the project i help to lead, faith as a way of life, has as part of its work a 'reflection pool' a group of senior pastors, youth pastors, and lay people who met in new haven twice a year to seek insight and practical strategies for modeling and mediating faith as a way of life. they are a wild and wonderful and passionate group, and i've blog-referenced some of them, with more to come.
we meet only twice a year, so like any long-distance relationship, we need a tie that binds. we're trying to all, in our own lives, take on the same individual spiritual practice. this time, it is the practice of hospitality. then when we get together in october we'll share stories with each other about how it went. so, i was reading stories to my kiddos as i often do. and i just happened to grab a dr. seuss off the shelf: thidwick, the big-hearted moose. 
and wouldn't you know it, it is a parable about hospitality. thidwick is a big moose who welcomes various animals (beginning with a small ant and ending with a bear) to live in his horns. it seems like a parable about being a 'sucker.' it made me reflect on when sonja and have felt like we've offered ongoing hospitality to others without their reciprocating, and how, like thidwick, we felt the weight of that over time. so, i thought to myself, what is dr. seuss trying to say and how does it connect to jesus? is hospitality--a way of life modeled on the self-giving of the holy trinity--foolishness? and what does it mean to be a 'sucker' and where might hospitality be denied? the temptation in contemporary america is that we have to be tolerant, we don't want to say no for fear of offending people. but when i was a pastor i learned that sometimes saying no allowed for a deeper spiritual journey. it made space for the holy spirit to work. like when someone not at all active in the church wanted me to 'do' their kids, and i said no, while inviting them to church and a process of reflection about what god is up to in their lives that has led them here to baptize their children. is that response, that 'no', offering hospitality? does always offering hospitality make us at times 'suckers' and therefore not as strong in our witness to a faith that really matters?
tough to make rules about it, but i think i'm with thidwick --sometimes it makes sense to say no.
anon, and +peace
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