Thought for the Week: Spiritual hospitality
Bob Ward reflects on flickering lights in the darkness
In his day, George Fox had good reason to raise objections to the established church: its rigid doctrines; its hireling priests and their demands for the payment of tithes to keep the edifice in being; but all parties to those times have moved on, if not necessarily in the same direction. So, as I travel around with my wife we find ourselves drawn to visit churches that we come across. They often reveal to us their offerings of spiritual hospitality. For example, in one Swedish church we visited we came across a bowl of water within which were some clear glass beads. Beside it there was a rose and a text in English. It said:
Dip your hand into this baptismal fountain, take a droplet and carry it home with you. Your whole life is carried in this droplet – comprising the totality of being human. It is this droplet that is filled with hope and love.
It would have seemed ungracious not to have accepted this gift. The droplet holds a place on my desk. Now I hold it in the palm of my hand, where it catches the light, the light that sustains life. More recently, we were walking among mountains in the south of France. We came across a simple church that, in part, serves as a memorial to local villagers who had been killed by an avalanche. Inside the church it was very dark but on a table there were a number of flickering candles. By their light we could just read a nearby text in French. It spoke to the condition of any who might cross the porch and realise that they were not sure what to do. It imagined that they might be saying:
I don’t know how to pray
I know only
I don’t have much time
The text then went on to suggest that a candle be lit:
The light that I offer is a little of my goodness
a little of my time
a little of myself
that I leave before the Lord…
This light that shines symbolises my prayer
that continues as I go on my way…
In the event, we did not light any candles, but we were both strongly affected by what we had seen and led towards prayer beyond words. Fox, when he was imprisoned in Lancaster gaol, was glad to have a candle in his cell. Our Quaker Advice 6 says:
While remaining faithful to Quaker insights, try to enter imaginatively into the life and witness of other communities of faith, creating together the bonds of friendship.
In our Meetings what kinds of spiritual hospitality are we offering strangers who appear in our midst – are there any droplets of hope, flickering lights in the darkness?
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