Making a Welcome

Making a Welcome combines an engaging personal story with an examination of the meaning and possibilities of hospitality, both as a domestic practice much in need of revival, and as a fundamental Christian orientation, with emotional, intellectual and spiritual implications. Maria Poggi Johnson draws on her knowledge of the Christian tradition, and on two decades of personal experience of trying to welcome well, to consider what happens when we open our homes to others, what is involved in offering a genuine welcome, and how the skills we develop in doing so can shape our relationships with our spouses, with the society around us, with our own beliefs and commitments, and with God. Illustrated by stories drawn from Scripture, literature, film, and from the author's own experience, Making a Welcome challenges readers to discover the life-changing practice of true hospitality, not only in their homes, but in all aspects of their lives "Maria Poggi Johnson knows that good stories are what guide good lives--and that we learn goodness as we place ourselves within them. She also knows that good theology begins at home, in the strange and glorious particulars of human community. In this book she reaches out by inviting us in to her own rather crazy life and home. The conversation that ensues is enlivening and theologically insightful, moved along by Maria's extraordinary stylistic skill and humoristic żare." --CHARLES PINCHES University of Scranton "This engaging book is a delight. With elegance and enthusiasm, and in a self-effacing loosely autobiographical style, Maria Poggi Johnson explores the core Christian practice of hospitality--the voyage of the self out into interaction with a range of significant others: visitors, strangers, one's marriage partner, and God. There is also a profound reżection on receiving texts and ideas hospitably. A book to help the reader re-imagine everyday life in more welcoming terms." --RICHARD S. BRIGGS University of Durham, England "Making a Welcome challenges Christians to reconsider the importance of hospitality as a practice and a witness. By hosting the reader on a tour of her life she welcomes us to her home, her marriage, her intellectual life, and her faith . . . The genuine vulnerability and honesty of her writing exposes the pretenses of the reader, while her generosity of spirit invites one to dive uninhibitedly into each new chapter. To all of this, she brings keen theological insight and refreshing wit." --J. MICHAEL UTZINGER Hampden-Sydney College Maria Poggi Johnson is Professor of Theology at the University of Scranton. She is the author of Strangers and Neighbors: What I have learned about Christianity by living among Orthodox Jews.