• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are
• Editor’s note: “Spiritual leaders answer” is a weekly column inviting Kaua‘i’s religious and spiritual leaders to share their doctrine’s perspective on a suggested subject. Every Friday, a topic is printed, inviting a response. Due to space limitations, submissions are edited. Thoughts or suggestions for future topics are always welcome. Next week the suggested topic is gifts. The topic at the end of the column is for the following week.
Kahu James Fung
Lihu‘e Christian Church
Hospitality, not only to friends and family, but to strangers has always been a prominent value of Christians. It is firmly established in the Judeo-Christian tradition as well as Hawaiian cultural. Guests are to be provided with food, a place to stay and spiritual hospitality. Spiritual hospitality has to do with creating space in our heart and time in our lives to sit and be attentive to our guests.
There is a story that Luke tells (St. Luke 10: 38-42) of Jesus who was received as a guest in the home of his friends Mary and Martha. The brief vignette describes the kind of attentiveness, spiritual curiosity and receptive delight Mary displayed as she sat and listened to Jesus talk about the things that were in his heart. The story exemplifies the kind of hospitality that we should all be providing each other.
Listening is an art. When we listen with genuine interest to another person they feel what they say matters — which translates into the feeling that they matter.
Welcoming a person as a guest is one of the best things we can do. Too many people feel that they don’t matter — that they are not cherished.
God cherishes each one of us. And God wants us to cherish one another.
Dr. Robert Merkle
Retired UCC clergyman, Koloa
We are all guests, invited for a relatively brief adventure on board a spaceship called “Earth.” Similarly we all have “guests” called cells and bacteria traveling on board a “sort-of spaceship” we call our physical body.
Most cells in the body are healthy guests and perform a beneficial service to all other guests. Occasionally there are rogue cells that for unknown reasons refuse to perform their assigned role in the larger body of which they are a part, becoming “cancerous.” If they are content to hang out with one another they form a benign tumor. If they aggressively intrude on and disrupt the activities of other healthy cells they can take over and destroy the body.
Every human body also entertains millions of “bacteria” guests. Some of these guests are only parasitic, causing harm to the total body. If it were not for the healthy guests among them who perform their assigned function, we would be unable to do many things. These guests provide beneficial services for the body.
Each one of us is an invited guest among the many guests on Earth. A major difference between us and our “on board guests” is we have the freedom and responsibility to choose whether or not to be beneficial guests, performing a vital and beneficial function in the total body of which we are a part. We can choose to be parasitic, benign, destructive or beneficial guests.
“Choose ye this day whom you shall serve…”
Pastor Wayne Patton
Anahola Baptist Church
Sharing meals, homes and worship with guests of different backgrounds is a proof of the truth of the Christian faith. The shared meal is an important way of recognizing the equal value and dignity of guests.
Yet we still struggle to find better ways to respond to the homeless, those with difficulties, immigrants and refugees. We search for ways to respond to youth who are detached from family, school and church.
Treating others as guests means living life with an attitude of acceptance toward them. When we can live with those attitudes it brings about the Hispanic Christmas tradition of “posada,” a sheltering quality to people around us. One of the gifts we bring to the world at Christians is making our lives available to others.
Treating others as guests is not only important, but it is the foundation of spirituality. In an uncaring world where many receive only rebuke and rejection small acts of kindness and generosity can make all the difference. It may be the only sign of the love of Christ that a person experiences that day, that week or ever.
Baha’i Faith
This is the season for visiting and hospitality. The Baha’i writings provide guidance as to how to be a guest and how to welcome a guest.
As a guest one must, “Take heed that ye enter no house in the absence of its owner, except with his permission. Comport yourselves with propriety under all conditions, and be not numbered with the wayward.”
Many Baha’is decorate their homes with the following prayer to welcome their guests: “My home is the home of peace. My home is the home of joy and delight. My home is the home of laughter and exultation. Whosoever enters through the portals of this home, must go out with gladsome heart. This is the home of light; whosoever enters here must become illumined…”
Topic for two
weeks from today
• Will you speak to us on goals?
• Spiritual leaders are invited to e-mail responses of three to five paragraphs to pwoolway@kauaipubco.com.
• Deadline each week is 5 p.m.
Tuesday.
