We were out yesterday evening visiting friends and experienced something very beautiful: true hospitality.

This deeply touched me, and I recalled the profound description of hospitality written by the Roman Catholic priest Henri Nouwen:

Hospitality, Nouwen writes, wants to offer friendship without binding the guest and freedom without leaving him alone.

Hospitality, therefore, means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines. It is not to lead our neighbour into a corner where there are no alternatives left, but to open to a wide spectrum of options for choice and commitment . . . The paradox of hospitality is that it wants to create emptiness, not a fearful emptiness, but a friendly emptiness where strangers can enter and discover themselves as created free; free to sing their own songs, speak their own languages, dance their own dances; free also to leave and follow their own vocations. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the lifestyle of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his own.

2 thoughts come to mind as I reflect on Nouwen's wisdom. Firstly, this model of hospitality could be extended to include parenthood. I speak as a non-parent, but I wonder how parents would respond to that idea.

Second, I think I can see more clearly the hospitality of God, who spreads a table before me, anoints my head with oil, and fills my cup to overflowing. He is a feet-washing family of welcome.

In the understanding of German theologian Jurgen Moltmann, the 3 Trinitarian persons are not merely persons but also "living space for the two others". Consequently, "we should not talk only about the three trinitarian Persons, but must at the same time speak of the three trinitarian spaces in which they mutually exist." Moltmann wants us to understand that God is "not a self-enclosed, exclusive unity," but "a unity which is open, inviting and integrating" – what he calls "the open Trinity".

Japanese evangelical thinker Miyahara seems to be thinking along similar lines with his formulation of the Trinity as "three betweennesses, one concord." The Japanese concept of 'betweenness' (expressed by the character 間) reflects the usual translation of John 1:14, where the Word became a 人間 (or a 'human-betweenness'). As Christ became a man 'between' (or 'among') men, so – Miyahara says – we are invited into this betweenness that exists within God.

Thus God is not just open in and of himself, but in Moltmann's words, "open to the world." It is as though humanity is invited into the 'space' within God. This is the "immanent tension in God himself: God creates the world, and at the same time enters into it."

On one (basic) level, this means our existence is patterned on God's. But the "cosmological perichoresis" [as I want to call it: perichoresis ((mutual) interpenetration) is a concept first applied to the Trinity by the Greek Cappadocian Church Fathers] that I have described above implies more: what is now predicated is not so much imitation of God as participation in him. Human personality, itself redefined in a quasi-perichoretic sense, is seen to be essentially other-oriented – to other people, and to God as the ultimate Other. Thus redeemed humanity – indeed, (for some thinkers) all creation, enters the perichoretic circle, and is caught up in the divine dance. R. Paul Stevens puts it like this: "Christian experience is nothing more or less than being included in the unity of the Trinity, participating in the mutual love, order and interdependence of the three Persons."

Thank God for hospitable friends!