Arriving at Our Own Door
“All kinds of people, round that table.”
And one of them is you. One of them is me. One of them is each of us. So I’m channeling my inner flight attendant this morning, to urge you to Be sure to secure your own [oxygen] mask before assisting others.
With my final sermon in our month of Welcome I turn the focus inward to consider the welcome we offer ourselves–as individuals and as a congregation.
The possible objections are obvious. We’re supposed to be welcoming of strangers. Welcome is all about what we offer guests. Welcome brings the other (whoever that may be) in, graciously, genuinely, eagerly. To focus on welcoming ourselves is to turn the entire concept of welcome upside down or inside out or both. Or, as the poet Charles Bernstein concluded in his poem, Self-Help: “Self-Help.—Other drowns.”
Yes, to all of that–except self-help–other drowns. Because I’m with the flight attendants on this one. Self-help does not equal others or the other drowning. That aside, yes, of course, we strive to welcome strangers. To offer guests and the neighbors and others warm, gracious, genuine welcome. Welcome that draws them in and expresses the honor and delight we feel in their presence in our home or community or at our event. Welcome is traditionally and perhaps best understood as other-focused. All that not withstanding,we do well first to pay attention to the welcome we offer ourselves, our true, authentic selves, because the welcome we offer others rests on the welcome we first offer ourselves.
You may have had the experience of being a guest, in a private home, when all the expected elements of welcome were present: the main entrance well-marked and easy to find; hosts ready to greet you, take your wrap, introduce you to the space and the other guests; attention paid to room temperature and lighting; sufficient comfortable seating; thought given to the mix of guests; meal or refreshments–if served–delicious and easy to eat in the setting. And yet, somehow, the warmth and ease that come from a genuine and gracious welcome just didn’t come through.
You’ve probably also had an experience of being a guest, again in a private home or at a church or temple or a public event, when one or more of the expected elements of welcome were missing or substandard: maybe the seating was a bit awkward or the refreshments skimpy or uninspired. Yet somehow, you were enveloped by welcome, knew you were an honored guest, that for that moment you were where you belonged.
And maybe you’ve had the slightly different experience of being at a party or gathering where the official host was distracted or putting out metaphorical fires or simply not very socially adept. But someone else exuded grace and warmth, putting you and everyone else at ease; essentially acting as a co-host in an unobtrusive way that lighted the hosts duties without usurping or diminishing their role in any way.
What about going to a gathering or even a religious service, and you found your way to the main entrance and meeting room, and greeters showed you where the restrooms were and seemed genuinely glad you were there, but still the welcome wasn’t all you’d hoped it would be. And maybe it was really hard to figure out what was lacking or what was awry. Maybe you never put your finger on it. Could it be that there was some confusion about why you or anyone else had been invited to this place or event? Or maybe what unfolded wasn’t what was advertised? Or maybe it seemed like you were welcomed because of what you represented, not who you are. A young person! A person of color! An LGBTI person! A woman! A man! But not, “you! We’re so glad you’re here.”
There are dozens of different ways a welcome can miss the mark or materialize against the odds, but I think a commonality lies at the core of many, if not most. I think guests/strangers/neighbors/others feel the absence of welcome when the hosts–whether individual people or an institution–haven’t arrived at their own door and found welcome there. Haven’t given themselves bread and wine and the love of their own heart. Haven’t carried their inner baby and shown them the vast wonders of the universe from the security of a loving embrace. Conversely, strangers/guests/neighbors/others experience the contentment, security and the joy of deep welcome in the presence of someone–a host, a fellow visitor or guest, a service provider–someone who has welcomed themselves into the fullness of their own being. A ripple effect occurs.
We hear the flight attendant line I started with a lot these days–or at least I do in ministerial circles. Be sure to secure your own [oxygen] mask before assisting others. We remind people in the helping professions and overwhelmed caregivers and frazzled parents and emergency responders of all kinds: “you can’t help or save anyone else if you’re not rested/healthy/getting sufficient oxygen and nutrition”. In repetition it can sound trite or simplistic: “put on your own mask first.” “You can’t pour from an empty cup.” “You won’t do your family/team any good if you’re sick in bed.” “Put on your own mask first!”
Trite or repetitive or simplistic or not, none of that is wrong. And, as I said a moment ago, it applies to welcome, too. I feel most welcomed into a home or a group or religious service or other public event when the hosts (or another guest) know themselves to be deeply welcome in the world. When they have, whether through the experience of having been repeatedly, consistently and generously welcomed by those nearest to them, or through doing the arduous, spiritual, and ultimately joyful work of learning to welcome themselves, or, mostly likely, through a combination of the two, come to know themselves of as worthy and honored guests of Creation.
Knowing oneself to be a worthy and honored guest of Creation, and thus to actively welcome oneself over and over again at one’s own door, into one’s own life, isn’t a once and forever state of being for most of us, and it doesn’t result from or come after a sort of purging or modification of flaws that we might think barriers to being truly worthy and honored. Rather, it grows out of our acceptance and celebration of the fullness of our unique and precious being. And relearning and reaccepting it over and over again, as often as we forget it. We’re welcome because we are welcome. As we are and who we are.
Short-tempered, slightly arrogant, clumsy, overly-fastidious, in recovery, indecisive, tending toward gossip or rigidity, chronically ill, physically or mentally, engaging in behaviors we’re secretly ashamed of, neurodivergent, college drop-out, underemployed for the level of formal education we have achieved, convicted of a crime, in debt, believer or unbeliever in whatever, estranged from the people we most long to be close to–any of these may prevent our being welcome in certain homes or organizations or by some people. Not one of them or or any other parts of who we are, who we’ve been, disqualifies us from being welcomed by Creation. We’re welcome because we are. And when we offer ourselves that same boundless welcome, we become an embodiment of and conduit of Creation’s welcome to others, because being steeped in this kind of welcome produces an inner calm, a generosity of spirit, a loosening of clutches at control, and an overall ease in responding to the fits and starts and switchbacks and tangles of life. Knowing ourselves to be a regular old, deeply flawed and slightly questionable human being who nevertheless and absolutely belongs in the Creation can’t help but make the welcome we strive to offer others more expansive, deeper, truer. Putting on our own oxygen mask first saves those around us from the soul pain of questioning their belonging in the Creation.
The church has two primary roles regarding welcome. First, the church exists in part, to call us back when we begin to doubt or forget our belonging in Creation and thus to become neglectful of welcoming ourselves. Here we offer words and gestures, music and silence, work and prayer that carry in them wisdom of the ages and of the myriad traditions that sing a thousand ways of Creation's boundless welcome of us. Here, through worship and covenant groups and religious education we teach and learn ways of welcoming ourselves. Thus reminded of our embrace by the great Welcome, and having learned and practiced welcoming ourselves with joy and reverence, we go forth from here week after week, carrying welcome in our very being to all we encounter.
That’s the inward facing role of the church with regard to welcome. The church, of course, also has an outward facing role with regard to welcome. The church is called to welcome guests, strangers, others who seek a spiritual home here, for a time or for a lifetime. And as in private homes or groups, the church’s welcome can be off if its sense of its identity or purpose or worthiness is shaky. If, and this I think is often what keeps churches and other groups from offering our best welcome, it doubts its own welcome in the Universe by forgeting that its flaws and imperfections and quirks and oddities and history of missteps and mistakes aren’t the whole of its identity and don’t need to be desperately, hastily rectified in one fell swoop, or most troublesome of all, denied and covered up.
An institution, this church included, that knows its identity; knows its reason for being in the world, what gifts it offers and also what roles and gifts are best left for other churches or organizations to offer; knows but is neither frozen nor obsessed by its shortcomings and flaws, is an institution that can offer an expansive, embracing, joyful welcome to all seekers. Such a church will, of course, speak the truth about troubling aspects of its history; pay attention to gaps in accessibility; shore up hospitality; deepen and expand pastoral care; widen its social justice ministry–whatever it takes to address flaws and imperfections and underdeveloped areas of ministry that keep it from ministering to its congregation, future generations and the community in which it is situation. But it will do so thoughtfully and deliberately, not reactively or out of toxic levels of shame. And the difference will be felt. Strangers, guests, visitors will be met by an institutional, systematic inner calm, a generosity of spirit, a loosening of clutches at control, and an overall ease in responding to the fits and starts and switchbacks and tangles of life, and feel themselves enveloped by the contentment, security and the joy of deep, reverential welcome. And they, like we already here, may then go forth from here carrying welcome in their very being to all they encounter, and arrive eventually at their own door, ready to feast on their lives.
And we, in ways we will never know, will be blessed by the cycle of welcome we set in motion when we began to breathe in our own welcome before assisting others. Amen.