Simple hospitality is never simple...

Well, here we are in a church hall in Barnet – basic toilets, a small side room to sleep in and keep relatively warm, a kitchen with hot water, kettle, fridge and a cooker. We have access to lots of cutlery and plates – yeh!

Of course, we popped to Waitrose just before it closed and bought a few things to eat and a bottle of wine. We are now tired but better for the food and wine, and are reflecting on the day. The morning was a pleasant jaunt through the countryside for about nine or so miles, then lunch was OK.... but the afternoon was much harder with 16 miles done without a stop (5 hours with lots and lots of hills of the steep variety) so we were more than a little foot sore on our arrival.

So what were we reflecting on? That enduring little nugget of an idea – hospitality – was the consideration of the day.

We were reflecting on the way that being a community, or part of one, inevitably involves making each other welcome and requires that you spend time together sharing food and conversation. We have been treated to a wide range of different types of hospitality so, in a short week, with very heavy physical demands being placed on us, we have had our hospitality radar raised to its highest sensitivity ratings and have found out some amazing things.

Firstly, receiving hospitality is a very nice thing to experience. It almost does not matter what the level is, the effects are still good. So, we have enjoyed professional hospitality from a country pub and a slightly run down hotel in a small town. In both cases the people who have extended their hospitality have made efforts to greet us and treat us as guests. Probably most impressive were the hotel people because, unlike the pub who were the owners/providers of hospitality, the hotel people were all straight employees, but they were very keen to make the best of what they had to offer... So, hospitality is in some measure about what you as a person are personally prepared to extend as part of the offer of hospitality.

Then there is the generosity beyond what is required and without restrictions – the couple who put us up in Downham were asked in the morning and by the evening we were being fed and treated to comfy beds, hot baths/showers and so on ... open house to complete strangers on trust.

So it is also about unconditional service to strangers. That is not an easy thing to be able to do. Not easy at all.

Then there are the family and friend offerings of hospitality that were exceedingly generous and seriously comfortable experiences. Again, unconditional hospitality but this time with love and an honest sense of generosity that stems form that love. Through a mixture of knowledge and empathy this generosity takes us into another aspect of hospitality where the familiar allows for greater degrees of comfort and where there are unspoken understandings/expectations that make everything so much easier.

So it can also be about being able to provide a space for rest and recuperation which goes beyond the simple provision of space and comforts - helping to make it a space that is more individually shaped to your needs.

All of this is just the beginnings of a view of what might be regarded as hospitality and where it might fit into the scheme of things but it does lead on from the rambling load of tittle tattle I posted yesterday..... it is part of that question of what makes you or I people fashioned in the likeness of God. What are our God like aspects or facets? What do our God-like bits look like?

Well, perhaps hospitality has something to do with all of this. Perhaps hospitality is part of the outcome of us beginning to act as people who have been created in God’s image?

Just one early idea in the collection of thoughts we might have or might explore.

Toodle oooo!