When No One Shows Up: Hospitality in the Age of Maybe

Kate Gaston
3 hours ago
13 min read

by Kate Gaston

The last of the autumn leaves have released their grip, and the holiday season is upon you. As you stare out the window at the first snowfall, you find your heart inexplicably yearning for a table laden with delicious food and flickering candles. You daydream of friends and family gathered together in a Rockwellian tableau, everyone smiling broadly, wearing vintage sweaters, and pleased as punch to be sitting around your table.

You’ve been hearing the word “hospitality” bandied about recently, so you decide to try your hand at it, just to see what all the fuss is about. Yes, a dinner party, you decide. That will be just the thing.

You consult your calendar and pick an auspicious date a few weeks in the future. You text all your friends the invitation, and you are pleased to receive a flurry of happy yellow thumbs and warm, if slightly ambiguous, texts in response:

“What fun! 😍”

“LOVE.”

“🔥🔥🔥”

Buoyed with this cozy glow of social approval, you set about planning your dinner. The menu, you decide, will be dripping with heritage, each course steeped in story and significance. The soup your mom taught you to make when you were a kid. The sourdough bread you mastered during quarantine. The scones you learned to bake at L’Abri.

You lovingly purchase each ingredient, even venturing across town to the fancy grocery store for those organic microgreens. Arriving home, you unload the groceries into the fridge. You anticipate the rapturous faces of your guests as they tuck into the feast you have in store for them, and you’re fairly purring with the knowledge that never has a more hospitable dinner party ever been planned.

The evening of your dinner party finally arrives. The bread is fresh-baked, still crackling with warmth. The soup is simmering away in your vintage Le Creuset Dutch oven. The scones are perfection. You’re crushing this hospitality thing.

As you hustle to finish the last bit of tidying and plump the throw pillows before your guests arrive, a text dings on your phone.

The message reads:

“We can’t make it tonight! Last minute practice scheduled. Sorry! 😬”

Moments later, before the disappointment from the first message even has had a chance to fade, a second message arrives:

“Tired from work. Not going to make it. Invite me again sometime.”

And it doesn’t stop there, oh no.

Within the hour, even the Maybes have transformed into Nopes.

Your guest list? Decimated by a firestorm of flake-outery.

Your vision of sparkling conversation, candlelight, and the table full of friends lies in ashes at your feet.

Alone, you sit at your table, eating a bowl of soup. It needs salt.

As you scrape the enormous quantity of leftovers into Tupperware and Ziploc baggies, you are aware of a feeling of slow-simmering shame deep in your belly. Sadness and anger are there, too, fizzing and popping. Tears drip off your cheeks, plopping with forlorn poignancy into the dishwater as you scrub your pots and pans.

You put yourself on the line.

You opened your heart and your home.

And no one showed up.

First Things First: Don’t Be A Maybe.

Let’s switch gears. Put yourself, for a moment, in the shoes of one who received an invitation to this dinner party.

Right off the bat—literally the moment you received the invitation—you knew in your gut whether you wanted to go to this dinner party or not, right?

Let’s have a little chat about the decisions that now lie before you, shall we? Just for funsies, we’ll play the whole thing out like a little choose-your-own-adventure.

Do you want to attend this dinner? Yes or No.

If the answer is yes, well then, by all means, go. Eat, drink, and be merry.

If the answer is no, you have another decision tree before you, don’t you?

Sometimes, even as adults, we must do things we don’t want to do. Grandma’s 90th birthday party, for example, is probably not going to be a rip-roaring good time. It’s likely not the way you’d prefer to spend your Saturday morning. But you’d darn well better show up.

So then, I ask you, is this dinner party to which you’ve been invited something you must do?

If the answer is yes, well then, time to suck it up, Buttercup.

If the answer is no, all that is left to do is to send your regrets to the host.

And herein lies one of the seemingly insurmountable challenges of our modern age. You must tell the host you will not be in attendance.

Here, at this pivotal crossroads, you realize you don’t actually like saying no. So in a burst of creative problem-solving, you discover a third way.

You guessed it.

You respond with, “Oh, maybe!”

“Maybe” is a squishy word, a thoughtless space filler. It is to your calendar what “Umm” is to your vocabulary.

But consider now what your choice—or rather, your lack of choice—has wrought:

A host must plan for a Maybe as if they are a Yes.

Food must be bought and prepared for Maybe.

Space must be reserved at the table for Maybe.

Why, exactly, do we say, “Maybe,” when what we really mean is, “No”?

Is it because we’re afraid of hurting the host’s feelings? Or are we trying to stay in their good graces?

“Maybe” feels nicer than “no.” It feels impolite to turn down an invitation. Nice people just don’t do that sort of thing. But they should. As Brené Brown wrote, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”

Perhaps you weren’t thinking about the host’s feelings at all when you responded with, “Maybe”. Perhaps it was simply the best way to keep all your options open. The dinner invitation sounded nice—soup is cool and all—but not quite cool enough to be inked indelibly into your calendar. Perhaps you’ve perfected the ideal level of commitment that allows you to keep one foot in the door, but is slippery enough for you to wriggle free in case something cooler than soup materializes on your social horizon.

Nice people shouldn’t do that sort of thing. But they do.

Perhaps you responded, “Maybe,” because you’d genuinely love to attend the dinner party you’ve been invited to…if only it weren’t sharing a calendar slot with three other equally lovely events.

Like Hermione Granger with her enchanted Time Turner, you channel your own magical thinking and plan to attend all three events. You have it all mapped out—if you remain at each event for no longer than 16 minutes and 37 seconds, you can squeeze them all in.

I get it, I really do.

Listen, I’m about as far from being a farmer as humanly possible. I certainly don’t own a barley field. But there’s something to that Old Testament instruction not to glean all the way to the edges of our fields. If I consider the valuable resources I do possess—time, for example—do I leave any margin? Or do I harvest it down to the minute for my own purposes, pleasure, and productivity?

Our resources—time, energy, money—are not ours, yet we play them for keeps. We imagine ourselves kings of our individual kingdom, masters of our molehills. Do we experience flourishing, I wonder, when we’ve harvested ourselves dry, scything our every resource down to the roots?

For whatever particular reason you might be tempted to employ the word, “Maybe”, reconsider. Be kind. Be loving. But be honest. Whenever and wherever possible, as far as it depends upon us, let us deepen our resolve to resist being a Maybe.

Entertainment or Hospitality?

Let’s return to our poor host, crying into the dishwater. Why, exactly, do his unmet expectations feel so terrible?

(Ah, I can see the gender reveal took you by surprise. As it turns out, men know how to make soup, too. And it’s a nice opportunity to be reminded: hospitality is for everyone.)

“But, Kate,” I hear you say, “haven’t you mentioned somewhere before that hospitality isn’t the same thing as throwing a dinner party?”

You are wise, dear reader. You have brought us straight to the crux of the matter.

If I am throwing a dinner party, I make my plans with an eye toward enjoying myself. I curate a guest list full of witty or interesting people. I serve the food I enjoy, and spin the records I prefer. I will offer something to the guest—say, food and wine—and the guest will offer me something in return. Perhaps it’s their charming conversational skills, their juggling ability, or a plate of warm snickerdoodles, but whatever their offering is, I experience some sense of return on my investment. Entertainment, you see, is a transactional exchange.

Let it be said: there is nothing wrong with throwing a party. Having fun is not a moral failing. We are made in God’s image, and God loves a party. Three cheers for the riotous joys and romping delights of life.

Hospitality, in contrast, is a one-way flow. It is your choice to offer something of value—your time, energy, food, or money—with no expectation of return on your investment.

Sometimes, yes, it’s possible you might receive something of value from your hospitality. You might find yourself in a thoughtful conversation you didn’t anticipate, and perhaps a new friendship is born. But expectations for this sort of result must be checked at the door.

Maintaining the distinction between transactional entertaining and sacrificial hospitality is very difficult. We usually discover how difficult it is right about the time that first text dings on our phone, and people start letting us down.

We aren’t wired to give without counting the cost. We are experts at counting the cost. Even when we actively try not to count the cost, we are aware of what it’s costing us to not count the cost. Bless our hearts, but being open-handed goes against the grain of our fleshly nature. Like parting our hair on the opposite side, it just feels wrong.

Resentment: The Canary in the Coalmine

A fairly reliable indicator that we’ve mistaken entertainment for hospitality is a brooding sense of resentment. Resentment is borne of unmet expectations. It is the festering feeling someone didn’t hold up their end of the bargain. With hospitality, of course, there is no other end of the bargain.

If you notice a creeping sense of resentment, return to the beginning. Remind yourself of the distinction between entertaining and hospitality. Then take a good hard look at your intentions.

If you are truly just trying to throw a good party, and need some direction about how to create a thoughtful gathering, read The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker. She shares some concrete guidelines about the process you’re sure to find helpful.

If your intention was to offer pure grain hospitality, definitely still read that book. And while you do, here are a few questions to help suss out whether you’ve blurred the line between hospitality and entertainment.

Do I feel others have let me down?
Do I feel huffy about how much the hospitality is “costing” me—whether it’s my time, money, or energy?
Have I only invited people to my party who make me feel (fill in the blank): Comfortable? Important? Special? Happy? Funny? Pretty? Smart? Talented?
Have I excluded someone from the guest list because they are (fill in the blank):

Awkward? Ugly? Annoying? Confusing? Boring? Other? Edgy? Uncool?

Have I only invited people from within the bulls-eye of my social sphere?
Have I neglected to invite people from the outer edges of my social sphere?
Am I hoarding my resources (my time, money, energy, creativity, space, or skills) for myself and the people I am closest to?

Resentment as a “Check Engine” Light

Okay, so let’s say you’ve taken that long, hard look at your intentions, and your intentions are good. You’re offering genuine hospitality from a sacrificial heart. You aren’t counting the cost. You are pouring yourself out for your community, and all is well.

Until it’s not.

Week after week, you watch your hospitality (literally or figuratively) consumed by a bunch of ungrateful wretches. Maybe a handful of folks express gratitude. More often than not, though, your hospitality is met with a sort of benign apathy. A vague ambivalence. And your only thanks? A whole lot of dirty dishes. Or, in the case of my personal favorite post-hospitality moment, an entire slice of apple pie smearing down the wall behind the sofa.

God is infinite in his ability to pour out grace on ungrateful wretches. You are not.

Especially after a season of pouring out, if you begin to notice resentment bubbling under the surface, it’s a good indicator you’ve overspent yourself. It may well be time to ease off the throttle. Pay attention to how you feel when you’ve begun scraping the bottom of your proverbial barrel. If you’re anything like me, you might not notice anything is amiss until you find yourself breaking that barrel down for firewood.

We must rest. We must humbly submit to the reality of our finitude. We must stop pretending to be indispensable to God.

Go away somewhere. Be alone. Do something that fills your barrel with creational energy. Go putter in your garden. Let someone else host this month. Practice saying no to things. Identify the places you’ve harvested yourself way out to the very edges of your fields. Practice leaving your margins unreaped. Replant.

You are a beloved child of God, and your hospitality comes pouring out of that abundance of grace you’ve received. From Robert Farror Capon’s book, Between Noon and Three: Romance, Law, and the Outrage of Grace:

“Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears.”

But if your delight has fermented into a resentful duty, it’s wise to take a season of refreshment. Lighten up. Rest, and regain perspective.

Let’s Face It, We Have No Idea What the Fruit Will Be.

Let’s say you’ve been offering hospitality in a particular way for a while, and things are going okay, you guess. You aren’t tapped out or resentful. But if you’re being honest, being hospitable doesn’t seem to be all it’s cracked up to be. You aren’t looking for a gold medal or anything, but you thought, at the very least, it would be accompanied by warm fuzzy feelings, or that cozy sense of accomplishment of a job well done. You aren’t asking for much. You’d just like to know your hospitality is producing fruit, darn it.

Often, we carry an unspoken expectation, some imagined ideal outcome, for our hospitality. This isn’t bad, necessarily. In fact, having a vision for what you’d like to achieve with your hospitality is a helpful navigational guide as you plan. We can get into trouble, though, when these expectations don’t pan out.

Maybe you had visions of hosting a rich conversation about social justice, but couldn’t get people to go any deeper than discussing their favorite political thriller on Netflix.

Maybe you wanted your home to be a safe space for someone, but they never showed up, and never reached out.

Maybe you invited a bunch of lonely people together and had visions of playing a game of Charades that would knit people together and transform lives, only to discover the cold, hard truth that strangers don’t want to play a game in which they have to imitate Dolly Parton.

Many of us are very strong, incredibly capable people. We have many gifts. We have many strengths. We can do whatever is in our power to place the beauty of God front and center. We can demonstrate, to the best of our ability, what it looks like to walk with God. We can set the stage. We can pay attention.

But we can’t change people’s hearts.

We can’t make people long for God.

Here, then, is the mysterious work of hospitality: it changes those who are offering it. We are led, gently but steadily, to the sure knowledge that we are not enough.

At the end of our strength, in our morass of exhaustion and dry-scraped barrels, we find ourselves staring our limitations dead in the eye. Our reliance on our own strength, capabilities, and gifts must submit to the work of those holy pruning shears, and, man, it can really be uncomfortable. But if we’re looking for fruit, friends, there it is.

At the end of all our striving, the work of reconciling the world is not on our shoulders, after all. It’s not some 50/50 split of the labor between my buddy Jesus and me. It’s not even 90/10, guys. Turns out, he’s carrying this team entirely. And I don’t mean he’s holding it all together with trembling arms while I take a quick swig of Gatorade. I mean it in the sense that Jesus is holding my atoms together.

At the risk of revealing the full extent of my fangirl enthusiasm for Robert Farrar Capon, I offer you one final quote from his book, referenced above, which drives home this very point beautifully:

“...your part in [the life of grace] is just to make yourself available. Not to make anything happen. Not to achieve any particular intensity of subjective glow. Certainly not to work yourself up to some objective standard of performance that will finally con God into being gracious. Only to be there, and to be open to your lover who, without so much as a by-your-leave, started this whole affair.”

The fruit we are so eager for is seeded in our slow, consistent, everyday availability to him, and subsequently, to the people who cross our path. We can’t see the results or tally the rewards, but the fruit is budding even as we faithfully set the table, light the candles, and stir the soup. With sap drawn straight from abiding in the goodness of God, the fruit ripens as our pride dies daily, as we confess our need, as we own ourselves to be wholly reliant on someone else, and in submission to the story someone else is telling.