Radical Hospitality, Session Four
UUCMP Covenant Groups
Created March 15, 2007

OPENING WORDS

[Hospitality] is instead a spiritual practice, a way of becoming more human, a way of understanding yourself. Hospitality is both the answer to modern alienation and injustice and a path to a deeper spirituality.
– 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
•	Did you have an experience that illuminated some of your criteria for relationship?

READINGS
“Hospitality is not optional to a well-balanced and healthy life. It meets the most basic need of the human being to be known and to know others. It addresses the core loneliness that we avoid with the bustle and haste of our hectic lives. There is a big loneliness at the center of every person. It is universal. There's a reason for the loneliness. It is meant to lead you somewhere. Even if you are unconscious of it, the big lonely is driving you homeward.”
“Hospitality is born in us when we are well-loved by God and by others. Hospitality is the overflowing of a heart that has to share what it has received.”
“When I let a stranger into my heart, I let a new possibility approach me. When I reach past my own ideas, I begin to stretch myself open to the world, and this opening of my heart could change everything. That's pretty frightening stuff. You can't ever be the same if you start doing that kind of thing.”
“Some of us need to be challenged and supported to connect with those of whom we are rightly afraid and of whom we are wrongly afraid. This is not easy. It is risky. To be homes of truly powerful personal transformation, we must also risk our safety some times by meeting those who are different and by listening well and intentionally to who they truly are. We may be surprised to find new friends and learn more about our selves. ” 
--Gretchen Woods, UU Minister
SILENT REFLECTION
•	When have I felt that someone truly “knew” me or at least a part of me? How does the need to know and be known inform my actions?
•	When have I taken a risk to allow someone frightening to be close to me? What were the results?
•	How has the experience of being in this group allowed me to open myself, stretch and transform? 
•	In what ways have practicing letting strangers into my heart in the safety of this group changed my daily life? 

 COMMUNING (Sharing & Listening without cross conversation)

DIALOGUE (Sharing & Listening with cross conversation)

CLOSING CIRCLE