This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
(from “The Guest House” by Jelaluddin Rumi)
“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”
(Hebrews 13:2, NIV)
Those of us who live in The Hospitality State know a lot about entertaining guests.
We can host the President of the United States in elegance and feed the hungry in a soup kitchen. We can be welcoming at a football game and at a funeral. We can serve cha-teaubriand on the finest china, and we can dish up some ribs on a paper plate. And it is not at all unusual for us to welcome those we don’t know, like Uncle Bill’s new wife, Bubbles. After all, when MamaandDaddyandthem get together, everyone’s family!
In my childhood it was common for guests to visit totally unannounced. My parents welcomed them, offered them coffee and cake, and they sat and talked. Somewhere in that exchange there was learning and understanding and connecting – even with those guests we would have preferred not to have come at all.
In “The Guest House,” by the 13th-century Persian mystic Rumi, we read about the guests that visit us in our inner lives – our feelings and our thoughts. Like human visitors, they come and they go, some staying too long and others not long enough – some making us laugh, others making us weep.
We open our front door wide to welcome the happy, peaceful guests like joy and calmness and gratitude and invite them to stay. We resist the dark and depressing guests like hate and greed and self-loathing, trying to not let them in. But they do come in – all of them – and they do leave – all of them. When we know and accept that, we are more able to appreciate the good times and endure the bad ones.
All our feelings and thoughts can teach us about ourselves if we will but let them. Joy can teach us that when we are connected with ourselves, others, and our higher power, life feels wonderful! Loneliness can teach us that we have love in our hearts, for if we did not love we would not feel loneliness. Anger can teach us about our hurts and how taking care of them in healthy ways might lead to our anger subsiding.
If we close our doors to pain and resentment and fear we might never know the important lessons they have for us. Building a good relationship with our inner guests and getting to know them can strengthen our ability to not fall prey to evil.
(Perhaps our inner houses should be like the old dog-trots, with both a front and a back door that are perpetually open. That way our thoughts and feelings could flow through us and get neither stuck nor stale.)
In the Parable of the House Swept Clean (Matthew 12 and Luke 11), a demon is evicted from his home. The residence is cleaned out, but nothing is put in the demon’s place. When the demon sees the empty house, he returns with his rowdy friends and they proceed to party. If the owner of the house had learned from the demon that evil hates good, he could have brought healthy guests into his clean quarters. Then the demon and his posse might have shied away.
Leonard Cohen’s 1979 song “The Guests” was based on Rumi’s poem. A portion of the lyrics read:
“One by one, the guests arrive
The guests are coming through
The open-hearted many
The broken-hearted few
And no one knows where the night is going
And those who dance, begin to dance
Those who weep begin
And "Welcome, welcome’ cries a voice
‘Let all my guests come in.’
And no one knows where the night is going”
We never know where the night is going — what will come from the visits of any of our guests. But we should not ignore the potential for growth through them. What might look like a mangy, worthless mutt could turn out to be a loving, faithful friend – a canine angel, if you will.
nRandy Weeks is an ordained minister and a Licensed Professional Counselor. He and his wife, Dr. Jeannie Falkner, make their home in Oxford.
