Separated from its moral and spiritual landscape, the concept (not to mention embodiment) of hospitality has lost much of its potency and nuance. Interestingly, the word itself -- in Greek, Latin, French and Italian -- means both host and guest, implying a readiness on our part to welcome, as well as enter, another's world. Such readiness demands courage and vulnerability -- ''moral nerve'' as Ms. Oden puts it -- by which we relinquish our right to ourselves and participate in the life of another, shifting our frame of reference to Christ. Church history professor Amy Oden has collected this omnibus of sources from letters, diaries, sermons, travelogues and community rules to help us recover not only a personal sacramentality toward life, but also a broader orientation within the Christian tradition; a spirituality embedded within the oikos, or household of God. These excerpts present not only a theology of hospitality but also a journal chronicling the way it was lived by those in the earliest Christian centuries. As the editor quietly proclaims, ''Even as I listen to these voices, I dwell with them.'' Seems to us that's where hospitality begins, and endures. 316 pp.
Separated from its moral and spiritual landscape, the concept (not to mention embodiment) of hospitality has lost much of its potency and nuance. Interestingly, the word itself -- in Greek, Latin, French and Italian -- means both host and guest, implying a readiness on our part to welcome, as well as enter, another's world. Such readiness demands courage and vulnerability -- ''moral nerve'' as Ms. Oden puts it -- by which we relinquish our right to ourselves and participate in the life of another, shifting our frame of reference to Christ. Church history professor Amy Oden has collected this omnibus of sources from letters, diaries, sermons, travelogues and community rules to help us recover not only a personal sacramentality toward life, but also a broader orientation within the Christian tradition; a spirituality embedded within the oikos, or household of God. These excerpts present not only a theology of hospitality but also a journal chronicling the way it was lived by those in the earliest Christian centuries. As the editor quietly proclaims, ''Even as I listen to these voices, I dwell with them.'' Seems to us that's where hospitality begins, and endures. 316 pp.
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