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.