Radical Hospitality, Session Five
UUCMP Covenant Groups
Created April 25, 2007

OPENING WORDS
“This tendency of ours to seek out comfort should tell us something about ourselves. We lack. We need...stronger medicine for our sickly souls. We need a transforming, shake-you-to-the-soles-of-your-feet kind of remedy. We need transforming 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
•	Have you caught yourself stretching and growing as a result of getting to know others more deeply recently?

READINGS
“A spiritual practice is an action intended to make a change or adjustment in the deepest realm of the self...The spiritual practice creates a possibility or opportunity, but the change itself is more gift than effort. You can set your will to be more open to others, but your heart still has to stretch gradually.”

“What we want today [from spirituality] is comfort. Tom Waite and Kathleen Brennan wrote a song called 'Chocolate Jesus.' It's about wanting a Jesus that tastes good, gives you the comforts of sweets and fast food, and makes you feel good inside.

“Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Good enough for me.
Well it's got to be a chocolate Jesus
Make me feel good inside
Got to be a chocolate Jesus
Keep me satisfied.”
(Jaima Music) [Chocolate Jesus, performed by several artists, is available for download on iTunes and probably other music servers. You might want to play it, rather than read it.]

From UU minister Karen Johnson Gustafson on transforming love. “[T]ransformation is an ongoing process that is fed by the accumulation and integration of insight and experience.” AND “Clearly this is not the love of valentines or popular songs or even love that parents feel for children or that we feel for our friends and others from whom we seek love in return. That love springs freely and spontaneously and naturally from each person's personal reservoir. It is love longing to be given. It is love that is eagerly sought. The love that transforms evil is an altogether different thing. It does not spring freely but must force its way through a blockade of other natural feelings that happen first. Feelings like fear and aversion and distaste.”

“Here is the core of hospitality: May I know you better? Will you come closer, please? No, it will not be easy, but make no mistake about it, your life depends on this saving stranger coming to you and stretching your tight little heart.”

“It is an adventure...It is not something you do, as much as it is someone you become...You make room for one person at a time, you give one chance at a time, and each of these choices of the heart stretches your ability to receive others.”
 
SILENT REFLECTION
•	Using this definition of spiritual practice, what practices and experiences in my life are spiritual practices?
•	What are my Chocolate Jesuses?
•	Do I agree that transforming love is strong medicine? What makes it shake up the world?
•	In one sense the idea of a gradual change that becomes a way of life is reassuring; you can take it one small step at a time. In another sense, it is off-putting because results can be so slow in showing up. What is my experience with making changes in this way?
•	Have I taken this first step of making room for one 'saving stranger'? If so, what were the results? If not, am I willing to invite one person closer, to seek to know him or her better and to do this in the next few weeks?

COMMUNING (Sharing & Listening without cross conversation)

DIALOGUE (Sharing & Listening with cross conversation)

CLOSING CIRCLE