Thinking about a New Nobility

Part 3. Hospitality

Hail and welcome!

This week I will finish my first thoughts and writing inspired by Mr Roberts article calling for a ‘New Nobility’. We have been and continue to be grateful for all your support and superb readership. The Word Emporium is your home for friendly (friends give each other freedom to disagree and still be friends) writing and reading. Friendship is itself a concept our modern world seems to have forgotten or has actually too often destroyed or sullied in the search for more clicks on the social media market place, for example. Perhaps, however, I am just cynical now about the so called digital town square.

Social media, perversely it has seemed to me, has connected everyone and simultaneously alienated us from the process of forging friendship. Friendship itself takes time, effort, commitment. These are almost dirty words now in the instant access age were a colleague can join your page ( fill in the particular one here………..) and is a ‘friend’ after a perfunctory 5 minute meeting. I am merely begging the question.

In reality I find it hard to make friends. Social media is a tempting cop-out. I have therefore it might seem to a casual observer deliberately made my life even harder in this particular and I would say peculiar, age. I would also respond that I have done it with thought and in the end, with gladness. Willingly. SubStack is my only footprint now. Yet I am happy!

Our interactions and intentions here on the Word Emporium are we hope, quality writing, or least writing that has some qualities reflected within it. I see no reason to change that whatsoever.

So after philosophy and history the last idea that my mind responded too, and rested upon,  was hospitality. It is such an interesting word that conjures up in my mind my own past as a chef in what is largely termed the “hospitality trade”. Not just the cooking for those paying customers perhaps celebrating a milestone such as a wedding anniversary in a restaurant or hotel, worthy as that is to celebrate.

I can still hear my lecturer in culinary arts (Mr Girling circa 1983-5!!) teaching us that it maybe the case ‘That a Husband and Wife will come to our restaurant for just the one off annual special occasion. We have to, have to, make it count with our hospitality: from the front door, to the qualities of service and our good food’. That mythical customer, as a human being worthy of respect in their own right and in our willingness to serve them correctly (as we ourselves would wish to be served) is still on my mind today.

Service is devalued however if it be reduced to numerical, monetary and monetised views of the worth of our interactions. Money can be the sole purpose and first amongst our considerations. Or as often as not the determinate factor in the level of service you receive. Thus I have seen the YouTube examples of food deliveries destroyed because no reward/tip is offered on the app! Incomprehensible to my way of thinking. If someone pays for a service you offer or are employed to provide, do it properly.

Think of the blessings I received from my Mother: who prioritised raising her children in a decent, clean, warm home with food on the table every day, way. I don’t care that some say it was servitude. Oppression. It was a gift of service of the highest calibre in my experience and opinion, and in hers.

Yet for me as important and also as enjoyable were the times I cooked in hospitals and schools in my time. Were people are dependent upon receiving nourishment as a vital part of recovery from illness and operations. My first ever job was in fact at St Michaels Hospital in Enfield Chase. There, people were at the end of their lives. Food and good treatment and service essential to dying with human dignity.

In schools, colleges and universities it is equally as important and necessary concomitant of the younger minds and bodies that need to be fed properly to be able to efficiently engage upon learning throughout the course of a day. Try listening to a Professor of Logic at 9.15 am when you have had no breakfast. Or even worse, when you have had a poor quality breakfast!

As a teenager and into my twenties I was reading various Greco-Roman texts and stories that often portrayed various attitudes and codes in regards hospitality. Especially ideas appertaining to Xenia. Welcoming strangers to your homes with respect as a duty, as a religious duty and a clear obligation. Perhaps even if you are at war with them! Like King Priam visiting Achilles in Homer’s Iliad as supplicant for the body of his Son Hector.

Or young Telemachus going to the gate to welcome in a stranger (The Goddess Athena, as it happens!). Yet beware. For there are horrors that await if hospitality customs and rules are ignored or worse, abused. Perhaps Prince Paris could be an example of what awaits those breaking such norms. Not just the individual held accountable, but a whole city state.

The Judeo-Christian stories and exemplars found in the Biblical records: from Abraham welcoming in stranger(s) who predict the birth of his son via his wife Sarai. Or Zaccheus, the tax collector, welcoming some itinerant Rabbi into his home along with all manner of suspect and morally dubious people for hospitality and not minding a jot it seems about what anyone else said. His heart and mind, had been altered. His priorities, changed. Hospitality grew from such a  noble root.

In my own life I have been blessed with many people who have opened their homes in times of plenty and also sparsity. In times of Joy and in those dark times of sadness and emotional breakdown. I too have attempted to be open and hospitable down the years. It really is a blessing to give hospitality and be hospitable without renumeration as a motivating factor.

A decade ago I was living in a tiny 3rd floor apartment in the Oxfordshire Market Town of Banbury. Mr Roberts also shared that space with me. That advent, near Christmas time about Mid December, we held a dinner and seasonal celebration. Our guests brought poems, stories as active participants in the evening. I enjoyed cooking. I seem to recall we even opened a preserved jar of blackberries ( preserved in Gin from the autumn. I like foraging and preserving when I am able) Then each person shared their gift. The gift of participation. Result? A firm memory of being a part of something greater than “ me”.

For being hospitable opens the possibility of, for want of a better mental picture, a symposium. An opportunity to commune with like minded people to create, critique, discuss perhaps a pre arranged set of topics. Or perhaps engage with clear guidelines, in issues that arise on the day.

In England we have a fine tradition of “clubs” for just that purpose down through the centuries. Last summer on my visit to the Metropolis, I visited the home and museum of Dr Johnson. They had, as it most aptly happened, a particular exhibition about his hospitality. How he encouraged and hosted friends and acquaintances with the purposes of shedding light on the literary and cultural issues of his day. So this issue was on my mind percolating away already. Would that I had a home, ever so humble, to offer such opportunities to you. I bought the picture below to remind me of my aspirations.

Dr Johnson hosting poets, artists, writers…..

Of course not so much in vogue nowadays. It also seems more about preventing groups of people  from participating than being open. Yet I agree with the sentiment expressed by Mr Roberts in his article. A nobility of thought, action, of the spirit: would I suggest find it difficult not to be hospitable and share all the trials and joys of living nobly with one another.

I am of a generation that was told repeatedly as we grew up to talk about everything except religion and politics. The two things that I always felt were exactly to be discussed! We yearned, still yearn, to discuss such topics. My parents generation confused and conflated the content with conflict and could see no way to navigate a sensible way through without harm, dissension, hatred, misunderstandings and brokenness as outcomes. Of course a look at European history might give them a justifiable antipathy to such endeavours.

All of this points me in the direction that nobility, a new nobility of choice, of attitudes and chosen behaviours and thoughtful, examined ethical standards (an unexamined life is not worth living…..)that underpin our treatment of each other locally and as a society:  cannot be divorced from the practical day to day living of those making those decisions. Us.

We need to work, earn a living, raise families, look after those in need for sure. We also want to be active participants in our world. Not passive consumers following appetites and the latest ‘thing’ without seeking illumination. Asking questions. Listening to the various views that our friends and family share with us. Networking with purpose and intent. Not the latest perfunctory updates.

Hospitality is a vital, practical part of that.

Now, how do I put my thoughts and ideas into action? I may not be able to offer the majority of Subscribers to the Word Emporium an actual hospitable place and a home cooked meal in Bahrain. Though I could for some!

Before I give up though I do have Zoom. I can connect and host something at the least. If you’d like such a day or an evening then let us know. We will arrange a subscribers event.

Hospitality is not, should not be, just a word in a text. Not for those of us reaching for a nobleness of spirit in the dry dust of a materialist world.

Blessings to you all.

Syre Byrd