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When I’m in my right mind, “hospitality” means opening up my thoughts, my heart, my time, and my home to the people in my life — especially to those who are in need, whether those needs be physical, emotional, spiritual, or even merely social.
However, I don’t regularly find myself “in my right mind.”
More frequently, the meaning of hospitality to me and my wife is something more akin to: We finally have a reason to deep-clean our house because we have people coming over, but we’re still going to stress about how small our house is and whether we’ll have space for everyone and whether we bought or cooked enough food and whether they’re going to have a good time and …the list goes on.
A key conflation which I’m actively trying to unlearn is how I’ve often treated “hospitality” and “entertaining” as if they are the same thing. If entertaining means putting on a show and being the best hosts possible and making sure our guests smiled and laughed through their entire visit, then we are desperately in need of hospitality of a very different sort. One without the performances. One without the desperate need to impress. One without the pressure to look clean and tidy and put together. But more importantly, I want to practice a type of hospitality where, by presenting my real self in its real state within my real life, my guest can also feel welcome and safe to be real. They might want an evening to laugh and play games, but they also might need someone to cry with, or someone to whom they can release a long-stifled cry for help.
My life has certainly been changed for the better by friends who were able to have me over in times of need, who didn’t decline because they wouldn’t have time to clean up their apartment first, or by friends who were able to take my phone calls, because they viewed our friendship as more important than whatever tasks they were presently busy with.
Real hospitality is hard, but in some ways, I think it’s also easier than entertaining. It is technically much easier to invite someone into your house in its present state than it is to clean and organize your whole house beforehand; yet oftentimes, the obstacle that gets in the way of honest hospitality is our own pride. We’re scared of appearing messy. We’re scared of people seeing houses and hearts and lives that aren’t Instagram-ready. But I’ve heard it said that we have two options in life: to be impressive or to be honest. We can’t choose both.
It might not be tonight or this week or even this month, but when you get your next opportunity to show hospitality to someone, I hope you will join me in this attempt to rewire our brains away from the pressures and expectations of performing and entertaining your guests, in favor of trying to invite them into the realness of your life. This doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t clean up or prepare, but it means that you should be kind and gracious to yourself if you simply don’t get the chance! And from the opposite perspective, when we are the recipients of other people’s hospitality, let’s aim to have realistic expectations for them and to graciously receive whatever space and time and care they are willing and able to give to us.
