A Sanctuary of Listening: Hospitality as the Heart of the Church
Jay McDaniel
"The first act of hospitality might just be helping us and others believe that all are inherently God-breathed and worthy of amipotent love. In other words, instead of self-actualization being the highest achievement, the amipotent God, in partnership with humans, lets us be who we are and celebrates who we are without judgment...Simply put, the commandment to love God, and our neighbors as ourselves, would simply be the definition of the reciprocal hospitality of the amipotent God. There would be no more giving to the poor as an ego boost, no more sharing of wealth just to receive the tax break, and no more drive-through Christmas baskets of Christmas cheer for the needy
Teri Ditslear in Amipotence: Expansion and Application Brown, B., Stedman, F., & Young, D. (Eds.). (2024). Amipotence: Expansion & Application. SacraSage Press.
My subject is Spiritual Direction and the Spirit of Hospitality as they might nourish the culture of a local church. My suggestion is that the spirit of holy listening in one-on-one spiritual direction can also be part of the radical hospitality to which a local church is called. Such hospitality is one way that we experience and partake of divine love, of what the open and relational tradition calls Amipotence.
Amipotence is not simply God acting in the world in a loving way, it is God being influenced by the world in a listening way. Holy Listening partakes of the listening side of love and God. My proposal is not that everyone in a local church must receive or give one-on-one spiritual direction; it is that the spirit of listening, in spiritual direction, can be part of congregational life as a whole. A congregation can be committed to a ministry of listening and responding to the world, creatively and lovingly, out of the listening.
I approach the topic in appreciative response to a phrase used by Rev. Teri Ditslear in her essay in Amipotence: "lets us be who we are and celebrates who we are without judgment." Rev. Ditslear is the founding pastor of Roots of Life Community, ELCA, and is now a doctoral candidate at Northwind Seminary in Open and Relational Theology. Her dissertation is titled The Future of Church Using an Open and Relational Dialogue. She is also a Spiritual Director and an Eco-Theologian, with training in spiritual direction from the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, where I also received my training.
Process and Relationality
As a process theologian, I want to begin with a word about "process" and "relationality" as they are part of human life and constitutive of what it means to be a person, a self. Think of the self—your self, my self, a dog’s self, a cat’s self—as akin to the crest of a wave. Our respective selves are always here-and-now, wherever we may be—sitting, lying down, standing, or walking. Yet, our selves are also slightly different at every moment. This is because, in any given moment, the circumstances of our lives have shifted, even if subtly. There is more to our past—more to remember—than there was in the previous moment. We are always in a “today” that includes a “yesterday,” and this “yesterday” grows larger with each passing day. The yesterdays of our lives expand as the moments unfold, and we grow with them. One obvious way we grow is through aging, but we can also grow in other ways, including spiritually.
Not only an individual self but also a local congregation can be the crest of a wave. A church, like a self, is here-and-now and ever-changing, shaped by its past and unfolding in the present. The congregation holds memories of its shared history, experiences, and relationships, yet it also faces new possibilities and challenges with each moment. It grows not just through the passage of time but through its collective spiritual journey, its acts of hospitality, and its openness to transformation. Like the individual self, a congregation is a relational process, shaped by its prehending of the world around it: the people it encounters, the community it serves, and the sacred presence it seeks to embody.
Relationality as Feeling the Presence of Others
Now, expand this notion of memory to include feelings, thoughts, perceptions, acts of imagining, and more. Think of these diverse ways of experiencing the world as acts of feeling or, to borrow the language of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, acts of "prehending." Prehending refers to the act of experiencing or feeling something other than ourselves—or, perhaps more significantly, someone other than ourselves.
These prehendings—these acts of feeling and experiencing others—are expressions of our fundamental relationality. Relationality is not logical relationality but rather, most deeply, experiential relationality. And it includes within its very nature a kin of spontaneity or freedom to respond. At any given moment, the question we face, consciously or unconsciously, is how we experience and respond to the new circumstances we encounter. Each moment offers different possibilities, both conscious and unconscious, for our engagement with the world. These new circumstances constitute the world itself: the hills and rivers, the trees and stars, plants and animals, and, of course and importantly, other people.
For example, imagine that you and I are in the presence of a stranger and must decide how to receive that person’s presence. They are given to our experience. We could respond judgmentally, eager to rank that person in a social hierarchy of our own making, deeming them “above” or “below” us in status. Or we could break free of that manner of judgment and, to slightly rephrase the language of Teri Ditslear in her essay in Amipotence, “let them be who they are and celebrate who they are without judgment.” If we receive them in this spirit, as Ditslear suggests, we are receiving them in the manner of the amipotent God. The God of Amipotence, she writes, “lets us be who we are and celebrates who we are without judgment.” In doing so, we are, as it were, practicing the presence of Amipotence.
Holy Listening: Participation in the Deep Listening
Spiritual direction at its best always begins with this kind of practice. It begins with one person (the director) listening to another person (the directee) in a nonjudgmental way, allowing the other person to be who they are and honoring them without judgment. Here the word "director" need not imply "directive." Some forms of spiritual direction are indeed directive, but I have in mind another kind that begins with, and is sustained by, a kind of gentle, attentive listening that helps another person (the directee) awaken to the promptings of the divine spirit in his or her heart by being listened to, Some speak of it as a kind of holy listening, because there is indeed something holy, something sacred, in the listening itself and in the act of being listened to. To be received in this way is, for the directee, a freeing and liberating experience—almost a kind of momentary salvation from the intensity of self-judgment and other-judgment, of perpetual ranking, that pervades much of society. If "ranking" and "being ranked" is what it means to be in the world, then in the moment of spiritual direction, the director and directee are in the world but not of the world.
Ditslear’s point is that there is something in the universe—the God of Amipotence—who listens and receives in this way. Thus understood, God is not an object among objects or a thing among things, not even an idea in our minds, but a Deep Listening in which we live and move and have our being. Her insight invites us to see God not as distant or detached, but as a relational presence that listens with infinite care and celebrates each being without judgment.
Moreover, Ditslear emphasizes that we can participate in this Deep Listening by doing the best we can, in the moments of our lives, to be deep listeners ourselves. In practicing this kind of listening, we align ourselves with the amipotent God, reflecting divine love through acts of receptivity and nonjudgmental presence. Importantly, she extends this vision to gatherings of people in the spirit of Christ—churches. These communities, when grounded in the spirit of Deep Listening, can commit themselves to a posture of openness that lets people be who they are and celebrates them without judgment. When churches partake of this spirit, they become sanctuaries of hospitality. Strangers feel truly at home, their dignity respected, and their presence valued. Such churches embody the sacred practice of listening, creating spaces where the transformative power of Amipotence can be felt in the hearts and lives of all who enter.
This practice of Deep Listening is not merely a human effort but an act of participation in the life of God. When we listen deeply and without judgment, we mirror the nature of the divine itself—a nature that draws close to each creature with compassion and understanding. It is, in many ways, a form of prayer, not with words but with the openness of our hearts.
A Sanctuary of Listening and Catalyst for Action Additionally, this kind of listening transforms not only the lives of individuals but also the collective identity of a church or community. A church rooted in Deep Listening becomes more than a gathering of people; it becomes a living embodiment of Christ's love in the world. It is a place where the barriers of status, judgment, and exclusion dissolve, and where people can experience the grace of being fully seen, fully heard, and fully loved.
In this way, Ditslear’s vision of Amipotence challenges churches to reimagine their mission—not merely as institutions of doctrine or ritual but as communities of radical hospitality. In these communities, the presence of God is felt most profoundly in the act of listening, in the shared moments of vulnerability and grace, and in the simple yet transformative experience of being accepted without conditions.
Listening, however, is only the beginning, albeit beginning ever-anew, moment by moment. A true spirit of hospitality leads naturally to action—a constructive response to the needs revealed through listening. Churches grounded in the ethos of Deep Listening respond by working to meet the needs of others and the more-than-human world. They become active participants in building community, offering tangible care and support, advocating for justice, and protecting the natural environment. This movement from listening to action reflects the life of the amipotent God—a God who not only listens but also inspires transformative engagement. When churches act out of this spirit, they embody the hospitality of God, weaving together lives, communities, and creation in love and mutual care.