Category: Meditations

Perhaps birds don’t make their nests any bigger because they know that crowded conditions are what give the baby birds incentive to learn to fly.

What discomfort is pushing you to dare to make a change?

The theme song from the old TV show Cheers declared “sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.” True enough, but sometimes it’s even more fun to go where you can meet a bunch of people and learn a bunch of names.

How do you broaden your circle of friends?

It can be hard to come home from a trip if you don’t have human or furry companions to welcome you back. But sometimes you need to create your own welcome.

How do you experience welcome when you come home—whether or not anyone is there to greet you?

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
―Emma Lazarus

What responsibility do you think a nation has to offer hospitality to those in need who are not its citizens?

“True hospitality is marked by an open response to the dignity of each and every person. Henri Nouwen has described it as receiving the stranger on his own terms, and asserts that it can be offered only by those who ‘have found the center of their lives in their own hearts’.”
―Kathleen Norris

How has finding your own center enabled you to show hospitality to others?