Disorientation and Hospitality

There is something in us that doesn’t like to be lost. We want to know where we are, and how we can get “home” again. We’re afraid when we get disoriented, which in its literal root means: “un-east-ed,” confused about the oriens or “rising sun.” Can anything good come of such experiences? We all remember times when we were lost, and I mean really lost. Where we lost our bearings, and couldn’t find the right path. Of course, sometimes, we’re “lost” without even knowing it, simply because we don’t really know where we are going. A familiar episode from the classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland recounts such an experience. You will perhaps recall it. The scene opens with the image of the grinning Cheshire-Cat sitting up in tree, as Alice wanders by. She has lost her way, and implores the Cat for help:

“Cheshire-Puss,” she began, rather timidly . . . “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where –” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“—so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”

There it is: if we don’t know where we are going, we are in one sense “lost” and it doesn’t matter which way we go. We’ll get “somewhere,” if only we keep pressing on. For this quandary, accurate maps or even the newest satellite-guided technology, a GPS device, won’t help us. A map will be useless if we don’t know where we are and can’t orient ourselves. And a GPS device can only tell us where we are and how we can get “there,” but can’t suggest where we should go. That still depends upon our initiative, our creativity, our sense of purpose, our mission – which is to say, our understanding of the destiny toward which God is calling us.

I have the feeling that this is something of the predicament we find ourselves in as a church. We’re not necessarily lost because we’ve become disoriented; we have maps that chart the territory, but we don’t necessarily know where we are, and we’re often quite unsure in such a quandary where we ought to go. And, for those churches that have something like a GPS device, telling us exactly where we are, the question is still whether we know where we’re heading. In such a case, the Cheshire-Cat’s advice is provocative: yes, we’ll surely get “there,” wherever that is, if only we “walk long enough.” And so we try the same familiar things more earnestly, or we try any number of new ones – but still without a clear sense of why, or toward what end.

Pentecost is a long season, the season we have come to call “ordinary time” in the church’s liturgical calendar. It is the time when we hear the ancient question Peter asked of Jesus, “Quo vadis” (or, “Where are you going?”), as one asked of us. Where are we going? This will necessarily “disorient” us, as it did the first gatherings of those who followed the Prince of Peace in Jerusalem two millennia ago. It may even call us to turn aside from the path we find ourselves treading, in order to find the way through that “straight and narrow” gate. And sometimes, this is the nudge we need to discern in the signs of these times where the unsettling call of God might be leading us. Disorientation is sometimes nothing more or less than a confusion; sometimes, however, it leads us into the realm of creativity – reversing the plight of Babel and opening us to engagement with others we’d not prepared for or expected.

In the United Church of Christ, this season marks the beginning of what our church leaders have called a “sacred conversation about race” in our nation. For those remembering the story of the first Pentecost, this will seem a familiar tale: these early disciples found themselves gifted with an ability to understand and speak the languages of those “others” gathered in Jerusalem for the festival, so that together they might together testify to the Spirit’s presence. And this means for us, as for these first followers of Jesus, abandoning the safety of the familiar, a holy disorientation. It will mean coming out of hiding in the “familiar” places where we live separate lives, and bearing witness to the Spirit’s urging to do a new thing. It will mean listening to others tell of their own experiences of mercy, and opening ourselves to finding their hospitality as the sure gift of the Spirit’s presence.

These times call for nothing short of courageous and humble hearts in going forth on this journey in which it does matter which way we go – at least, if we hope to follow the Spirit’s wild and faithful ways, which call us into the creative disturbance that marks Her presence. On this way, we will surely come to know the risks involved in sharing life with others whose languages and ways are different from our own. In the hospitality we receive and offer, may we also know the Spirit’s blessing of creative and adventurous communion.

Mark S. Burrows
Theologian-in-Residence at Old South Church (Boston)
Professor of the History of Christianity at Andover Newton Theological School