True Community - You Can’t Buy It 9-8-9

Anderson, South Carolina

During my high school years I found much joy and adventure as a member of an Air Explorer Squadron. Rather than camping, this variant of scouting allowed me to fly in all manner of Air Force planes, to be an observer at missile launches, and tour most of the Air Force bases in southern California - a glorious thing for a heavenly-minded kid who built telescopes and watched the race to the moon in the 1960s. Part of this cosmic journey were biannual ceremonial meetings in Air Force dress blues at the local Sheraton Hotel; walking distance from my house. These were splendid and truly comfortable experiences in that old somewhat shopworn hotel. My first puppy loves were even found at our dances in the old moldy ballroom.

Nearly twenty five years later I had reason to return to that hotel under very different circumstances. The original hotel was severely damaged in an earthquake during the intervening years, condemned, and rebuilt as a lavish Ritz Carlton. My return was precipitated by the occasion of my brother’s marriage. In the course of this event he chose to rent this hotel and several of its catering halls for meals for family and out-of-town guests.

I and a dear friend decided to make a camping journey out of this wedding and spent about ten days in national parks both ways on the 5,500 mile drive from Alabama to California. We showed up at the reception desk of this place, not having showered in a few days, having used our trouser legs to wipe off excess peanut butter from our life sustaining PBJs in the deserts, and giving evidence of other major lapses in personal grooming. The staff at the reception desk was not certain whether to call the local police and have vagrants removed or to get out the nearest can of Raid and eradicate stray desert bugs. There was no sense of hospitality forthcoming. Only when I suggested that my brother had rented the place were we offered the key to the kingdom, and even then with some hesitation. Over the next several days there I felt like a total bumbling idiot - wondering what faux pas I was committing. Even with my brother renting the joint, I felt quite unwelcome. I wondered if the comfortable spirit of that old Sheraton fell into the San Andreas Fault that runs under the place. It was grand to get back into the desert.

There is a proverb that has worked well for thousands of years to describe human behavior. It essentially says, “We will be nice and show up as long as you can put out shrimp and caviar on the table.” A more modern interpretation would say “If you spread your money around, you will never really be sure who your true friends are, but when your money runs out, you will know for sure.”

Recent experiences overseas in upscale environments suggested to me that as long as my credit card was not declined then I could come in and play and enjoy the hospitality. Or could I? For weeks on end I felt like a wallet disguised as a human.

I received and exchanged several e-mails in the past days about my participating in some kind of Labor Day event in one of the South Carolina state parks. During the course of this exchange I suggested that I might not know anyone there and wondered if I should attend. It was suggested that I knew no strangers, and would leave with a bunch of new friends. With temerity, I drove twenty miles out to the state park, not having a clue who or what I was looking for. Several mostly random turns had me driving up to a lakeside picnic pavilion where I could hear wondrous strands of the happiest foot-stomping music in the world. I parked in a grove of trees and cautiously walked to the pavilion. A woman standing outside the pavilion erupted in smile - one known well to me and immensely pleased I had strayed in from the stand of trees. No can of Raid here.

I found myself suddenly inducted into a 51st wedding anniversary celebration for people I did not know. The reigning matriarch of this gala event extended the purest form of southern hospitality and community I have yet experienced. As a total stranger, I was admitted into sharing a sacred milestone in her life and an epic meal of grand proportions, one that gave me cause to wish I had brought mountains of Tupperware for leftovers. A truly happy band of fiddlers, banjo players, guitar and mandolin pickers, and a bass player preached a soft comfortable southern country theology in song that reminded me of what really matters in life.

I could have dining on porcelain, using Baccarat and sterling, set on Egyptian linen, but it would not have held a candle to the meal I enjoyed with new friends on Styrofoam, using polystyrene plastic ware on disposable table covers. The waterfront view was the equal of that at Louis 15 in Monaco, and we had live music.

Henri Nouwen describes the true nature of hospitality and community in much of his writing. True hospitality is not about being nice to nice people we already know and think we might get returns from. It is about being nice to strangers and creating safe spaces for them. “In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found.” Nouwen goes on to say that it is imperative for us “to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings”, even if they wipe peanut butter on their pants in the desert.

Those fiddlers and pickers have got their theology straight. My credit card did not work here.