Hospitality

Isn't it amazing how some weeks can fly by so very fast? Well my readers might be wondering at the lack of posts of late. The reason is that I am pretty busy with trying to get things ready for my handfasting which is this Saturday and the arrival of my parents and children. This will be the first time my parents have come to visit me since I moved here. In true pagan fashion I will give them the very best hospitality I can afford. Hospitality I have learned is one of the most important virtues to our prechristian celtic ancestors. It seems to me that it is a virtue that modern america has left in the corner gathering dust and cobwebs, no longer understood or valued...until you need it but can't find it. Hospitality was an outward sign of how honorable a person was. So important was it, that it was essentualy a lack of hospitality that set the wheels in motion that freed the Tuatha de Danan from the Famorians. Bres the beautiful who's sire was a Famorian and mother of the Tuatha came to rule over the Tuatha after Nuada. However he made the Tuatha beholden to the Fomorians and much tribute had to be paid. Yet it was not this that started the war, but it was Bres's lack of hospitality to Bards that finaly set the wheels in motion when one Bard, having had quiet enugh of the poor hospitality wrote the first satire. So scaulding was it that Bres the beautiful broke out with blister all over. The being that the king of the Tuatha having to be physicaly perfect caused Bres to be thrown out (they were just looking for an excuse I am sure) and sent him back to his father's tribe with his tale between his legs.
Another reason why I feel hospitality is so very important to the neopagan community is that it will bind us closely together and thus give us great social and cultural strength despite our few numbers and status as a minority. Hospitality binds people together in magical ways. It creates a sense of caring, love, respect, and goodness between people. When hospitality is so important and can be shared even between people who are enemies, it can go a long ways to lessen hostilities. That is assuming the hospitality is given with a good intent and not used to try and shame another as the Famorians tried to do to the Dagda by giving him super human amounts of food and telling him that to not eat it all would be rude. Like all things Hospitality can be abused.
Hospitality is what tied our pagan ancestors together in the past. Some where along the way the people of America have lost that path, but I am reaching out to those who will listen, neopagan or not, we need to bring it back. It is the ties that bind community together. I do not just talk the talk, but I walk it and I do it as best I can.
Gwynt-Siarad