on turkeys and hospitality

48 hours before Thanksgiving, hosts and cooks have made many lists. Lists of guests, of dishes to prepare, of stuff that must happen before the doorbell rings, of food to buy and stores to visit. Schedules are made too, as prep and cook times overwhelm (The cubic limits of an oven and a refrigerator require “strategery,” as a friend used to say). For the chronically controlling planner and the last minute, impromptu, party thrower, good hospitality takes preparation. While preparation does not have to cause frantic stress, it does take work to offer another human a place of refuge, of welcome, of belonging.

(Did you catch it? This week is not about producing a tender turkey or an apple pie that sets up properly; it is about creating a space where others find safety and belonging. Consider this a PSA reminding us not to prepare for the one task while neglecting the other.)

Hospitality can get a bad rap. For some, it conjures the prefect hostess showing off her perfect home. For others, it is a catch-all for programmatic systems created to demonstrate welcome. Indeed, from churches to sales offices to sleazy hotels, the presence of a hospitality team does not ensure an authentic welcome. In an effort to reclaim the word, I’d like to suggest that hospitality, considered anew, offers us a radical standard for preparing to engage and welcome others.

 “Community” is tossed around by social justice folks, educators, Presidential candidates, spiritual leaders, and counselors. Everyone talks about it. We all need it. Some of us are pleasantly surprised when we realize we found it. Nearly all of us want it, but feel chronically dissatisfied with the communities we share. Community is not a passive commodity that one just receives though. Communal connection—shared living and with-ness—requires intention. 

 Dietrich Bonheoffer, a German Christian who died when he resisted Hitler because of what he understood about God’s thinking about community, warned us not to throw away the community we have for the community for which we long. He helpfully reminds us that many are prone to dreamlike wanderlust when it comes to our communities. We imagine how great it will be when we are known, loved and comfortable using everyone’s back door without knocking. Meanwhile, most of us pretend like we don’t notice our neighbors as we zip in and out of our driveways, chronically overextended. Like the air traffic control-like planning required to get a turkey, 6 sides and 2 pies to the table on Thursday at 2pm, hospitality must be intentional. It requires a pause, an awareness that each of us can extend a welcome to another human. It demands an acknowledgement that our habits increasingly lead us to distracted lives and fractured identities, and that if we long to belong to others, then we likely need to clear out room for that to happen. We are the neighbors we’ve been waiting for.

And yet, our habits of isolation are so powerful that it requires a disruptive imagining to wonder about what sort of connections are possible. Hospitality requires curiosity. What would it be like to nurture curiosity for the folks you will see this holiday season? To wonder about their story, about what would make them feel welcomed or prepared for? I teach my students that the best writing comes when authentic curiosity leads them to follow a line of inquiry into a piece of literature. The same is true among us. Relationships come when authentic curiosity leads me to follow a line of inquiry into another person. Curiosity about another requires me to suspend my stereotypes, to dispel all the assumptions and judgments I harbor, and instead provide them with the space and time to be whomever they actually are on a given day. As Thursday approaches, if we find ourselves rolling our eyes, pretending to listen, or forcing a smile in anticipation of certain guests, we know that we are preparing to host, but we have not prepared to be hospitable. Instead, hospitality asks us to be engaged in the moment with the divinely created human before us, to prepare to welcome them with intention, and to lean in to their story with curiosity.

Curiosity-driven hospitality naturally, even gently, decenters the self. I know this sounds like postmodern gibberish, but hear me out. In order for me to welcome you fully, first, I have to know you exist. In order for me to actually see you enough to be curious about who you are, to want to know you, I have to lift my gaze from me and onto you. We cannot be present with others if we are only interested in our personal perceptions, sensations, thoughts and feelings. Hospitality begs us to look beyond ourselves and onto an other. The worst kind of hospitality, a version that many of us know quite well, is the kind that serves and advances the host. The best kind of hospitality, the intentional, curious and decentering kind, welcomes and embraces the guest. Of course the wonderful truth is that it is in welcoming others that we discover we belong.

Thanksgiving can be a lot. Indeed, I have friends who adjust their meds and create thoughtful strategies so they can be present but healthy in the days ahead. Turkeys, mental health, challenging people…it’s hard work! This year, Thanksgiving strikes me as a kind of unofficial holiday of hospitality. The entire point is to gather around a table of delicious food and share not just what makes you grateful, but what effect gratitude has on your being. I can’t think of a better time to ponder how we create welcoming spaces for others.

This week, our Thanksgiving tables provide us with the chance to practice hospitality with one another. To be intentional, to be curious, to lift our gaze outside of ourselves to notice those around us, to lean in and listen. Hospitality helps us pay attention, with gratitude, to the stories unfolding around us. Don’t miss them.

on 'free pass' people and what they teach us

Expand Your Us offers a different way to imagine ourselves and our connections to one another.  We live in troubled times, with palpable tension, easy binaries and divisiveness in the air we breathe.  Even those of us who recognize that defensiveness is destructive, that binaries destroy, or that our biases shape the way we see others fall into these traps.  If we celebrate the dignity of all others, we walk a narrow road of empathy, and the ditches of distrust on either side are large and strangely inviting.

“Choosing to extend compassion and understanding to another human being is always a choice. Within our tribes, these choices are often instinctive. What if we chose kindness more often?”

While this is an accurate description of who we are, it is not the full story.  We have become instinctively divisive in the way we consume news and engage others in the public sphere, and yet we continue to be good at loving our “us.”  Yes, we are often quick to demonize, caricature and misunderstand others; however, given the right circumstances, we are also quick to listen, extending grace to people who don’t deserve it.  I call them “free pass” people, because they are the select few who always get the benefit of the doubt.  Even though we are stingy with grace or understanding for people with whom we don’t agree, we all know how to care about our free pass people:

We know how to forgive instinctively, before we are asked. 

We know how to listen with empathy even when an action seems selfish or hurtful. 

We know how to lean in when we want to point a finger in judgment.

We know how to use our power to pull strings for a person who might blow the opportunity. 

We know how to be generous to people who haven’t earned it.

We love our tribe even when they are defensive, argue an irrational point, or make selfish choices.

Choosing to extend compassion and understanding to another human being is always a choice. For our free pass people, these choices are easy, even instinctive.  By observing these choices, noticing them when they happen, could we become better at intentionally choosing kindness to more people more often?  Could we realize we achieve very little when we refuse to access compassion for a large segment of society?  Could we widen our circles, extending the mercy and empathy we reserve for our tribe to others?  Could we recognize that we are part of the problem when we only value our us? 

If we blindly let our instincts decide when we choose compassion, and when we choose to demonize, we miss the opportunity to examine what empathy costs, and how it might heal.  Given our public discourse, it is easy to think we are devolving as a society.  Perhaps we need to be reminded that we already know how to care about people whose perspectives or choices infuriate us.  I have been delighted to realize that many of us are, in fact, expanding our us at an astonishing pace.

For instance, I see transformative reform in the way old divides are being erased through collaboration and resistance.  The last few years have witnessed the exposure of widespread injustice, but we are also witnessing game-changing reforms.  Black Lives Matter brought to light deep patterns of inequity in criminal justice and legal systems.  Brutality is not new, it is simply now exposed in the public sphere, and this exposure necessitated change.  While it is true that many deny injustice exists, even more law enforcement agencies are hard at work improving their relationships with ALL the communities they serve.  In fact, systems are reforming: from body cams, to prosecutors who examine their relationship to police and defendants, to engaging in restorative justice, to de-escalation training, to mental health awareness, to reforming unjust laws, to judges working with communities for fair sentencing, justice is on the move because we are listening to each other.

Similarly, the #metoo movement has exposed deep patterns of misogyny in almost every industry.  These problems are not new, they are simply coming to light in the public sphere.  Millions are teaching us that objectifying women in any way has consequences; there is no such thing as innocent locker room talk.  While some men belittle this abuse, many have listened and responded by examining their potential influence to improve the way we speak about and relate to each other.  Because of brave women and thoughtful men, behavioral norms are changing.  Children are taught differently, coaches coach differently, new staff orientations occur differently and mentors lead differently.  We are learning to honor one another.

This notion of expanding our us instead of demonizing those who dare highlight problems plaguing society is catching on.  In Nashville, a school that was chronically labeled as troubled is now being celebrated as a leader in forming community partnerships; across the nation educators have noticed the ways they collaborate with the city, families, teachers and students to reform approaches to education.  In fact, last week, the Director of Metro Nashville Public Schools and a Nashville Precinct Commander visited Pearl-Cohn, listening and partnering with school Principal Dr. Sonia Stewart, who replaces despair with hope and agency every day.  I am encouraged that our city and state officials are paying attention to our resilient students and the leaders who champion their voices!  This week, the State of Tennessee’s Commissioner of Education, Dr. Candace McQueen, publicly stated that resisting systems based on violence and fear is an important part of the educational process.  She therefore recommends that no student be penalized for participating in next week’s #nationalschoolwalkout protest.  Dr. McQueen understands that we can find hopeful paths forward when we listen to each other rather than demonizing any act of resistance.

Imagine how interconnected our society would be if we started to treat more people the way we usually treat our ‘free pass’ people.  What are the costs of expanding our “us”, so that we give others the benefit of the doubt, committing to listen, seek understanding, and extend compassion more regularly?  Granted, it might cost us our precious binaries, our approaches to others as Good or Bad.  It might cost us the chance to judge before we listen, and it will surely lower the number of people we ignore or even loathe.  I suspect that replacing judgment with generous curiosity will not just improve our connections to others, it might make hopeful peacemakers out of us all.