Elsewhere in the world, there are old traditions, principles, or, if you will, actually, meta-principles. I mean by this that they pervade over all, or nearly all subcontexts. From some angles, this looks a bit like superstition. Those angles, however, are, themselves, the result of another tradition. At it can be blinding. In part, because it too casually defects from something it failed to actually embody and thus explore… first.

There is a library of such foundational understandings, but one I am fond of is the principle of Guest and Host.

This idea wasn’t some late-stage addition to the lexicon of human transactional language; quite the opposite. The principle is blatantly obvious all throughout nature and relation. What happened was that, eventually, this fundamental aspect of relation emerged into our waking-mind conceptual awareness, and was revered there.

I could ask that you imagine a conversation, or getting coffee at a café, or meeting a playful dog in the park, or negotiating stop-sign priority with other drivers. Dinner that Mom made. Going fishing. Going to the grocery store. Gassing up the car. Kissing. Getting into a fight. Writing this post.

All of these situations, the last one not merely imaginal, take place in what we can understand as a ‘Russian Doll’ of guest/host relationships. But in the café, I will naturally understand my role to be ‘guest’. And that of the café to resemble ‘host’. The café is the ‘guest’ of the landlord.

A visitor to my home will not likely begin going through my private belongings, or running to my kitchen to prepare food. Even us moderns, most of us, implicitly understand the basic role forms implicit in the Guest | Host couplet.

When I am in a living place, I am almost always a guest, and so I have reverence — not just the idea of it — reverence happens in my body. I feel inherently respectful, and obliged to be attentive.

A guest who becomes beloved brings one’s home to life, contributing something perhaps substantial (a carefully selected gift), but also a spirit of becoming more beautiful and true together. The Host is honored, the home is honored.

The sky and the earth change places.