ThinkFwd: EP014 Nanette Sawyer - The Art of Authentic ...

Nanette Sawyer, pastor at Wicker Park Grace, explores the realms in which we extend hospitality. Hospitality starts in our core, as we extend hospitality to God, inviting him to be in relationship with us. Encountering God through this core relationship makes it possible for us to then extend hospitality to our friends and neighbors, to strangers, even to our enemies and nature at large.




Spencer Burke, host of ThinkFwd, interviews Nanette at the Wicker Park Grace?s organic gardens. The gardens, which they inherited from the local Arts Council, are an opportunity to build community. Anyone can come and help with gardening, learn about urban agriculture and simply be together. Nanette sees the gardens are a door into Wicker Park Grace as well as a door from the church into the community?an opportunity to extend hospitality and an authentic welcome.




What is an authentic welcome? It is a welcome that does not apply pressure to achieve sameness. ?We have a center,? says Nanette, ?but not a boundary.? People should not feel pressure to have sameness of look, or thought, or belief. But rather they can all journey on their spiritual path together.




And what are the different realms of hospitality? In Nanette?s book, Hospitality - The Sacred Art, she talks about the ?in,? ?with,? and ?out? of hospitality. The inward practice of hospitality is preparing us to be receptive beings, and to have an openness in our relationship with others. The ?with? practice of hospitality is when we truly encounter someone, a sense of reverence arises and we respect who they are and their humanity. And the outward practice of hospitality happens when, after that reverent exchange with another person, we?re inspired to be generous with them.




When asked how other groups can practice hospitality when they may not have organic gardens or similar doors to the community, Nanette says to look at who you are?are you a contemplative. An artist? Find how you can be connected to others?find areas of kinship. Kinship means how we ...

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• chant
• chicago
• christianity
• church
• emerging
• faith
• gardening
• hospitality
• justice
• nanette
• sawyer
• postmodern

[Drregaleagle]

@arbiskup,

"This stuff has nothing whatsoever to do with the soul saving Gospel of Jesus Christ."

Since God isn't the author of confusion, there's no way she's preaching the Word of God.

[zoecarnate]

Aw, c'mon. Ease up a little; widen thy frame...

[arbiskup]

This stuff has nothing whatsoever to do with the soul saving Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is warmed over Gnosticism and Existentialism. This is the idea that everything is about us as humans, and God's standards are what we suppose them to be.

This is the lie fo the "Emergent Church".

For a full treatment of this subject, Google the Article by Paul M. Elliott called "The Emergent Church's Retreat into Pre-Reformation Darkness".