While You Were Eating

Growing up as a first-generation Nigerian American comes with its fair share of happiness and headaches. An experience that straddled both polarities was hospitality. For holidays or for no reason at all, my parents would invite friends over to our home to fellowship and to feast on delicious pepe soup, jollof rice, moi moi, and other native delicacies. This was happiness because hello, Nigerian food. But also a headache because someone needed to make all of this happen. While my mother did most of the heavy lifting in the kitchen, over time, my sisters and I graduated from peripheral roles to more central roles in preparation for the gathering. But one thing remained consistent: whether we’d known our guests for one day or one decade, the same amount of concerted effort always went into welcoming them into our abode.

That is why I struggle even now when close friends, basically sisters to me, want to come over to my place just to hang. My most common response: “It’s not clean, you can’t come!” I know they don’t mind the collection of dust on the baseboards at this point, but there’s something to be said about how hospitality is oddly reflective of moments of vulnerability in our lives.

Hospitality is revealing. To open your home is to make things personal. Yet sometimes we may take hospitality too personally, almost contradicting its purpose.

The first rule of hospitality is that it is not about the host. The goal is to make the guests feel welcome. While I am ultimately the master of the menu and the itinerary, I have to remind myself that my comfort is not the objective. I would love to use the most beautiful of place settings, serve the most diverse of food and drink options, and provide the most entertaining of activities that will cultivate the finest experiences of fellowship every time I host. However, I’ve realized that my friends do not need all of that to enjoy each other’s company. A lot of times just the thought of not measuring up to my personal standard inhibits me from making any attempt at hosting in the first place. If that sounds anything like your thought process, I encourage you to give yourself a little more grace and dial things back a bit. Maybe all of your extravagant components of a good time don’t need to be perfectly manifested in every single instance. Instead, focus on just one of them at a time, rather than risking not having the experience altogether. Give one of your guests the opportunity to cultivate a group activity or bring an interesting dish. Or try sharing hosting responsibilities with a friend.  

Perhaps you are on the but-did-you-die end of the hosting spectrum, and your guests will just have to accept the minimal hospitality you give them, to heck with what they think, the invitation itself is kind enough of a gesture. In many ways, you are right. The virtue of minimalism is that it keeps the focus on the fellowship rather than the pomp and circumstance. However, there is a difference between minimalism and negligence. We should be mindful that if we wouldn’t feel comfortable breaking bread at an unkempt restaurant with inattentive employees, similar sentiments likely transcend toward peoples’ homes as well.

Now, I am no expert in hospitality. I only recently have become more intentional about it since reading a few books about it.* I don’t share all of this to mean that guests have open season on violating house rules, forcing you to become someone you are not for the duration of their stay. Consider this instead: at the essence of hospitality is someone giving of themselves and their most valuable resources, for the sole benefit of literally everyone but themselves. Does that sound familiar?

In love and veritas,

Chioma

* The Gospel Comes with a House Key: Practicing Radically Ordinary Hospitality in Our Post-Christian World by Rosaria Butterfield

From Tablet to Table: Where Community Is Found and Identity Is Formed by Leonard Sweet