Unconditional or sacred hospitality––which is non-possessive love and compassion, openness of heart and generosity––means always welcoming the stranger, the known and unknown other in any form, alien or intimate, mineral, vegetable, animal, human, or spiritual-divine without reserve or calculation, whatever the cost. It means putting oneself in the other’s place, while putting the other in one’s own place: caring for the other as for oneself. It expects no reward. It is un-economic: it is not done for any purpose or any agenda, but for its own sake alone. It lets go of all notions of sacrifice as any kind of exchange. It sacrifices sacrifice itself. Unconditional, it gives everything away and what it has it receives, only to give it away.
In deed and practice, unconditional hospitality lies both at the heart of the divine and of what it means to be human: a spiritual being, called to be a coworker in the divine spiritual mission of creation. As such, it is the existential and ethical call at the heart of Anthroposophy or Esoteric Christianity as a spiritual path, indeed of all religions as well as the Abrahamic traditions taken as a whole.
The course will explore the path of unconditional or sacred hospitality against the background of Anthroposophy and seek to live into this new transformative reality from many different perspectives. We will start from our contemporary situation and those contemporary thinkers and saints who have begun to rediscover it. Then we will examine its avatars from Gilgamesh to Abraham and the Jewish tradition, discovering along the way its deeply Sophianic nature. We will find it exemplified and incarnated in the Gospel teachings and in the beings of Christ Jesus and Mary. We will find it embodied in the earliest Christian communities. We shall discover from the earliest theologians that “sacred hospitality” is also the life of the Holy Trinity and that practicing it we can allow the divine to be present and transform the earth and heaven as well. We shall find it likewise in Grail teachings of Parzival, as well in the heart of Rosicrucianism and the prophetic life of Novalis.
The focus of the course, however, will be inner transformation, not information.
CHRISTOPHER BAMFORD, as editor-in-chief of Steinerbooks, has introduced, edited, and translated numerous volumes by Rudolf Steiner. He is also a respected authority on Western esotericism, the author of two books, and a lecturer. Two of his essays have been recognized in Best Spiritual Writing.
