hospitality – Feminism and Religion

The Gift of Hospitality by Carolyn Lee Boyd

The Earth’s abundant gifts of hospitality

Hospitality is the way of Nature. Every spring, the Earth provides us with warmth, beauty, water, and nourishment. In winter, the Earth offers tools to heat and shelter ourselves. When we are sick, medicine is as close as the forest and meadow. She has welcomed a variety of life forms as the environment changes over our planet’s many geologic ages. Living beings have always been the wanderer in need knocking at Earth’s door and She always gives Her all to us.

This welcoming attitude has been reflected in customs of offering strangers food, water, and shelter in ancient and contemporary cultures and religions around the world, including goddess reverence. We see the influence of hospitality in the many goddess temples that welcomed and, for living traditions, still welcome, anyone in need of healing. These include those of the Egyptian Neith, the Italian Angitia, Idemili of the Nnobi Igbo people, the Yoruba Oshun, and others. We also see it in stories of women caring for one another like that of the Greek Maenads, ecstatic women worshippers who were unable to return home after attending rites and fell asleep in a town along the way. During the night, the town’s women silently encircled them, holding hands, for their protection.

This I Believe by Yara González-Justiniano

I believe love that enters through the kitchen feeds others with care and compassion.

El amor entra por la cocina (love enters through the kitchen) is a popular saying in Spanish. The process of preparing a meal and sharing it, forges communal bonds that go beyond simply something transactional. It’s more than giving and receiving.

I was very young when I lost both my grandmothers but whenever I think about them, I picture them in the kitchen. I remember the smell and taste of their meals and the stern focus of their gaze while cooking as if they were pouring their intentions over the meal. Feeding others where their love languages.

Blinded by the White by Marcia Mount Shoop

White supremacy culture is on full display day in and day out in America. You don’t have to strain to see it—the President’s recent comparison of the impeachment proceedings to a lynching is the latest example.

Of course, even such an extreme example is still defended by white people of all shapes and sizes: senators, voters, talking heads, and the offender himself. The grotesquery of such a distorted perspective is emblematic of a sickness in our country to be sure.

But there are even more sinister forms of white supremacy that afflict our collective lives. They are harder for many white people to see. And they are, therefore, harder for us to believe. This kind of whiteness is the whiteness that blinds us. This is the whiteness that creates the conditions for the extremes to be mistaken for the whole problem. But more importantly, this is the kind of whiteness that creates the conditions for whiteness to be even more tenacious in some dangerous and annihilating ways.

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Adventures in Churchgoing by Elise M. Edwards

I am often greeted by warm smiles and handshakes–and sometimes even hugs–from churchgoers around me. But I wonder if the friendly people would be so welcoming if they knew that I identify as feminist.

It’s hard being a feminist and visiting a new church. I’ve recently moved to Texas from California and I’m looking for a church to attend. There are many things I love about church: corporate worship, talks with people of faith, gatherings where friendships are built, and opportunities to serve and to learn. I also love to sing, and my not-ready-for-primetime voice would love to join a choir with and contribute to other people’s worship experience.

In my past, I’ve been a member (or regular attender) of churches where I felt welcomed and affirmed. Yet, I always feel defensive when I seek out new places to worship. I question whether a church will be affirming to women and girls as whole selves – as embodied, thinking, feeling beings. I mentally prepare myself to hear male imagery and language for God and I pray themes of male headship vs. female servanthood are not expressed. I feel like an investigator seeking out clues to determine our compatibility. It’s no wonder that I’ve recently heard several people compare visiting churches to dating.

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To Garden by Kathryn House

My work is transformed when I view the task at hand through verbs I learned through gardening: tend, nurture, sow, dig, weed, share, till, harvest, nourish, rest.

Yesterday was the autumnal equinox, which means that fall is officially here. Right on cue, the first leaves are changing from green to shades of gold and crimson. The air is crisp, and the nights are cooler. In the Northern Hemisphere, fall also marks the beginning of the harvest season. Tending a garden has certainly changed the way I think about food, but it has also given me a lens through which to reflect more broadly on community, justice, faith, and hope. I love that gardening invites me to consider a way of being that is governed by a rhythm all its own. This steady beat brings my tendency to rush without reflecting to a halt. Every garden is unique and every gardener has a different philosophy, of course. For myself and for the housemates with whom I have gardened over the years, these three raised beds have come to constitute a sacred space. A space of hospitality, of nurture and delight, they are a space around which we are reminded of finitude, of beginnings and endings, of gratitude. Continue reading “To Garden by Kathryn House”