HEALTHY LIVING: Clear the Table - Make Room for Love

My family has known that the dining room table, the kitchen dinette table top — at home or at weekend retreat cabins, for that matter — are not for stacking, storing, or otherwise setting stuff upon. Call it a carry-over standard, it was the way my mom, Theoni, ran her house and it trickled its way to being my way, too.

I’ve thought it quirky of us; maybe even slightly idiosyncratic. A clean table top, with often a bowl holding this, that, and the other thing, Theoni always had it ready that way for the next meal. The next cup of coffee. The next visit.

Recently, I was introduced to the term Sacred Hospitality and I have been quietly twirling it in my mind with a new sense of awareness.

Because when you put a name to something it becomes all the more vivid in its being, in its existence, in its essence, and you suddenly see things as that (this thing that has always been) but now you see it and say, “it” is “THIS!”

Sacred Hospitality. A safe space where one is received in a generous spirit of welcomeness, where there is a curiosity and gentle eagerness for expanding understanding through a different perspective, where there is present, a wish to find commonality, and where shared joy and shared suffering are celebrated and comforted through respect and genuine care.

Suddenly, you see through the lens of Sacred Hospitality at every turn — where it is and where it is attempted. And — where it is absent. My mom never heard of this term in her life. And yet, around her table, it was this.

A clean, uncluttered tabletop prepared for the next opportunity for connecting with her girls. Her grandkids. Her friends. And the strangers we all brought to her that always left … filled.

I look at my cleared tables and I see so much opportunity to practice this in my own home… … And to create this sacred hospitality through all our interactions... through our tone, the gentleness of our voices, the invitation of our smiles, the gentleness of our touch, to say “you are safe with me, you are welcomed here with me, you are celebrated here with me, you are ’free to be’, to eat, to talk, to share, to care.”

And to say to each other: “Come, sit. My table is clear. I am ready for you.” Vicky Kettner is the Association Director of Marketing, Community Relations, and Member Engagement for the YMCA of Greater Kalamazoo.