The H-word

What comes to mind when you hear the word "hospitality"?

When you hear the word “hospitality” what comes to mind? How do you feel about it?

A.    Entertaining in my perfectly clean and tastefully decorated home (which feels pressured)

B.    A gift or skill that some people (but not me) have (which feels intimidating)

C.    Gathering friends (and strangers) around the table (which feels exciting)

D. A spiritual practice of welcoming people into any space (which feels inspiring)

Last week I traveled to California to teach at the West Coast Christian Writers Conference. My writing bestie Susy Flory (follow her here) directs the conference, and I serve on the board and faculty. After the conference we spent a few days together at her cabin in the mountains.

We spent time reading, hiking, watching movies, and recuperating from three intense days of mentoring and teaching writers. When we get together, we talk about things we’re writing, or want to be writing. We talk about books we’ve read, and books we want to write. And sometimes, we don’t talk at all but that feels very comfortable and cozy—and needed after three days of being “on” and teaching.

Susy welcomes me to the high country of the Sierra Nevadas.

We talked about this newsletter, where I’m writing about Welcoming and Wandering. I told her when I talk about welcoming, I’m talking about hospitality. She told me she wouldn’t want to read about hospitality, because that word carries some heavy connotations that seem to require a very clean house, mad skills in the kitchen, and having a lot of people in her home. To an introvert who doesn’t love to cook, but does love to be surrounded by piles of books, two dogs and cat, that just sounds terrible.

Hospitality for her, she explained, feels like conformity to impossible standards. The Bible tells us to practice hospitality. But—what does that mean? She grew up in a very conservative church with strict rules about gender roles. She’s gradually freeing herself from those, and just that word, hospitality, feels repressive and regressive for her. She doesn’t want to practice hospitality, because that’s what perfectly submissive Christian housewives do. Also, it would require more cleaning and cooking than she wants to do.

“Susy, you and your team just welcomed 300 writers to a conference where they could be nurtured and fed,” I told her. “That’s hospitality.”

She looked incredulous.

“I never thought of it that way,” she said.

Susy with faculty members Jeanette and Kathi as they welcome writers to WCCW.

Susy also leads an online community of memoir writers—another place she practices hospitality.

I also pointed out that she had welcomed me to her home in the mountains for the weekend after the conference, and a few years ago, invited me to travel to Ireland with her. She’d welcomed me into many adventures. “But you’re like family,” she said. Which is true—and it’s why I feel so welcomed there. But that’s because I’ve been welcomed to her home many times before. When I visit, I often do some of the cooking. We sit and read without speaking much, or we go hiking. We are not afraid to say we need some time alone. But I feel welcomed because she doesn’t fuss or worry about “entertaining” me. What if hospitality is the exact opposite of what she thinks it might be?

I’m curious—do other people react in a similar way to the very word “hospitality”? Does it feel impossible or intimidating or restrictive? A heavy “ought to” that overwhelms or restricts us? Especially those deconstructing a fundamentalist background that limited women to “keepers of the home” and little else?

How about you? Does the word “hospitality” feel inviting, or intimidating? Is it something you want to do? And what exactly does that doing look like?

How about the word “welcoming”? Does that feel different? More accessible? In what ways?

I’d love to hear your comments below.