Welcome Made Tangible

A reflection on vulnerability, rest, and welcoming weird American women whose eyes don't work good.

I’m back in the United States, where eye doctors (optometrists? opticians?) are many, so I’ve started wearing my contacts again. (Responsibly, I swear.) My normally fairly healthy self managed to contract a corneal ulcer, something that I’d never heard of nor thought I would get, possibly from contact lens overuse/misuse. (One of the volunteers, a former deputy cook named Evie, said, “When you said you were tired of having to be the person with the vision, maybe God or the universe took that literally?”) Every Saturday during the season at Iona Abbey, the community holds a Service of Welcome for the guests who have arrived that afternoon and anyone else who wants to join. I reflected on the story of Elijah from 1 Kings 19:4-9 as he rests and takes some food and water. Maybe that’s a good passage for all the exhausted clergy, church staff, and women spent from all the emotional labor of the holidays. But in these twelve days of Christmas, I can’t help but think about a Jewish refugee family from Palestine, too.

Photo: A feast for a stranger at Petra and Sabine’s house.

A few weeks ago I received a welcome I never planned on. Long story short (which is what people say when they’re going to tell long stories, but it’s cold, so I promise I’ll keep it short)—I had a weird ailment and had to travel to the doctor. Nothing life-threatening, but not something that you could get care for here on this island off an island off an island.

I found myself making my way on the ferry, and the bus, and the other ferry, and the train, and the taxi to Gartnaval General Hospital in Glasgow. Unlike the prophet Elijah, I wasn’t fearing for my life, but I was anxious, in pain, scared. It was at the end of a long journey and a long, long day that I was welcomed. Petra, my host didn’t know me, this weird American lady whose eyes were not working properly, from Adam or Eve. But she was a friend of the community, and opened her spare room to me. She helped organize someone to pick me up at the train station. She made a bed, and she asked me if I wanted something to eat. We have a couple things leftover, she said.

I was imagining a slice of cold pizza, or some crisps and a piece of fruit. Friends, she brought me a tray. With homemade soup and good bread. With slaw and olives. With not one, not two, but three cakes. I ate that food, and I texted a picture of it to my family and friends from home. “What happens if you get sick, all the way out there?” they had asked. This is what.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve been working in the Abbey kitchen, but I noticed in this scripture that God welcomes Elijah into a place of rest with some food and water. I love the image of God baking a cake for Elijah. (Maybe not a chocolate rosemary loaf or Victoria sponge—something that I’ve never had but seen on the Great British Bake-Off—but something nourishing all the same.) God bringing some water to Elijah - not a hot pot of tea or coffee but something to quench his thirst. Welcome made tangible. Love made delicious.

Maybe at the end of whatever journey has brought you to this island off an island off an island, you are tired. Maybe you can receive the welcome of the God who knows and loves you.

Maybe that welcome does not depend on what you can do or how much you can contribute. Maybe it just depends on you being a beloved child of God, worthy of love and compassion and care. You are seen. You are loved.

And maybe you can welcome, too. You don’t need to be able to make the most beautiful scones or bread. You don’t need to be the most social extrovert who has ever lived. Maybe you can just hold space for another, look out for someone who needs to chat, who needs some care, who needs some food. How would our lives be different if we were always looking for ways to welcome? How would our countries, our politics, our world be different if we always looked first to welcome the stranger?

So may you go from this place into the rest of this night knowing the welcome and love of God who meets you where you are, exactly as you are.

And may you share it, too. Welcome made tangible. Love made delicious.

Amen.