How do we make others feel welcome?
For more than fifty of his more than eighty years, Nurney Mason was a barber in the United States House of Representatives. Mason cut hair out of a tiny booth in the basement of the Rayburn Office Building - his little stall saw nearly as much history as the floor of the Capitol itself. And every day, he brought to his job not only his barbering skills, but kindness, optimism and encouragement. He would greet everyone - whether powerful member of Congress or lowest-level staffer - with a solid handshake and a knowing smile. Mason stayed upbeat, day after day, the vibrations of his clippers surely jarring his wrists over the half century he worked.
He was asked by one of his Congressional customers how he stayed so upbeat and happy all the time. Nurney Mason replied simply, "I just make it right here. I create joy where I stand" [From The President's Devotional by Joshua DuBois.]
Nurney Mason possesses the heart and soul of hospitality that Jesus exalts in today's Gospel. Mason responds to God's call to create joy where he stood, to reveal God's compassion and peace in his tiny booth to anyone who came by for a haircut. Such is our call, wherever you live and work and play, to welcome everyone into your midst, and to share such joy, even if it’s just a cup of cool water.
Such stories bring me hope and we can live such joyous welcome in our lives, even with Covid-19. But I want us to go a bit deeper for ourselves. Not just to think of our welcoming others, but how might we welcome Jesus into our lives and hearts…
And it is important more now than ever… we still have a deadly pandemic all around us, we see the brutal violence of racism, we see an economy in crisis, and there isn’t an end in sight for any of it.
It is exhausting. It is stressful. It can harm us. How can we still our soul and lift it up to God?
There is a prayer called the Welcoming Prayer. I spoke of it 3 years ago and want to reintroduce it. “It’s not an ancient practice, though it’s an ancient idea.” Mary Mrozowski of Brooklyn, New York — one of the first leaders of a method called centering prayer — developed this welcoming prayer, inspired by an early 18th century spiritual work.
The Welcoming Prayer is a method of consenting to God’s presence and action in our physical and emotional reactions to events and situations in daily life. The purpose of the Welcoming Prayer is to deepen our relationship with God through consenting in the ordinary activities of our day. It is a "letting go" in the present moment, in the midst of the activity of our ordinary life, and giving it to God.
Practicing the Welcoming Prayer offers us the opportunity to make choices that respond instead of reacting to the present moment. Through the action of the Holy Spirit, the practice empowers us to take appropriate action as freely and lovingly as possible in any situation that presents itself.
"To welcome and to let go is one of the most radically loving, faith-filled gestures we can make in each moment of each day. It is an open-hearted embrace of all that is in ourselves and in the world." — Mary Mrozowski
Why do this? Why welcome Jesus into ourselves and give over those emotions… Because by stopping for a moment and welcoming God in, we can deal with our thoughts/feelings/emotions/situations. In an old episode of NCIS…
Palmer: How do you do it — block out fear?
the older agent Gibbs: You don’t. It’s what you do with it.
If you are struggling with a bad feeling, this method offers a structured way to embrace and accept it, so you can release it and move on. There are three phases to the Welcoming Prayer. You might go directly from one to the next in a single, relatively formulaic prayer sequence. Or you might find yourself staying in one phase as it does its interior work. The three parts are:
Focus and sink in.
Welcome.
Let go.
1. Focus, feel and sink in — Feel the feeling. Don’t run away from it or fight it. Stay with this until you really experience a connection to the feeling or emotion on not just an emotional but also a physical level.So get comfy. Relax. Slow your breath. Think about what’s most on your mind at the moment. Hold on to it. Feel it in your body. Focus on it, Welcome it & let it go, while I say the words to the prayer…(in the next blog post)
2. Welcome — Affirm the rightness of where you are and acknowledge God’s presence in the moment by saying: “Welcome, [fear/anger/etc.].” Don’t just say this and move on. Repeat it and sit with the feeling until you experience a genuine sense that you welcome it, that you are not fighting against it and that God is present with you right now.
3. Let go — Say “God, I give you my [fear/anger/etc.],” or another phrasing if you find it more helpful. At this point, you can turn the feeling or emotion over to God and let it go. If you haven’t truly felt it and welcomed it in, you may still experience resistance here. Stay in the letting go, or turn back to the focus or welcome stages as appropriate.”
Leanna Tankersley in a book that includes a chapter on the welcoming prayer says this, “I love these lines, this concept, this practice. The Welcoming Prayer takes us out of our heads and into a space where we stop, even for a very few minutes, our analyzing and figuring. We relinquish our strategies and allow God to work within us, in the place where we are far more malleable than our mind. We are opening ourselves up to a divine encounter which is never a bad idea.” (Leanna Tankersley, Brazen, 2016. pg 200).
Opening up ourselves to a divine encounter…
This prayer opens us up to welcome Jesus into our very hearts and lives. The welcoming prayer is a way to deal with fear or anything else of our lives, to turn it over to God and welcome God into our very moment, to welcome God who is already in our midst into that fear, emotion or whatever we are dealing with.
Mary Mrozowski, “I am where I need to be. Everything around me includes and hides the sacred.” Amen.
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