Rosaria Butterfield, author of the spiritual autobiography and conversion story, Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, has also written this newer book, an exhortation and guide to Christian hospitality, subtitled Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World. Ms. Butterfield, who came to Christ as a lesbian professor of literature and eventually became a Presbyterian pastor’s wife and mother to several children, has a great deal to say and a number of stories to tell about what she calls “radical hospitality.”
She first ties the idea to of hospitality to respect and care for persons made in the image of God. “Radically ordinary hospitality–those who live it see strangers as neighbors and neighbors as family of God. They recoil at reducing a person to a category or a label.” Then, she goes on to to note the efficacy, indeed the necessity, of hospitality as a means of evangelism, in the best sense of the word. “Those who live out radically ordinary hospitality see their homes not a theirs at all but as God’s gift to use for the furtherance of his kingdom. They open doors; they seek out the underprivileged. They now that the gospel comes with a house key.”
Ms. Butterfield fills the remainder of her book, after the preface from which the above quotes are taken, with some exhortation but mostly with stories about what hospitality looks like in her own home and community. She also touches on current events and concerns: “Me-Too”, the dangers and boundaries of hospitality, loneliness, and the sad likelihood of being misunderstood. The stories are inspiring, but also daunting. I agree with her thesis, but I truly don’t know where to begin, even though the author tries to give some ideas about how to start practicing radical hospitality, or least simple hospitality, in her final chapter entitled “Conclusion: Feeding the Five Thousand.”
I’m fairly good at having a home that is open to all the many members of our large family and their friends and associates. we often, usually weekly or even more often, have a houseful. I have a private library in my home that is open to members of the public three days a week, and I try to practice “book hospitality” there. But welcoming my neighbors inside for meals and fellowship, opening my home to those who are very different from me, is not something I’ve ever practiced consistently.
This book reminds me of The Turquoise Table: Finding Community and Connection in Your Own Front Yard by Kristin Schell. These books show a way to the kind of hospitality and community I would like to foster in my own neighborhood, but I’m way too introverted and reserved to do it—so far. I think I need a turquoise table or one other concrete starting point to move toward the kind of radical hospitality that I am convinced is our calling as Christ-followers here in major suburbia and elsewhere.
