This video is a part of the Healing the Heart of Democracy Discussion Guide and can be found with more videos and resources in our “Healing the Heart of Democracy Hub.” You can explore the hub, download the guide, and find all of the videos along with additional resources here.
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Open and honest conversations in a setting of deep hospitality, held as an ongoing program in a congregation, can plant seeds of healing and civic unity around this and other contentious and painful issues of our time. (143)
Becoming people who offer hospitality to strangers requires us to open our hearts time and again to the tension created by our fear of “the other.” That is why many wisdom traditions highlight the creative possibilities of a heart broken open instead of apart. Only from such a heart can hospitality flow—toward the stranger and toward all that we find alien and unsettling. (149)
Q. Do you have a story about how a religious community helped you to develop democratic habits of the heart? How might the practice of “hospitality”—a central feature of all major religious traditions—help heal democracy? What forms might that practice take in congregational life? How have you offered or received hospitality in that context?
