Raspberry Crumbles, and Other Forms of Hospitality

It’s not every day your husband brings home a raspberry crumble.

Mine did, a couple of Sundays ago, when he returned from a visitation at a church where there’s apparently a woman who remembered how much he liked the raspberry crumble she made the last time he came there. Now that’s service, don’t you think?  And it’s especially heartwarming, I might add, that she made a WHOLE raspberry crumble, for him to take home (to be shared, say, with his wife) instead of presenting it at the coffee hour, where it would disappear in no time. Come on–if you approached that table and saw a plate of little store bought cookies and then, out of the corner of your eye, the freshly made crumble just oozing red berries, you’d go right and look for a spoon and a plate pronto, maybe even before the organ postlude had finished.

This occurrence got me thinking about the whole concept of hospitality. Yes, we generally think of hospitality as more about welcoming people into our home than about offering gifts to others who take those gifts into their homes. But really, aren’t both actions cut from the same cloth—the cloth of kindness and generosity?

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home that was hospitable to pretty much all comers. My brothers’ friends played endless outdoor games–at least that’s what I can see from the home movies when I was toddling around, being ignored mostly–but they also often came in and sprawled out on couches to watch sports on TV.  A dog might start barking with any knock on the door (that sure happens to us now, too) but my mother, especially, would always want to greet people with a smile and a ready laugh, hurrying to the door as she tried to smooth down her red-gone-almost blonde hair as best she could.

In that she was from a lapsed Canadian Methodist family (did I just invent a new term?) I’m not sure whether or not she knew the famous verse in Hebrews 13:2. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” Don’t you just love that term, “unawares”?  I don’t know about you, but I feel like I spend most of my waking minutes beings “unawares” to a zillion things I probably should be noticing. But that’s another story.

And then of course there’s the crucial story in Genesis 18:2, when Abraham and Sarah welcome the three strangers into their home. Naturally, the strangers may at first appear to be strangers, but it’s not a big leap to see that they’re really representing God in three persons, the Trinity. (Rather than, say, a forward line of a hockey team). You just never know who might be a’knocking. Sure, people may come walking up the driveway bearing publications like The Watchtower or asking you to sign a petition for clean water, but it’s really better—isn’t it—to pause a minute and greet them warmly and not act as if you’re SO terribly busy with a multitude of important things that you couldn’t possibly talk.

Since we’ve recently moved to a new location, I admit to being especially attuned to issues of hospitality. It really does make a difference, right in my heart, when people go out of their way a little bit to extend themselves, to be welcoming. I sense, sometimes, that certain individuals might have gained a sense themselves, at one time or another, what it feels like to be transplanted, to need to find bearings in a new place. It’s not so easy, especially when children don’t lead the way into a whole range of activities and institutions. But of course all of us are hoping to find, or maintain, a sense of community that provides a kind of cloak of warmth. I guess I’m both trying to retain the precious elements of the old, as far as that’s possible, and make inroads into the new. I want our dining room to stay bright and welcoming, for whenever we manage to have people over to sit at our table.

From what I understand of the work my husband is doing with churches, it’s a lot about hospitality in that realm, too. Congregations are seeking to maintain their own sense of togetherness, of mutual support and comfort, while also reaching out to outsiders, to complete strangers. Sometimes it seems like a fine balance: trying to gain, while trying not to lose, either.

In a profile of Pope Francis almost a year ago in The New Yorker, James Carroll wrote that the new leader of Catholics everywhere “views the Church as a field hospital after a battle.” It needs to welcome people in, provide relief from all kinds of struggles, not give them reasons to stay out.  I was going to say at the beginning of this essay that it sometimes seems odd to me how the word “hospitable” kind of resembles the word “hospital”— a place we generally want to avoid. But, on second thought, during storms of all kinds, we might actually be relieved to find one of these. In any case, I’m grateful for raspberry crumbles, people who extend themselves to others, sites providing medical care…and everything in between.