* My Signature Blend: As a Language & Culture Empowerment Specialist, I weave stories in Diaspora spaces. How to consume my words: They pair well with a comfort beverage and a reflective space. They are crafted with wholesome, layered complexity, freshly selected thoughtfulness, rhythmic repetitions, punctuated with a unique blend of precious perspective found in diverse and often marginalized corners of the globe and of human hearts. Each ingredient is prayed through, wrestled with, & marinated in hope. I invite you to savor my signature blend of detail like a delicately prepared dish made for you to taste and share. I pray that it may satisfy the souls of those who choose to break bread with me. Welcome!
Philo—love; xenos—stranger, foreigner, or guest.
Philoxenia is a brilliant Greek word that has no synonym in English. My proud Greek father will tell you there are a litany of words borrowed from the Greek because the ancient language excels in nuance and precision.
Philoxenia embodies the profound and ancient Greek concept of hospitality. An important cultural and moral value in Greek culture, it emphasizes generosity and welcome towards visitors, particularly those who are from foreign lands.
Principle #1: Greeks not only excel at nuanced language, but also at the nuances of hosting others.
I’ve lived among overwhelmingly amazing Greek hosts my whole life. Cultivated in diaspora—on the fringes of my Greek-immigrant community, I never dared to live up to the quality of hosting that has lived on in generations of Greek homes and legends since the beginning of time.
Principle #2: A good Greek hostess always remembers her guests by what they like and dislike.
I married a xeno. My non-Greek husband was first welcomed into my extended Greek family with a message that pre-circulated his arrival at every Greek dinner table: he will not eat tomatoes. Noted. Everyone knew his waywardness with village salads—that he more than made up for with eager seconds on every other homemade delight.
Phobia—an intense, irrational fear. Xenophobia is the fear or hatred of strangers, and quite literally the opposite of philoxenia.
Xenophobia is a present reality for so many foreigners who flee from one place to another. There are messages of hatred and distrust that pre-circulate their arrival before they ever have a chance to come to the table.
World Refugee Day Preparations
As an Empowerment Coordinator at our local Immigrant and Refugee Center, I was appointed by our strategic and fun-loving Mexican Directora to be the hostess of our World Refugee Day event. We wanted to host a party for our clients—a day to really celebrate them and prepare a place for them to feel at home. Our clients come from a myriad of nations that are currently on a travel ban list in 2025. Others face insurmountable walls and seek temporary protections from life-threatening dangers.
I didn’t realize I possessed any of the hostessing prowess of my ancestors until my boss invited me into that role. My goal? To make our clients from every language group feel welcome and that this event was for them.
Applying Greek Hostessing Principle #1: The best way to express safe, welcoming spaces for everyone was to start with the nuanced details of good music, carefully selected cuisine, and familiar faces.
Applying Greek Hostessing Principle #2: I made my list of what I knew people liked and didn’t like from previous mental notes:
- Halal and vegetarian food markers for our Muslim friends
- A carefully selected variety of cultural music that moves people to dance or sing or smile
- A space where the children feel free to dance and play.
Will my Eritrean friends feel like this event is for them?
The unique sounds of ancient Eritrean instruments and rhythms were first to burst forth from the borrowed sound system. With a glint in her eye, one of my regular Eritrean clients stepped forward and then back. As I moved in to greet her, I discovered myself joining her dance. Tiny steps forward and tiny steps back. Then shoulder shrugs and head leans. I wasn’t in it for mastery; I simply received the invitation to join something wonderful. Before I knew it many more familiar faces appeared on either side of me. Women and their babies I had often sipped tea and broke bread—hembasha bread—with. My Eritrean friends gleamed as they savored a small feeling of home in a culture so far from it.
Will my Rohingya, Somali, and other Muslim friends have food to eat, and know it’s for them?
I handed over the halal and vegetarian labels that I had carefully prepared to our Somali intern. She was delighted as we discussed the importance of our Muslim guests knowing that food was thoughtfully prepared with them in mind. We had even figured out a way to hire one of our local Rohingya chefs to make 300 spicy, halal meat and potato sambusas for our event. I found myself doing a little Eritrean-inspired shoulder shrug happy dance as I bit into one.
How can I support my brave Haitian friend in her big stage performance?
I gave my beautiful friend a warm introduction as she courageously climbed the stairs of the 4-foot stage anticipating her solo in Haitian Creole. I explained to the gathering crowd that her song expressed a prayer for her beloved Haiti. She rose up—her voice, her body, her words—as did the Haitians in the crowd, with their cameras and connection to their language, their homeland, and the words of her song. Another dear Haitian friend spontaneously leapt onto the stage, grabbing the singer by the hand and twisting her in his arms while she boldly belted out her tune. I felt honored to share in that brief moment with the singer—and to witness the spark in her spontaneous dance partner’s eyes that joyfully lit up his whole face.
Our staff, volunteers, and community partners extended invitations. People ate well and danced well and smiled as their little ones played. We worked hard to serve each other well. It wasn’t just about Eritrean music, Somali friends, Rohingya cuisine, Haitian inspiration, and our interactive Mexican mercadito. It was about sharing moments of connection among friends in community. It just happened that our community is gloriously diverse in all its expressions.
~There is a time to mourn and a time to dance.~
Flourishing and struggling are not strangers—to love is to grieve and to welcome the stranger and walk alongside them on their journey means we also see the challenges they’re up against. We took the time to dance with friends from a myriad of ethnolinguistic groups. A few days later we mourned the realities of how much harder it will be for them to live and work and flourish in this country they are trying so hard to call home.
Inflammation occurs in the body when one part becomes reddened, hot, swollen, and painful as a reaction to an injury or infection.
Our world is inflamed. Conflicts are harder to resolve peaceably. Bodies are increasingly broken. Homes, communities, and families are forcibly uprooted and displaced. Rubble and bombs inflame the earth. The casualties tend to be the ones who are already the most vulnerable. Everything around the xenos feels more inflamed.
When we know what is inflamed, we can pay attention to it. Then we can diagnose it and move forward as healers in hurting spaces. Until then, we mourn. My deep faith compels me to mourn with those who mourn, and to acknowledge the inflammation around the bodies, minds, and spirits of those who are vulnerable.
But we also dance. We danced that day because most days at our Immigrant and Refugee Center we face challenges. We dance to share in each other’s joy and release some of our pain. The privilege of the dance is also the honor to hold another’s grief—that is what makes the dance so beholden.
We celebrate philoxenia because xenophobia is palpable.
I had a new sense of my Greek-rootedness—cultivated in a beloved diaspora community. In our small corner of the world that welcomes foreigners as honored guests, philoxenia abounds. As I marinate on the manifold experience of World Refugee Day 2025, I realize that I was the strange one being generously welcomed into the joy-filled spaces among friendly faces of our wonderfully diverse community.
Let us be relentlessly hopeful as we receive the sacred invitations of a loving God to His attentive children. Welcome! Walk with me. Join the unforced rhythms of my grace—the treasures and the smiles and the symphonic beauty of it all. Philoxenia—you are welcome here, with me—in welcoming others.
To our north are a few more Yemeni families who throw great girl parties and provide my kids with an endless supply of sweet treats, especially during Ramadan. Next to them is Hussein, the paper airplane guy, and his sister Latifeh, working professionals who live with their elderly parents.
So as I stood in the back of the Sabeel Media event, having arrived a little late, I started to think of my own response to the refugees joining my community. I can donate to the cause. I can pray for those who suffer. I can speak out for the needs of these new Americans. I can even volunteer for an event of handing out free backpacks to refugee kids starting school in a new country. As I was pondering my action points, I scanned the room of attendees and my eyes fell on a beautiful young woman dressed in a bright pink sweater with a coordinated floral scarf covering her head. I was surprised to realize that I knew her, and not only that, but that I had been thinking about her. I knew her by name. I had given backpacks to her kids at a volunteer event in September.
move. Fatima was honoring her father who only wanted to protect her. He had no idea what this situation was like. My dad would have counseled me the same. My husband would probably give our daughters that advice, too. I took a deep breath. I agreed that listening to her father’s advice was the best move. I silently prayed that maybe I wouldn’t get a ticket.
commitment to religious purity, even on a treadmill, I bounded with greater fervor up the stairs to the track. I was greeted by the sight of a man and his son pausing their workout to stop and pray eastward in the corner. One of the things that I appreciate about 
What would it look like if we were all a little more radicalized to show extreme love, drastic kindness, and fanatical forgiveness in a hurting and confused world? What if we all paused to pray throughout our day more often? One of my favorite bumper stickers challenges people to Wage Peace. What if we all practiced just a little of everyday radical by waging peace wherever we are? 
Last month, as my husband and I and our three children drove homeward after an epic road-trip across miles and miles of United States, we started to notice a pattern. Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois… My kids wanted to know what was wrong with all the American flags. I explained to them the phenomenon of “half-staff”. When something really bad happens in our country, people hang the flags at half-staff on purpose as a way to show their grief and support. My son asked, “Did something bad happen in each of these places?” I assured him that it was to show support, not because every city we passed had something horrendous happen in it. But deep inside, I shuddered at that fearful possibility.
On My Mind 