It Ends in Hospitality

I’ve reached Chapter 12 and the epilogue of God in the Yard: Spiritual Practice for the Rest of Us by L.L. Barkat.

This last chapter is on hospitality. Barkat describes it as a process of receptivity, reverence and generosity.

Hospitality is not exactly my strong suit. I think I was born with hospitality not being my strong suit. Almost painfully shy as a child, I was always on the outer circle of the neighborhood rambunctiousness. Truth be told, I probably preferred to sit quietly and read. My parents, in fact, would often throw me out of the house to get me away from reading.

This didn’t change much as I grew older. I was the one everyone came to for help with their homework. In college, if I read one paper on either “Barn Burning” by William Faulkner or Young Goodman Brown, I read hundreds. (I’ve never read Young Goodman Brown but I can likely recite anything you want to know about it. I read the Faulkner story in my early 40s. I think I read almost all of Faulkner in my late 30s and early 40s).

I’m still not comfortable in crowds. When I go to conferences where I know virtually no one, I dread the cocktail receptions. I’ve taught myself to make conversation if I’m sitting at a lunch or dinner meeting. Wordsworth said it a long time ago: the child is father of the man.

There’s a cost to this, this “introvertedness,” this aloneness. But perhaps the time has come to stop paying the cost and find another way. Or, as Barkat says in the epilogue, “…you can embrace the life you have before it’s gone.”

Read this book.


The God in the Yard posts linked all in one place:

Introduction: God in the Yard
Week One: Little Woods and Big Woods
Week Two: Life is a Garden
Week Three: Singing in the Wilderness
Week Four: The Grief Makes the Way for the Joy
Week Five: Detachment
Week Six: Lament? What?
Week Seven: Working at the Margins
Week Eight: Sabbath and Verse
Week Nine: Writing Poetry
Week Ten: I Fix Mess
Week Eleven: Submission is Not a Passive Thing
Week Twelve: It Ends in Hospitality