When I'm working on a ritual, especially one I'm having trouble writing, I tend to do a lot of internet research and collecting a lot of quotes and links. Here are the ones I found most inspiring on the topic of Pagan hospitality:
When I'm working on a ritual, especially one "... hospitality is practiced as a way of showing respect to the sacredness inherent in all people." - Musings of a Kitchen Witch
"Hospitality is about interdependence, between ourselves, and between us and the Gods. ... It encompasses compassion, sensitivity, understanding the needs of others, and not waiting to asked. We are all guests in each others’ lives, and the best thing we can do is be good guests and good hosts." - Julie of Thornhaven Grove (ADF), quoted in The Pagan and the Pen
"We receive hospitality, whether we want to admit it or not, every time that we step or sit or screw anywhere in this world: all things were Created and Blessed and are enspirited by some forces greater and infinitely more complex and holy than we. We are guests here. And in turn, our religious structures are a way of reciprocal hospitality: we provide in our home shrines a space to welcome those (sometimes invisible, sometimes terrifyingly visible) forces, powers, gods and goddesses and ancestors and holy powers into the center of our homes and lives and families." - Thracian Exodus: Nomadic Musings of a Wandering Polytheanimist
"The laws of hospitality are ancient and to a certain extent elastic enough to stretch into different contexts, but always it is about the relationship between being welcome and being welcomed..." - Thracian Exodus: Nomadic Musings of a Wandering Polytheanimist
"The exchange of gifts is a way of establishing relationship. In gift economies, gifts are given without any formal agreement as to when the favour will be returned; however, the ethic of reciprocity is so strong that the gift creates an obligation to return the gift or favour, and in this way, an ongoing relationship is created. ... The giving of money in exchange for something does not create relationship, it ends it. If I pay in full for a service or a commodity, my obligation is discharged, and that ends the relationship." - Sermons from the Mound
The ritual I wrote inspired by this research: Imbolc: Being Welcome & Being Welcomed.
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