Eve Tushnet
at First Things:
That brings us to the most important spiritual aspect of cocktail culture: hospitality. Those people coming in off the streets, coming into churches and taverns, what do they seek? Home. What truly excellent pastors can help to provide for the wayfarer is a taste of the home that is promised us with our Maker, though of course we will never feel quite at home this side of the kingdom. But the work of helping people to feel a bit less estranged, a bit more comfortable in their own skin and in the Milky Way, is the work of hospitality, and it is a task for a bar like Derek’s Columbia Room, New York’s Death & Co., or South Bend’s Tapastrie even as it is for the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. A priest who answers the rectory door and a bartender who places before her customer a cool glass of water and a menu share the obligation to look upon the congregant with love and respect and then to assess what’s the best way we might serve.
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