Tacos & Tea

About a year ago, a notable shift took place in our church congregation. Week by week, people from the neighborhood work release center (an incarceration facility where inmates are only allowed to leave for work and church) began filtering over, to our great delight. A few became a handful, and before long, they filled several rows. The men and women eventually filled in the side wings, and some of them began serving communion and passing the offering plate.

Because we’re no strangers to the specific joys of friendship with those at the margins of society, this thrilled Cory and me. It also quickly changed the shape of our Sunday afternoons. Until that time, we’d considered Sunday a day of rest and a day set aside for family time. Now, we were faced with the reality that a growing number of the people in our lives were left with a short window of freedom each Sunday afternoon, but often no family to spend it with, no home to relax in, and usually no car to get them where they wanted or needed to go.

The solution was simple. The execution was, too, though it would cost us some things, like down time and our Sunday afternoon naps.

With our home just two blocks from the church and only a few more blocks from work release, we put out an open invitation most Sundays: Come. The crowd varies a bit from week to week. There are a few regulars, who I put to work making coffee and chopping the occasional head of lettuce. They know where the sugar is and feel comfortable plopping down on the couch once their bellies are full. Some of them bring laundry, and they slip away to switch the load right around the time we’re digging into dessert. Some visit loved ones stuck in jail via video chat, flipping their phones around so the rest of us can wave, say hi, and dream about the day they’ll join us for hot soup or Hot-N-Ready pizza.

Other guests cycle in and out. On a blazing July afternoon, Jake was the new face at our table. He sat to my left out on the back patio table, his jeans two sizes too big, his glasses as thick as a double-paned window. Twice during the meal he stared down at his fidgeting hands, mumbling a quiet “thank you” for the meal. Glancing at the greasy paper plates with sloppy joes and chips straight from the bag, I hoped he understood that it really was no trouble. We sat for an hour under the shade of one small patio umbrella, six adults laughing and bumping elbows while the kids (some by age, others by virtue) raced around, trying to fabricate a zip line from trash found in our garage.

As usual, our conversation was all over the place. With the exception of our newest friend, the rest of us realized years ago that our bonds are real and built to last. Together at the table, nothing is off limits and everyone listens. With time and open-hearted patience, our Sunday crew is revealing a picture of what it truly looks like to come together regularly for the sake of the family.

Right now there’s a lot of talk about what it might take to fix the problems plaguing our world. Legislation might help, our education system needs to be taken to school, and the church has its work cut out for it—the heaviest lifting waiting within its walls. Families are fractured, alienation abounds, and fear runs wild. Global conflict? Check. Rampant polarization? Check. Religious demonizing? Dinners with extended family where not even homemade mashed potatoes keep you from wanting to dash out the door? Yes. All are present and accounted for, looming overhead and casting long shadows.

But every Sunday I’m inclined to believe that making the world a better, brighter place might really be as simple as making lunchtime brighter for one person.

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Hospitality. It sounds kind of fancy, but its meaning is simple, bare-bones, pure, and entirely holy—you are invited. There is room for you here, next to me. I receive you with gladness and offer my truest self. Here, we draw nearer to each other, seeking refuge from the crush of life. Here, we are safe. We are warm. We are free.

Knowing that, why does something so vital to our souls often feel scary and uncertain? What is it about the come-as-you-are spirit of hospitality that makes us doubt our ability to do just that? We can blame social media with its impulse to stage perfection and crop around the mess. We can point a finger at the individualistic bent of our modern age. I’m sure we all have a story or two to share about a time we put ourselves on the line in the name of welcome and walked away lonelier than ever. Rejection is a chronic injury, difficult to shake, once felt. We are so afraid our vulnerability won’t be held with gentle hands.

The truth is, we still want more. Our ready skepticism wobbles on this one. Past disasters and potential future failures aside, we know it’s worth it. We want to do better. We want to crack this nut. This inborn optimism to keep trying is all the proof we need: hospitality, the urge to gather, is hardwired into our spiritual and relational DNA. It might look a little different from person to person, but in this one way, we recognize our shared lineage of potlucks and patios, long nights where the wick burns down to an ember and the kids incite some small catastrophe. Despite all the mess and unpredictability, I’m positive it is worth taking some risks and making some mistakes to cultivate a consistent rhythm of welcome and belonging in our homes.

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What if we each decided to go first and be the hostess we long for? Think for a minute about the times you’ve felt most at home, most comfortable and free. Scour the details. Was the floor freshly mopped? Did you swipe the baseboards with a white glove and Instagram the results? Did you pull out the refrigerator vegetable bins, checking for withered lettuce or slimy cilantro, ready to hurl stones? Did your host ask you to leave and not return until you were more smartly dressed? Did you pull out a scorecard and rate the meal? Were you positively disgusted by the antics of normal kids being their normal, dysregulated kid selves?

I’m guessing not.

What probably happened is that you felt listened to. Noticed. Included. Renewed. Accepted. You probably laughed a lot, and maybe you cried. You recognized a no-pressure zone when you saw it.

Bingo. That’s our way forward.

We have deceived ourselves into thinking hospitality is more about the house than the humans. In reality, it’s just the background noise to the real meat and potatoes of connection. If we can keep this reminder taped front and center, we might find ourselves falling willingly, happily even, into a new rhythm of belonging.

Shannan Martin, author of The Ministry of Ordinary Places: Waking Up to God’s Goodness Around You and Falling Free: Rescued from the Life I Always Wanted, is a speaker and writer who found her voice in the country and her story in the city. Shannan, her jail-chaplain husband, Cory, and their kids, live as grateful neighbors in Goshen, Indiana.