The Sacred Gift of Hosting

By Kelly Foxcraft Porier

​“Every time we gather, we are collaborating to create in the present, the possibility for a collective future…Let’s create those spaces.” – Adrienne Marie Brown

This past New Year we delivered a small-scale Art of Hosting Training in one of our local First Nations Communities with a group working in Community Engagement for their Comprehensive Community Planning. In the weekend-long training the Elders, youth and others resonated strongly with the same feeling: “we KNOW how to do this!”
 
This is the beauty of the Art of Hosting - that it feels like a homecoming to so many of us. In particular, it resonates deeply for many of us grounded in cultures that understand that gathering well, hosting well, feeding people beautifully is powerful. When combined with providing agency and autonomy for folks, to undertake the ‘business’ that is top most on their hearts and minds, to come forth with intention and attention, you are able to generate powerful outcomes that ripple out into collective action.
 
Every single day communities, organizations and institutions are seeking ways to ‘do engagement better’, to ‘outreach with community’ and I hear folks so often express their feelings of being overwhelmed and daunted by the complexity of figuring out what that looks like and how to be effective. This emphasis on productive, effective and outcome orientation often leads to unmanageable ‘laundry lists’ at the end of meetings, to checklists and barreling forward into an agenda that considers the outcomes and objectives far more strongly than the context and/or the actual people’s realities that joined you in doing the work in the first place. That is simply how the entire practice of ‘engagement’ falls apart. It becomes inauthentic and not driven by a shared values-based centre.
 
This is where the ‘hosting’ of the Art of Hosting is so central, simple and powerful. For our Indigenous cohorts doing work in community especially, words like ‘facilitation’ and ‘engagement’ don’t always feel meaningful, and jargon like ‘consultation’ has not only become meaningless but also harmful and damaging! BUT HOSTING! Now there is a strength-based value that runs strongly within the ancestry and DNA of all of the Indigenous folks we work with across ages, formal training and capacities. Hosting is a practice that reaches back and reaches forward in powerful ways – and is a practice that we all know deep in our bones how to do. It invites in beauty, care, dignity and much of what can be missing in the agenda/objective/checklist driven ways of doing business.
 
Speaking as a Tseshaht First Nations mother, daughter and aunty, I can say beyond a doubt that Indigenous people KNOW HOW TO HOST! It is a core value that everything from governance to ceremony is driven by. AND the truly great thing is, that ALL people can connect with what it is to host a dinner, a party, or a more austere gathering like a celebration of life with care, attention to detail and INTENTION.
 
This is what is so beautiful about the Art of Hosting and the suite of tools, methods and more - it is not a FACILITATION training, it is touching in on some of our greatest human practices, our natural and best ways of remembering how to gather with each other in ways that are connected, generative and hold space.
 
This Spring, along with my colleagues, we spent time in Ontario out on the land in Manatoulin Island receiving traditional teachings, while a sugar shack reduced down the maple sap into beautiful sweet maple syrup. So much resonated with us and the work we do in offering the Art of Hosting, in the work taking place: folks working together, in relationship and wholeness with the land, the trees and each other.
 
So many teachings were offered, but one in particular resonated strongly, as if to crystalize what the often-daunting notion of ‘engagement’ truly boils down to. In essence it is hosting:
 
“The only thing you need for ceremony is to be simple, authentic & sincere - Aanishinabe ‘diamond’ teaching
 
I think we often think of engagement as something overwhelming, we get swamped emotionally and physically in so much of the mechanics of strategy and to do lists that we forget the simple truth; when we are gathering people, for any reason what so ever, we are asking them to offer their most sacred resources - time, trust and lived experience/wisdom.
 
In receiving these gifts from our participant, when we gather people together, we need to realize that we are shifting into a sacred space, and even into ceremony, where we really need to intentionally and sincerely gather. Some types of gatherings do require austerity - but we can also host A LOT of complexity with simplicity.  When we speak of the sacredness of our contribution of our limited time and energy resources that is absolutely sacred - and every community event or gathering DOES need to be considered with this kind of deep care at the centre - but also, we don’t want to get caught up in the weeds. It is so essential to also be visionary, and remember it does not need to be fancy, it just needs to be sincere. A community potluck with paper plates can often be MORE effective, and honour the context MORE, than a hotel ballroom with a 5-star catered chef meal.
 
This is where the Art of Hosting and its emphasis on hosting fills such an important contribution to dialogic and participatory practices for us in our community work.  Within our human systems we need to consider not just the way we drive a room of people towards a checklist of objectives with all of the bells and whistles and conference ‘swag’ bags.  We can and must also deeply consider the way that the spaces, formats and methods employed in our events and ‘engagements’ honour the people, offers them dignity, trust and agency to create what is most needed AND reciprocates their time and wisdom.
 
In my experiences, from that small CCP group, to much larger gatherings and community engagements - the Art of Hosting provides the tools to dance between and enrich the possibility for us to gather in ways that honour the people and host them well, elevating our collective experience while also achieving layers of objectives and core needs at once.
 
Throughout my more than 10 years as a practitioner and learner of the methods, I feel more invigorated and passionate than ever that our work and world will be transformed if we can shift beyond facilitation and meetings and move more deeply into the territory of ‘hosting’ each other. Honouring the most sacred contribution we could all give in these harried busy days - our time.
 
I truly believe that the investment of time and energy into Art of Hosting training offers a kind of leveling up of professional skills while sharpening personal practice and lenses in which to see your work and world anew. It is a sacred gift that your work and our world truly needs RIGHT NOW!