Radical Hospitality: Benedict's Way of Love

So, I finally finished this book, and I highly recommend it. I was not taken with it immediately as the first few dozen pages seemed dedicated to two points: this is not about becoming Martha Stewart, but Jesus Christ; and September 11 had a profound affect on Americans. I was fully expecting the first point (perhaps not all book purchasers or browsers would), and I still have great difficulty revisiting my mental images of September 11, so one reference would have had sufficient effect for me on the second point. It took me some time to get passed that into the meat of the book, which really addresses what it means to encounter other human beings.

The book held many insights for me. One was the allowance for encounters, relationships to be truly meaningful without digging out one's deepest, innermost thoughts. I have a lot of deep, innermost thoughts; I splash them around quite freely on this blog for example. And for a long, long time I really struggled to know what to say to someone who didn't seem inclined as receptive to deep innermost thoughts. Small talk has been a skill I've picked up (to varying degrees of success) in only the last 10 years or so. But I think all this is because I've been focused on myself. I had great felt needs that I didn't know how to get around in order to go to someone else. This book verifies for me that small talk isn't necessarily stupid chit chat as I once thought. It can be a most beautiful welcome extended to Christ Himself.

The chapter on intimacy goes far to pluck apart the cultural misappropriation of the word. Another chapter discusses boundaries and the role of self-respect in hospitable relationships. The co-authors are a monk and a married woman with grown children. Even though the narrative style gets awkward and confusing with both of them always speaking in the third person, the combination of perspectives helps me as a lay person to know that monks who live Benedict's way of love aren't on the easy road; human work is human work regardless of vocation. And attention to prayer truly does change souls.

This book will not advise you on how to have the best dinner party, nor will it encourage you necessarily to invite Jean Valjean in for dinner and send him off with your candlesticks. But it will share what it is to touch a human heart with caring. It truly awakened me to prepare my heart, to see the people before me and to open my heart to them. Not in order to offer anything special or powerful or important, but to receive them as receiving Christ.