Hospitality in My Life
By Oblate Lori Carroll
One of the earliest demonstrations of hospitality I witnessed actually came from my dad, who was a typical husband and father of the 1960s and 70s – meaning he was pretty uninvolved in childcare and totally uninvolved in the care of our home.
My best friend Pat had spent the night at our house, and at breakfast the next morning, Dad told Pat he had something to give her…a set of luggage! She and I looked at each other with surprise and excitement, until he pulled out this “luggage set,” which was actually a set of paper sacks in different sizes that he had labeled and decorated with a Magic Marker.
Apparently, my dad had noticed that whenever Pat spent the night, she brought her clothes and toiletries in a paper grocery sack – so he thought his gift was hysterical and laughed at his own cleverness. (Remember, this was before the famous “dad jokes,” but certainly qualified!) That has remained one of my favorite memories of my dad.
After I married my husband Paul, who came from a family of 11 kids, I remember getting the house spiffed up when we were going to host a family gathering for the first time and I wanted the house to be perfect. Because I was teaching full time in addition to playing at church on the weekends, plus giving piano lessons after school…house-cleaning had to be done at night. As I finished vacuuming some time after midnight, Paul said to me, “You know, they don’t care how clean the house is. They’re coming to enjoy each other’s company!” That made me realize my priorities were a little messed up, and since then I have looked forward to hosting family gatherings without the stress of having a perfectly clean house.
In 2005 I went to Kosovo with a group of adults and youth from Muscatine for what I thought would be a “musical mission trip.” The Kosovars were only six years past a war that had devastated their people, infrastructure, and economy, and I expected to find the people depressed and angry.
What we found couldn’t have been more different from my expectations! We met people who smiled freely and welcomed us into their homes to share wonderful meals, serving foods that had probably decimated their monthly food budget. Unemployment was around 75%, and those with jobs made very little money. But everywhere we went we were treated like royalty. The entire group from Muscatine agreed that we had gotten far more than we had given.
All of us here today have experienced hospitality from some of the most hospitable women on the planet…our beloved Benedictine Sisters. I will never forget the smile on Sr. Charlotte’s face as she welcomed me to my first retreat at Benet House many years ago. Later she showed that same hospitality the first time I played the organ for prayers in the chapel and she would glance over from her seat to cue me that it was time to start the next psalm. She had played so many times before her diminishing eyesight ended her time “on the bench” that her internal clock was spot-on.
After I retired from teaching I asked to become a “live-in volunteer,” and each time I’ve come for a week the Sisters have all welcomed me warmly. It has been a real inspiration to see the Sisters together in their “regular” environment, when they don’t have to be hospitable to guests…only to each other. My favorite thing to observe is how a Sister will quietly show another Sister where to look for the day’s prayer service if she’s confused in the chapel. At meals, they are so helpful to less-mobile Sisters, and get beverages or desserts for others without being asked.
Sometimes I try to imagine what the monastery was like in Benedict’s time, and how those monks might have responded to having an “outsider” actually living, praying, and eating with them for an extended period of time. Maybe they showed as much hospitality to their guests as “our” Sisters do, but it would be hard to be as welcoming. These Sisters are such a good example of what we all should be, and I am so very thankful for their influence on my life.