What is Hospitality?
Hospitality is the most beautiful human, and one could argue, divine expressions of relationship. It is the process you engage in when you want to begin, foster, build, strengthen, develop, or end a relationship.
Hospitality creates a space where the practice of privileging other’s experiences over your own can happen. For example, when one is hosting an event or rite, offering the best that one has to one’s guests is considered remarkably virtuous, and can come from the space of being present with the needs and desires of that guest. Conversely, to generate virtue as a guest, one must be able to receive in grace, free from the story of “... I’m not worthy of such a gift.” To say such a thing would be to devalue and show disrespect toward your host’s perspective and understanding of right-relationship.
In being conscious of the “others’” experience, this is not to say that we forget ourselves in this process. In both the guest and host roles, it’s about our most authentic expression of ourselves, while not losing sight of the fact that without another being, one cannot practice Hospitality.
This brings up the question: is there self-hospitality? Can we practice this virtue internally? Do we need “other” to practice? Without getting metaphorical, the answer is that we do need “other” to practice this virtue. Applying metaphor, we can say that it would be a good practice to offer one’s-self the best as a guest would a host… as long as you’re not in connection or relationship with another.
The practice of Hospitality, and how one understands it, is the soil from which grows the methodology of relationship-building. Hospitality offers us the chance to practice reciprocity.
Hospitality is the most beautiful human, and one could argue, divine expressions of relationship. It is the process you engage in when you want to begin, foster, build, strengthen, develop, or end a relationship.
Hospitality creates a space where the practice of privileging other’s experiences over your own can happen. For example, when one is hosting an event or rite, offering the best that one has to one’s guests is considered remarkably virtuous, and can come from the space of being present with the needs and desires of that guest. Conversely, to generate virtue as a guest, one must be able to receive in grace, free from the story of “... I’m not worthy of such a gift.” To say such a thing would be to devalue and show disrespect toward your host’s perspective and understanding of right-relationship.
In being conscious of the “others’” experience, this is not to say that we forget ourselves in this process. In both the guest and host roles, it’s about our most authentic expression of ourselves, while not losing sight of the fact that without another being, one cannot practice Hospitality.
This brings up the question: is there self-hospitality? Can we practice this virtue internally? Do we need “other” to practice? Without getting metaphorical, the answer is that we do need “other” to practice this virtue. Applying metaphor, we can say that it would be a good practice to offer one’s-self the best as a guest would a host… as long as you’re not in connection or relationship with another.
The practice of Hospitality, and how one understands it, is the soil from which grows the methodology of relationship-building. Hospitality offers us the chance to practice reciprocity.
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