Quote from FB

[sasha_feather]

Leigh Ann Hildebrand: I explain radical hospitality to my classmates by referencing the experience of arriving at a table where all the seats are already taken. Even if you've been invited to the meeting/dinner/event, if you arrive and there is no place to sit, there's a momentary experience of not-belonging. That feeling happens *before* people get a chance to offer a chair or move down or make room, and if there are additional factors like being already marginalized, being the only POC, the only woman, the only PWD -- that first impression can cast a long shadow on the organization. So I tell people, "Always have an empty chair. And if someone arrives to fill it, get ANOTHER empty chair. Make sure that there is always room at your table -- literally and metaphorically -- for the unexpected guest as well as the expected ones."

Comments

[cynthia1960]

thank you 10X!

[deakat]

I love this. Thank you for sharing it.

[jesse_the_k]

That makes me smile deeply! Have you ever attended a Seder (the family ritual meal held the first two nights of Passover)? Because there's always an empty chair, just in case the prophet Elijah stops by.

[sasha_feather]

Yes I have! Two years ago. It was so much food.

Elijah

[bibliofile]

One of the things that amused me in Lyda Morehouse's AngeLINK books was that, during a seder, Elijah actually showed up....

Meanwhile, love this quote. Such a simple, elegant solution!

[dogstar]

What an AWESOME quote - and a great theory of how to run things, too :D