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Every culture in the world holds up some standard of hospitality as a basis for civilized behavior. The word shares the same root as hospital and hospice, both having to do with caregiving and healing. Hospitality is a form of healing: in extending food, shelter, rest, and good conversation, one is providing a place where people may be healed from the bruises and buffeting of a culture in which overcommitment has become a virtue and home a launching pad.

Students I know who have gone on mission trips to Mexico and Central America have invariably returned humbled and amazed at the generous hospitality of the very poor people they encounter. Some of them, somewhat to their dismay, have been given the only bed in the house while family members sleep on mats.

As middle-class consumers in the wealthiest nation in the world, most of us can extend hospitality without depriving ourselves. We give out of our abundance. We have guest rooms or foldout sofas, something on the shelf we can whip into a meal on short notice, or a deli around the corner we can call. But, reminded daily of crime, scams, and antisocial behavior, we are wary of strangers, and generally don't allow anyone in our houses but those we know and love—including the occasional difficult relative. I'm not necessarily suggesting we round up the homeless and sit them down at our tables, though such a gesture is not unthinkable. But I am suggesting that we take time to perhaps enlarge our notions about hospitality.

I was recently at a retreat where a young minister told us, rather ruefully, that his wife would give anything away. If she learned that someone needed something, she'd just hand it over—a blanket, an electric mixer, the food in the refrigerator. This was sometimes disconcerting and inconvenient for the family. But her reasoning was simple: "It's all God's stuff." I've thought about that funny little sentence many times since. Frequently when I find myself deciding whether to loan or give or donate something that is "mine," it comes back to me: "It's all God's stuff."

Christians are specifically called to break out of their insularity, look need in the face, and recognize in it the face of Christ. One of the clearest mandates in the ancient Rule of St. Benedict, still observed in monastic communities all over the world, is "Receive all guests as Christ." And in the letter to the Hebrews we read, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it."

Does all this sharing mean lavish expenditure or improvidence? I don't think so. One wise woman I knew declared that if she had a chance to entertain one of the great spiritual leaders of the day, she wouldn't bother with a big meal. "I'd just give him a bowl of cereal," she said, "and tell him to start talking." Her "cereal solution" brings me to another point: hospitality begins not in food, but in conversation. In encounter. In eye contact. In attentive listening.

Basic conversational skills are an important dimension of Christian charity: possibly the most important way of attending to guests. In French the word for attend (attendre) means to wait. When we attend to one another, we give time. We wait, for instance, long enough to hear what the hesitant have to say. As good hosts, it may be our part to "bring them out." Engaging people in good conversation is a gracious art, and a way of extending grace. The idea of social graces is not entirely separable from the theological idea of grace. The give and take of good conversation involves not only sprightly speaking but thoughtfully receiving others' observations.

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April 23 2001, Vol. 45, No. 6