On Opening the Door

We arrived at the retreat house mid-afternoon on a sunny, but blustery, day. We had not traveled far, but the approach up the driveway took us in to another world altogether, one without very good cell reception, daily newspapers, television screens. As we drove up, the door opened, or so it seemed, and she was waiting to invite us in. The hostess, now elderly, has belonged to this order since she was a teenager. She has celebrated her 50th anniversary of belonging. This day she opened the door to our small group of Ammas to welcome us to four days of reflection and prayer. But we are also welcomed and opened to a house of memory of a brave and tenacious group of wisdom practitioners who together stood up to the repressive remands of a cardinal to become their own order in the ’60s, yet to remain faithful to their own tradition. Their strength and clarity pervades the house.

The house in which we stay is old, beautiful and holy. Our voices automatically find a softer cadence. Out footsteps slow and tread more lightly. It takes a few minute to enter the sacred space fully, to begin, to calibrate our bio-rhythms to a gentler pace. There are more doors to open. Each of us has a sleeping space, ample, comfortably appointed, with a vista of sea, bosque, mountain or garden, or all of them. We are offered windows into beauty the mystery of creation from the comfort of out own sacred space.

The door to the library where we will gather for our reflection is open. Bookshelves floor to ceiling, old richly colored rugs, ample sofas and chairs, tall stately lamps, a table for the finger labyrinth are  the setting for our sacred conversation, prayer and song. The door to the living room leads us to a hospitable meeting place around a fireplace where we share stories that allow us to know each other in ways and in venues we have not previously known. The hearth naturally leads us to the long, beautiful dining table which can served 12 or 13 of us for dinner each night. However, we go first into the always open swinging doors to pantry and kitchen where we are introduced with love and enthusiasm to the dishes made, most of which are grow in the garden right outside out dining room window, and adapted to the dietary needs of each of us. It is a door of a culinary kind ,that lets us taste spaghetti squash, spinach cheese frittata and roasted sweet potatoes, as well as peanut butter sandwiches.

We found it to be the perfect setting to explore from sacred text and tradition the meanings of hospitality- Preparing, Welcoming, Nourishing, Including, Protecting, and Receiving. Music, mandalas to color with markers and crayons, baby sea animals, poems and ikons all helped light the way.  What does it mean to be a faithful person in a 21st Century world who welcomes, offers hospitality, takes the risk of opening and loving? We wrestled, with some tears, some painful memories, some ancient patterns of behavior, but time and time again, we came back to the exemplar of the open door of our hostess, the one who gave us a key, showed us our room, kept fresh flowers on the table and on every shining surface, and told us her best and latest joke! What an embodiment of an open-hearted one!

We returned home through that same open door, after our experience of having an “encounter (with) a God of life and love who embraces us.” (Nanette Sawyer, Hospitality, The Sacred Art) to go “running into the world and our community to see how we can extend that community to others.” (Stephanie Spellers in Sawyer). I was grateful to see my own front door that I could open, to hear it open when my husband arrived home. Now I am pondering, what other doors am I being invited to open with beauty, grace, welcome and love?