I have agreed to facilitate a Round Table at the Global Conference of Tertiary Chaplains in Boston in June. Radical Hospitality is one of the four themes of the conference, so here is what I’m proposing. I’d appreciate your help in sharpening up the questions, which are meant to promote discussion.

Radical Hospitality as the Core Value of Chaplaincy in an Age of Pluralism

Summary:

The legend of the life of St Martin of Tours defines the underlying values of chaplaincy, in particular, unconditional hospitality. Nouwen’s conception of hospitality as ‘making space’ overlays a powerful image on this myth.

The practice of hospitality is found within the traditions of most, if not all, indigenous cultures and world religions and is therefore a common value for multifaith chaplaincy – a response to the pluralist context.

Radical hospitality is becoming increasingly countercultural and prophetic as universities adopt a consumer-business model.

1. What are our experiences of the transformative dynamic of hospitality that convince us of its centrality to the practice of chaplaincy?

2. What barriers have we experienced to its flourishing?

3. If radical hospitality is unconditional, what issues have you experienced among sponsors or other stakeholders, who may have conditional expectations of chaplaincy?

4. What protections are at the disposal of the host, while still making hospitable space for the guest?

Julian Burnside gave another excellent address at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas last weekend. His topic was “Do we Care?”.

He has been thinking a lot about empathy lately. So have I.

A quick look at Wikipedia -empathy – the capacity to recognize and, to some extent, share feelings (such as sadness or happiness) that are being experienced by another.

I like Berger’s definition – “The capacity to know emotionally what another is experiencing from within the frame of reference of that other person, the capacity to sample the feelings of another or to put one’s self in another’s shoes.”

Clearly, our capacity to care is closely related to our capacity for empathy. Someone may need to have a certain amount of empathy before they are able to feel compassion and act out of that compassion – to care.

I recall reading an article recently reflecting on the emphasis on self-esteem we teachers adopted in the 70′s, which I expressed (in my former life as a teacher) through my commitment to use Health Education as a vehicle for promoting it within the context of the well-being of students. But did our emphasis on self-esteem play into a kind of individualised narcissism at the expense of empathy? The research revealed in this article indicates that capacity for empathy among students in the US is in sharp decline. It suggests that, among other things, a myopic emphasis on self-esteem at the expense of empathy may be part of the blame. http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Should-We-Care-What/128420/

If this is so, then the answer to Julian Burnside’s topic “Do We Care” is likely to be -
…well, ‘yes’, at the moment, but in the future, perhaps not!

Julia Gillard may be unpopular at the moment, but I find myself in sympathy with her determination to “be on the side of history” (her words) with regard to dealing with climate change.

I’ve always been taken by the word of the prophet Isaiah that “God is doing a new thing – see God is doing it already!” In the eye of faith, it is God who is acting in history, even though we may be players in it. We can see what “God is doing” – if we know how and where to look!

God is not contained by our thinking or theology. God is always doing God’s new thing. And to this extent I like Julia Gillard’s approach. To “do the right thing”  in response to climate change and to seek to be “on the side of history” may well be a secular way of answering Wesley’s two fundamental questions  ”what is the Spirit of God doing?” (in the world), and secondly, “how shall we meet the needs of this hour?”

The 9/11 of the Jewish people took place in 586 BCE when, against all tenets of their faith, the Temple in Jerusalem, in which they believed God resided, was utterly destroyed and the Jewish elite were forcibly exiled. It is not surprising therefore, that Isaiah, looking back towards the end of the exilic period, suggests that God cannot be contained by our thinking – even our most orthodox thinking. Only the Jeremiah’s were able to see what was coming – and didn’t he have a hard time trying to sell it!

Our task is to discern as best we can, the movements we see at large, and “to be on the side of history”. The majority will always tend to want things the way they always were. But I find little evidence in the Bible that life is static or that faith is static. God as Spirit (ruach = breath) sees to that! “The wind blows wherever it wishes,” says Jesus,” you hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going”. Love may be eternal, but the temporal is forever changing.

Bring on a price on carbon, and let’s do what we can to support those adversely affected!