Hospitality Reflection

I reflected on your posting and the way you unravelled the direction hospitality takes a believer/religious individual in their own individual walk in their faith identity. I think in the intern meetings we have attended, hospitality seems to call out a natural value we internalize and apply to our own circumstances, whether we connect it to our religious identity or not. I re-call Father Monge saying to us that we need to consider the identity of the believer first in entering into the act of interfaith dialogue... Our witness to the truth is necessary (Monge, 2014). Having said this, creating a safe and inclusive space for the interfaith exchanges to take place creates the daunting challenge in balancing all of the needs of all of the student faith communities that university attempts to accommodate. However, the daunting challenge in meeting all of the different Multi-Faith Centre's venue and function needs for the variety of student faith communities certainly gives a unique branding to the centre's efforts of pluralism. Fr. Monge had also mentioned that no one has the truth in their pocket, and dialogue is a step of faith acting on the moving of God (Monge, 2014), but finding our role in the way we receive and our reasonable service in participating in hospitality requires us to work take out faith for a walk every time we enter into any common space. 

When I think back to the Parekh reading on how one must consider the two dimensional aspect to our identity that takes in the personal and social aspects, which can be inseparable to how we connect our own identity, our reading on Seljack takes a more pragmatic approach to how to navigate these different cultural communities. But it is always important when we are transitioning from the feeling of either experiencing the "othering" or entering into active participation with strangers in unfamiliar activities, that our recognition of building on a deeper  "self-understanding" as you mentioned, connects to having a willing and "open-minded" approach to the exercise. 

Truly, if we reflect on where this course has taken us so far, it has truly helped us to better embrace and prepare how to ask questions in relation to situations like the student leaders meeting dialogues or community events whether we are acting in the role or a host or a guest. One question I wanted to ask is, if you were to pick one common theme or core idea away from your experiences of hospitality abroad and at the Multi-Faith Centre, does the space in which we offer hospitality change the way in which we expect a inclusive atmosphere for interfaith dialogues or plural common spaces? and do academics or university administrators provide enough latitude for students to self-direct their own faith communities on their own terms while fostering requiring spaces to be inclusive to all students?