A place to write stories and essays from my druidry training and work

Virtue: Hospitality

The Dedicant Handbook defines hospitality as follows: “Acting as both a gracious host and an appreciative guest, involving benevolence, friendliness, humor, and the honouring of “a gift for a gift.” Collins English Dictionary has a couple of related definitions:”

1. the act, practice, or quality of being hospitable; solicitous entertainment of guests, and

2. kindness in welcoming strangers or guests, also receptiveness.”

 Exercise 1: Who and What Is Hospitable?  I find that identifying modern examples of hospitable people is difficult. Society has changed significantly over the last 100 years (even the last 25 years!), and hospitality looks different today than it did a century ago. I picture the 1950s neighborhoods with neighbors all sharing ingredients for each other’s’ recipes. Of course, that didn’t occur everywhere in the US but it’s the perception of American hospitality that stands out. I clearly remember my first military duty station when a sponsor was there to meet me, help me out, and even invite me over to dinner. Even when the hospitality was ‘assigned’ to someone it was carried out without question.

 Exercise 2: Examining Definitions  I find the Collins’s dictionary definition to be abrupt and incomplete because it fails to merge the reciprocity, friendliness, and hosting/guesting into a coherent picture. The Dedicant Handbook is broad enough with the incorporation of the *ghosti principle to fully encompass the virtue within hospitality and set it as a goal for those pursuing druidry. I have the desire to summarize hospitality as “just being a good to other human beings,” but doing so omits the responsibility for both reciprocity and the host/guest roles.

 Exercise 3: Seeking the Mythology and History  The most prominent examples that come to mind about this concept of hospitality come from multiple religions. Among the Greeks, Norse, and the Hindu, humans sometimes experienced a deity visit to test their hospitality. Often the host would not know of the nature of their visitor and their lives could be significantly influenced by how they performed this duty. The hospitality culture was deeply ingrained in the ancient Viking lifestyle. Both a gracious guest and generous host was considered a duty in their society.

 Exercise 4: The Virtue and the Self  I can think of times when I was both hospitable and less than hospitable in my past. There were times I have offered to help and house a new military member to the base. I felt this was a duty because I would hope the same hospitality would be offered to me in the reverse situation. And while I take great effort to be courteous and gracious in my daily interactions with people, I can recall times when my hospitality did not measure up to the situation. One should expect to see reciprocity in society daily but I sometimes get annoyed at people who take more than they give. Driving among rush hour traffic sometimes pulls these feelings to the front.

 Exercise 5: Your Understanding of the Virtue  Hospitality is a virtue that one should seek because it recognizes the duty of all of us as members of a society. We should treat others as we would wish treated in similar circumstances. We must all strive for *ghosti in our lives to make our civilization a place where we can all succeed. Dumezil would recognize the need for hospitality in all societies where the common people gathered to live and work together. Hospitality would be required for a functioning society!

 

Works Cited

 https://www.adf.org/members/training/dp/dp-manual-web/index.html

https://public.wsu.edu/~kimander/hospitalityvikings.htm

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/hospitality