31 days of hospitality

“What matters is that we stretch our hearts open and draw near to each other.  It is the way of hospitality, the way of life, and it is, in this remote place where we have awakened to find ourselves, the only way home.”

I am still trying to catch up on them but your emails and comments during this series have been so life-giving.

Thank you for taking this journey with me.  You make it so worth it.

This series has turned me inside out.

I didn’t expect it to be so…..emotional.  I am spent.

I set out to show you pretty pictures and share some new recipes.

Instead, I’m all twisted up inside and the last thing that seems relevant to me is a recipe.

And then there were the 3 loaves of pumpkin bread and the two tarts I made today to give away, serving as a timely reminder that food is always relevant.

All that to say, sometimes you have to live hospitality instead of talking about it.

Back soon with more goodies!

 

Also, I started a Hospitality Board on Pinterest and thought you might enjoy this article all about  Southern Women. (it helps me to understand myself better!)

What other 31 Dayers are you reading?  Tell me your favorites in the comments.

xoxo,

edie

quote from Radical Hospitality

Okay, since we’ve  reordered of our affections toward our beloved, here’s a few practical tips for making the bedroom more welcoming and sultry.

Declutter

Remove the treadmill.  And the stack of clothes currently sitting on it.  You know this was never a good idea, right?    This sanctuary, this sultry holy of holies (thank you, Laura!) was never made for exercise equipment.  It’s just wrong.  We’ve gone way to0 analytical and practical.  This room is not made for practicality.   Read some  poetry in here.  Play some Mumford and Sons.   This room was made for love.  Period.  You know I’m right 🙂  And I know you’re gonna hate me for this–but while you’re at it, get rid of the t.v. too.  Mmmkay, quickly moving on.

Infuse your Personality

If any room in your house should wreak with your personality, it should be this one.  You can do this in so many simple ways.  Put your jewelry or your scarves on display.   Hang some art that inspires you.  Paint it a romantic color.  But somehow, in some way, make this room be a reflection of who you are and what you love.   I violated all rules of wall hangings in my little corner but it makes me smile every single day.  Of course my all-time personal favorite in the ‘make your room scream YOU’ category is the monogram.  It’s my mission in life to have at least one in every room.  That way, if you’re ever at my house and can’t remember my name, there will be little clues everywhere.

Now, don’t stress yourself out.  Take baby steps.  Make a Pinterest board of inspiration and then slowly but surely,  infuse your bedroom with little parts of yourself.

Buy the Best Linens You Can Afford

Save your pennies and invest in good linens.  You spend 1/3 of your life here in your bed.  Don’t sleep on cheap, scratchy sheets.  I’ve made a science of bed comforts.  We use only feather pillows, we invested in a good mattress and I have the softest Italian sheets known to man.  They were not cheap.  But you can get great, high thread count sheets from Tuesday Morning and TJ Maxx for a fraction of the retail cost.  It’s so worth the thought and effort you’ll put into it.  Stevie and I HATE to travel because our bed and linens are like BUTTAH.

Invest in a Good Room Fragrance

4.  I am so sensitive to smells.  I can detect a sour scent a mile away.  So, my house is full of home fragrances, mostly diffusers.  There are certain ones I like for certain rooms but my favorite for the bedroom is Archipelago’s Havana.  You can buy it here.

I do still have some candles but due to family allergies, I don’t use them very much.  Good quality diffusers like this are so worth it because they put out a lot of fragrance and last forEVER.  I’ve had the one in my bedroom for 6 months and it’s not even 1/3 gone.  You’ll be addicted to this Havana scent!  Just between you and me, I also spray a tiny little bit of my own perfume on the linens before I make up the bed. Did I mention I’m very influenced by smells?  I use Tocca’s Cleopatra.  It’s todiefor.

Okay, that’s a good start.  Let me know the state of your bedroom and what little changes you could make to make it beautiful and inspiring for the one you love!

 

 

Welcome! I’m glad you’re here. This is day 9 in a 31 days series on hospitality. Start from the beginning here!

Don’t worry. This is a family blog. I’m keeping it on the up and up.

But really, I’m convinced that it all begins right here.

In this bed, in this room, with this relationship.

The very person you love the most is the hardest one to love sometimes.

They often fall to last on the list.  We cook the best meals and wear the best clothes for someone else.

We clean the house and get out the best dishes when company is coming.

And it’s time to reorder ourselves.

This person should come first;  this person with whom I share my bed and my struggle.

I should make it my business to know what he likes and what he doesn’t.

I should make it my life’s mission to serve him, above all others.

Wanna know why America is in such wretched shape?   We’ve lost the order of things.

“Things fall apart,” as the poet says.   “The centre cannot hold.”

We kill ourselves and spend our last dime to make our children rotten but we’ve forgotten that it all  hinges on this bed, and our holding it sacred.

See him with new eyes and study him.  How can you help him?  How can you ease his burden?  How can you make him laugh?

Stop keeping score and just love and serve him.

You know him best so this won’t be hard for you.

Make him see that you hold this relationship in the highest regard.

Hospitality starts here.  In this room.  With this man.

The strength of our love for others depends on what happens here.

May the centre hold and may the best be full of ‘passionate intensity.‘

Love him well.

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“I will love with urgency, but not with haste.”

 

 

 

From The Second Coming by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Y’all have been so patient.

I know you were thinking that surely a series on hospitality would be full of recipes, model guest bedrooms and perfect table settings.

It’s coming.  Hang on!

I started this series where all true hospitality begins—-in our hearts.

And before I move on to all the fun stuff, I want to pause to consider why any of it matters.

Why should I make room for others?

Why should I perfect a few recipes?

Why should I put some thought and effort into what goes into my guest bedroom?

What’s the point?

The point is to serve others.

That and only that should be my guiding principle.

So yes, we’ll talk about kitchen and pantry organization.  But not for the sake of perfectly aligned spices.   Only as it helps to serve our family and neighbors.

We’ll  talk about cooking and why it’s important to learn basic kitchen skills—but not so we can boast of being  gourmet chefs.

We’ll do those things that help us feed and serve our families and friends.

It’s so easy to become obsessed with the perfect home, the most organized playroom, an heirloom tea set.

But what is our motive?

Are we spending our time and energy and money to impress others?   Or to serve them?

We become slaves to our stuff instead of using it as a tool to serve those we love.

So, we won’t encourage perfection.   We will encourage service.

And, as the topics become more visual and practical, don’t forget the goal:

To use our resources of time and treasure to love and serve our neighbors.

It’s just that simple.  And just that impossible.

Join me in the beautiful and crazy paradox!

 

 

 

 

This is day 7 in a 31 day series on hospitality.   You can start from the beginning here.

We often have nothing to give others because we are bankrupt.

The irony is that we haven’t learned to help others because we haven’t learned to help ourselves.

Solitude is how we help ourselves.

It is in solitude that we develop a rich inner life that sustains us and spills over into the lives of others.

In Radical Hospitality, Pratt says that,

“When we are alone, we have cut off our normal routes to escaping ourselves.  Not only that, solitude hacks off most of the usual ways we feel affirmed.  In solitude, we cease being competent workers.   We do no serve or nurture others in solitude, and we seldom talk.  Once amputated from these normal support systems, we discover a throbbing restlessness that begins to surface.  Ancient wounds to the psyche begin ascending into the conscious region of the mind.  They float up like long dead bodies.  Illusions shatter around us and wisdom gets  a chance to get hold of us.”

Most of us are scared to death of solitude.   We know that our demons linger there.  We are haunted by the truth about ourselves and solitude threatens to expose us.

But if you can stay with solitude long enough to get past the initial pangs of emptiness and helplessness, you will find a beauty and strength there that cannot be possessed in any other way.

Your demons aren’t that scary when exposed to the light of day.  The emptiness is a God-given longing for home, for Him.   He is in the solitude.  It’s His face we find there and it’s there where we come to truly cherish this life, these relationships.

Learning to be alone is a spiritual discipline.  It takes practice.  And it’s become nearly impossible in our modern world full of chaos and distractions.

Pratt says,

“We possess inward solitude at a very high cost.  It does not come easily.  In solitude, we feel helpless and almost out of control.  We have grown dependent on others and the noises we make at each other.  We do not even know how to imagine our lives without the bustle.”

 

The problem is, most of us moderns have neither solitude nor true relationship.   We live our lives in the murky middle, where it’s comfortable and doesn’t cost us anything.

But true relationship and solitude both require us to be fully present, fully alive to both our fears and our deepest vulnerabilities.

I like to call it living on the dangerous edge of life, where joy is possible but so is falling.

You can stay in your comfort zone and miss the danger.

Or you can enter the wild abundant life that awaits just on the other side of solitude.

The riches you will discover there will lead you to a life that naturally overflows to your neighbor and meets his need without you even trying.

Solitude breeds hospitality.   In silence, true conversation is born.  Out of my emptiness and heartache, I see how desperately I need others.

And falling is finally the least of my worries.

When all else around me is quiet,  I can finally hear His voice.

Only then do I have something worth sharing.

 

This is day 6 in a 31 day series on hospitality.  You can start from the beginning here.

Brave hearts shine with the divine presence; like God they are free, they are welcoming and accepting,  they are strong yet gentle.  They are wondrously available.

You have all the same excuses I do for not opening yourself to others.

You’re busy.  You don’t have the skill set.  Their problems are too much.   Their  life is a mess.  Your life is a mess.  You’re too impatient.  You’re not kind enough.  You don’t even like them.  You don’t have anything to offer.  What does it really matter?

Turns out, in the end, it’s all that really matters.

All that other stuff we spend most of our lives doing—-that’s what  doesn’t matter.   Trust me, I’m the queen of meaningless minutiae.

But those people that we pass by everyday, that we discard, that we overlook, that we disdain, that we can’t stand, that we don’t get—-those people need us and we need them.

So let’s call the problem what it is.

We are selfish, prejudice, self-centered, arrogant, and desperately afraid.

We are afraid that we’ll be exposed for what we really are.   We are afraid of rejection.  We fear people who aren’t like us.  We are too self-absorbed to be bothered.

And if those are not your barriers to making yourself available to others, you know what yours are.  We’re all in the same sinking ship.

But here’s one thing that is true.  You can spend your whole life hiding behind possessions and gadgets and busy-ness and fear and you will never know the joy of true relationship.

Yes, it will break your heart.  Yes, it will be messy and terrifying.   Yes, you will be broken and humbled and changed.

But the alternative is a mediocre loneliness that will eventually smother you to death.

Open your heart and live.

Your willingness to be alive and vulnerable will welcome others to do the same.

When you extend your heart to someone, you are, in bravery, extending them  a lifeline.

Be brave.  Step into the light.  Someone’s life is hanging in the balance.  And the irony is—–it  may be yours.

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quote above from Radical Hospitality by Lonni Collins Pratt