others, resistance to change – these are housed in the mysterious realm of spirit. Our minds cannot conceive of solutions to our dilemma until our hearts are convinced to love.” 
– Radical Hospitality: Benedict’s Way of Love by Daniel Holman and Lonni Collins Pratt (unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from this book.)

CHALICE LIGHTING 
	Leader:	We gather together as a community of memory and hope to celebrate life and its infinite possibilities for love.

	ALL:  		We light this chalice as a symbol of the light within every human heart.  May our individual sparks meet and merge bringing both light and warmth to the world.

SHARING OF JOYS & CONCERNS

READINGS

“Guests are crucial to the making of any heart. Benedict instructed his monks to welcome the Divine in the stranger. He told them to look again, look deeper when you look into the eyes of strangers. If you want to be a person of great spirit, you can’t do life alone. If spirituality matters to you, you can’t do spirituality alone either. To really grow as a human being you need other people.” 
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels [messengers from God] unawares.” Christian Bible
“…Benedict tells us to offer an open heart, a stance of availability, and to look for God lurking in every single person who comes through the door.”
“In Unitarian Universalism, we believe that the holy is continually being revealed; that ‘revelation is not sealed.’ So until our very end, and maybe after, there is always the possibility of discerning something new about the transcendent…” The Rev. Jennifer L. Brower, Minister of Pastoral Care, UU Congregation at Shelter Rock
 “[H]ospitality was not about social graces but about mutual reverence. Father Noel knew that spirituality is about relationships. Every man, woman, and child bears to us the presence of God.”
“The stranger next door, and at our door, is particularly frightening…People have been hurt by strangers…When we speak of the depth of hospitality, we are proposing something scary and radical. But it’s worth the risk. Unless we find a way to open ourselves to others, we will grow even more isolated and frightened. If we do not find and practice ways of hospitality, we will grow increasingly hostile. Hospitality is the answer to hostility.”
SILENT REFLECTION
•	Think of one person who has been open to you, has invited you in. How did you experience the interconnected web, or Emerson’s Oversoul, or even yourself in that relationship?
•	Does hospitality, seen in this way, offer a valuable spiritual practice? Perhaps a kind of mindfulness meditation of relationship?
•	Is there value for you in viewing the people who cross your path as having a message for you? As being messengers of your subconscious, or the universe, or God?
•	What stands in the way of opening yourself to the stranger? Is it worth the risk? 

 COMMUNING (Sharing & Listening without cross conversation)

DIALOGUE (Sharing & Listening with cross conversation)

CLOSING CIRCLE