Hospitality

I don't typically like yellow, I don't know why, because I love yellow flowers. It's not a colour I would wear, although I remember one of my favourite dresses as a teen was a yellow dress. It's funny how we come up with likes and dislikes.
Anyway as I was working on this quilt it kind of grew on me and I like the result of my collection of yellow scraps and trying out this new block pattern. Basically you put a light and a dark together, slash them and sew them back together in a different combination. A great way to work through your stash!
As I am learning about the Benedictine way, living in the world, the idea of hospitality came to mind. Benedict teaches to be open and receptive to the good and the bad in our lives, be it circumstances or within our own hearts. Each aspect has to teach us something and by receiving it and asking questions, we get to know ourselves and God better.
We tend to try to label things as we perceive them, not realizing that we thus judge them as well. I'm learning that by welcoming in "the stranger" (whatever their form) and getting to know them first, helps me to see things first from God's perspective. We don't have to condone everything, but by looking at things from the other side, we can begin to understand them. This may result in a surprise realization that we're not so different after all, and we all have wounds that we let define ourselves. Hospitality and mercy are very close to each other. 
Christ came and died to reconcile the world to God and as we try to follow him we can bring reconciliation within our own messed up lives as well as between other people.
So I'll sit with my Yellow quilt and keep the conversation going for a bit longer..............