Be a Joseph

Our Christmas homily included the advice: Don’t be an innkeeper; be a Joseph.

The innkeeper in the Nativity story, the guy who said there was no room and turned Joseph and Mary out, was probably a realist—all his rooms were filled (Luke 2:7). Granted, he may have been inundated with people seeking shelter because of the census so he had no empty rooms, but the priest wondered if the innkeeper had considered all his options? Had he thought of giving up his bed so that a pregnant woman could rest comfortably?

We don’t know. Maybe another pregnant woman had arrived earlier. Maybe…. Well, we just don’t know. The story handed down to us is not a first-person account, so we can only guess at what really happened that night.

The more important thing to consider, though, are our own actions.

We don’t have to go far to find people in need, people facing difficulties, struggling with illness or life’s challenges.

How are we like the innkeeper, turning people away when we feel we are at our limit and they are asking us to make room for them?   

Do we do things a certain way because we have always done them that way? Are we so focused on one course of action that we cannot see alternatives?

When life seems full, do we shut the door and say enough? Or do we make room for one more?

Compare that to Joseph, who had already made up his mind to divorce Mary, until he had a dream suggesting a different course of action. Then he pivots and does as the angel in the dream instructed (Matthew 1:19-24).

I wondered if the innkeeper might have had a dream that night after turning Joseph and Mary away, a dream when an angel told him to go find Joseph and Mary and offer them his bed. But upon waking from the dream, he only said, “I had the weirdest dream last night,” and went about his day as usual. Haven’t most of us done that?

We are all invited to change course from time to time, to reframe a situation, get a different perspective.

Can we be like Joseph and be willing to rethink our decisions, to make new decisions based on new information? Can we be guided by the whispers of the Spirit when we feel a nudge to reach out to someone, to offer assistance or comfort? Can we hear the voice of God in our dreams and gain insight into a new direction for our lives?

As I review my journals from this year and remember different events, I am aware of how often I am like the innkeeper, choosing to be comfortable rather than stretching to meet another’s need.

My friend Steve (who died ten years ago) used to start each year by choosing a word or phrase to guide him through the year, something that the Spirit had whispered to him.

Be a Joseph is my phrase for 2023.

Open the door

At Christmas Eve Mass, the priest asked us to recall a time when we had been the recipient of generous hospitality. He had been talking about the lack of hospitality Mary and Joseph experienced in Bethlehem, and then he shared a time he had experienced unexpected hospitality during a trip to Ireland.

The memory that came to mind was the time I had moved out of the l’Arche community feeling disillusioned and disappointed. My pride was wounded, and I was too distressed to make a decision about my next move. I felt let down and lost. After all, I had moved to l’Arche expecting to be there the rest of my life, and only a few months after arriving, I was leaving.

It took me a while to realize that my expectations had been way too high and to own why l’Arche did not work out for me. On the day I left the community, though, I was desolate.

Fortunately, the Sisters at the Benedictine Monastery invited me to stay with them for a week, which gave me a little breathing room.

A friend then invited me to stay at her house for as long as I needed. She would be away but her upstairs tenant (whom I knew) was looking after her house and there was plenty of room.

Unfortunately, the upstairs tenant did not share my friend’s generous spirit. She said I could stay for one night and then had to find someplace else. It wasn’t that there was no room, but rather that this woman was just inhospitable.

I felt so unwelcome that I did not even stay that one night.

Instead, I drove away discouraged and thinking that I would have to sleep in my car that night.

I had plans to meet a friend for coffee in the afternoon, and I was in tears by the time I got to the café.

Learning this latest development, my friend arranged for me to stay in her Mennonite community at the home of a young couple who had an extra bedroom. I moved in that evening.

I can still remember the couple opening their front door and inviting me inside. The welcome I received from this couple and the rest of the community was incredibly warm, and I immediately felt at home. The community shared everything they had; their attitude was that there is always room for one more.

It didn’t matter to them that I had no money or job, that I was spiritually and emotionally drained or that I had very little to contribute. They accepted me as I was and included me as a full-fledged member. They loved me back into wholeness, and I can still feel my heart swell with gratitude at their kindness toward me.

Their hospitality was what I wished for Mary and Joseph upon their arrival in Bethlehem.

I was grateful for the priest’s invitation to recall how blessed I was by generous hospitality.

What is your memory of hospitality?

What I learned from unexpected events

This week, Christians celebrate that God became human in the form of an infant child. The story is full of unexpected twists and turns—Mary becomes pregnant even though she is a virgin; Joseph stays true to his commitment to marry her because an angel appears to him in a dream; and Mary and Joseph trek to his hometown for a census, only to find no room for them at the inn.

It is easy to imagine the people in this story saying, “I didn’t expect that” or “I didn’t see that coming.”

“How was the past decade for you?” someone asked on a radio show this week.

My first reaction was “Ugh!” The past decade was a tough one for me—full of unexpected twists and turns. Many times, I said, “I didn’t expect that” or “I didn’t see that coming.”

If someone had asked me at the end of 2009 to predict what the next decade would bring, I would not have been able to guess most of what happened over the past ten years.

It started in December 2009, when my cousin died from pancreatic cancer. Her death rocked my world on several levels. She was near my age (too young to die) and she lived away from family (as did I). She was unwilling to talk about her illness and seemed to be in denial that she was about to die.

I grew up in a house where denial was a way of life. Years of therapy have helped me learn a different way, but my cousin’s death made me wonder if I would revert to the fallback position of denial if something catastrophic happened to me. I began to ask myself how I would react if I was diagnosed with cancer or another terminal illness.

Of course, we only know what we will do when we are faced with the situation, but my cousin’s death made me face my own mortality.

Over the next six years, five friends died from cancer and one (who was only twenty-six) died from a heart attack.

Plus, I moved back to my home state to be near my family.  

It was a decade of change and loss, and I am happy to put it behind me.

At the same time, I learned a lot during this decade.

I am not the same person I was ten years ago and much of that change happened because of the challenges I had to face.

I learned that I really would step up in a crisis, take someone into my home and help him to have the kind of death he wanted.

I learned to be more honest and realistic, to let go of unmet expectations and accept reality.

I learned to spend more time and energy on what really matters and give little time or energy to petty problems or contrived dramas. “Is it brain cancer?” I ask.

Unexpected events happen; how we respond to them is what makes the difference.