Category: Hospitality

Hospitality is a spiritual practice involving receptivity, reverence, and generosity. It can change our lives and our communities.

Belonging Before Believing

I’m all set up to teach an intensive 3 week class at McCormick Theological Seminary this May with my colleague Pastor Alise Barrymore from The Emmaus Community in Chicago Heights. It’s called Belonging Before Believing: New Communities and Emerging Forms of Church. The class will run from May 13-June 3 if we get at least …

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No Future

I have a wonderful spiritual director through The Claret Center in Hyde Park. We’ve been meeting for about 8 months and focusing on how to achieve balance in my life. In other words, how can I rest? What stops me from renewing? Why do I let my sabbath time slip so easily away? How can …

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A Network of Friends Seeking Transformation

I’m always amazed when I watch this video, by the huge amount of similarity we use in talking about our emerging efforts at being church in new ways. Created in the spring of 2010 at a gathering in Minneapolis, this video features 16 really cool people doing awesome things across the country. Each of us …

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Becoming Bully Proof

Yesterday a good friend of mine was in a car accident (no one was injured), and the driver of the other vehicle leaped out of his car and called her a horrible string of names that can’t be repeated here. Being in a car accident is a scary thing, for everyone involved. For a moment, …

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Poverty of Heart Means Openness

The reviewer at Publisher’s Weekly described my understanding of hospitality as “capacious.” I had to look that word up! (You can read the full review on the Amazon.com site.) Capacious means containing or capable of containing a great deal, roomy. Yeah. So, not only my book, but hospitality, too. A roomy heart and life. Capacious! …

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