Opening Your Home After Covid
Offering a place of light and refreshment
On Thursday, I’ll share highlights from your discussion of viability standards. Thank you for your patience and charity as people have navigated significant disagreements about abortion. I’m proud of the way the Other Feminisms community can speak seriously about injustices while trying to invite in other readers who disagree about who is most at risk.
In many parts of the United States, it’s getting more plausible to have friends over to your home. For many folks, this may be their first time hosting in more than a year. We’ve had a few friends over for dinner, and we’re looking forward to hosting a bigger group soon for a day of playing games written by my husband.
It’s a good time to reflect on what you may want to change about how you welcome others, or, if you’ve felt unequal to hosting in the past, to remember that, at this time, people want more than anything to see you. The bar for your housekeeping, decorating, and cooking is low!
I liked seeing these remarks from Joy Clarkson on twitter:
I appreciate her reminder that being a homemaker isn’t about creating something photogenic and professional. It’s about providing respite.
Respite might look like air-conditioning in the middle of a horrendous heatwave. (Seriously, check in on your friends and see if they need somewhere non-scorching to sleep). It might be cocoa on the stove on a snowy afternoon. It could be coming over to babysit a newborn for an hour while the parents take a nap.
But, as Joy points out, there are other kinds of respite to offer as a contrast to the world outside. Welcoming people into your home might be a chance to invite them into a space of conviviality, big questions, or unembarrassed earnestness.
The home can be place of renewal, but it isn’t a retreat. As I wrote in Building the Benedict Option, my book on building Christian community, we gather with friends to be fed—with food, with beauty, with kindness. And we rely on those moments of respite to strengthen us to share good things with the wider world.
A quiet, earnest moment with a friend may give you the courage to speak up when you hear a demeaning joke. A moment where you are welcomed in your weakness may help you reach out to someone else in need.
What kinds of respite do you most want to receive right now from a friend?
What kinds of respite do you hope to offer this summer?
I want to give people the gift of knowing that it's OK to tell me they're not OK; and knowing that it's OK to not be OK. In the past month or so, the stress created by Covid has been amplified in my life by a new phase in the reckoning of my country (Canada) with its genocidal past in the form of abusive residential schools for Indigenous children. This is affecting me deeply both as a citizen and as a member of the Catholic church, which to its shame, operated about 70% of residential schools. Pile on top of that the death of a dear friend and teacher, and I am rubbed raw. I have been surprised to find, though, that there is an occasion for self-gift in my current sadness. I believe my heart is becoming more tender, more and more a heart of flesh and less a heart of stone. My defenses are defeated, and it turns out to be a good thing. Everyone who asks me lately how I am doing gets maybe more than they bargained for!
I hope and think, though, that my earnestness and honesty, and sometimes my tears, are an invitation for my friends to open their hearts as well. Honestly, who is OK? As the world slowly returns to normal, whatever that is, I think a lot of people are going to be bearing wounds. It's my hope that I will be open enough that people around me don't have to pretend to be happy if they're not.
Right now, my most urgent respite needed is simply holding my son and talking with me. Most days, I am home alone with him. I have a new friend in my upstairs neighbor and just had someone over for lunch from my church. With them and other mamas, my son runs up with open arms. It's so nice to have a break mentally that he enjoys the company of others than me, and the conversation running between us is refreshing: We're sharing life stories about our families, our struggles and fears. Since we recently moved and a close friend died, it has been relief during my time of grief and also a practical lift with my 30-lb toddler.
I hope to offer a healthful break for those who need friendship and are suffering. In the past, I've focused on food a lot in my life, but it's usually not been healthy. I've eaten out and wasted money and calories on food just for the thrill of dining. But now I'm trying to make things I used to eat out from scratch at home. It's better for my family - we're on a tight budget - but it also opens the opportunity to invite others into my meal-making (and also into my culinary interests). I can honestly say, "What are you craving? I'd like to take a whack at it." This feels really good to text someone because I know I'll be able to offer something to them they were already seeking.