Hospitality, House, & Home

One Sunday morning in class there a discussion on hospitality. Actually it began with with a discussion from parenting class that was something like "How Can We Keep our Kids from Resenting God and His word" and from there somehow hospitality arose.

The Equuschick thought the apparent bunny trail was rather appropriate, because one poor woman began a good and lengthy discussion by confessing that a couple of weeks ago she'd asked her children why they never invited friends over anymore and their response was the tragically age-old "Mom, the house is just never clean enough for you when we have company."

The Equuschick thought it brought the whole discussion full circle, as a classic case of a child learning to resent a biblical commandment as a burden instead of learning its value as a blessing.


Hospitality is a biblical commandment, commanded several times in several places, and it distresses The Equuschick sorely to see it so blatantly disregarded or resented in so many churches today.

How did we get here?

The Equuschick sees one possible explanation in the all-too-common scenario described above, where the house was never "clean enough." We have misunderstood hospitality. In its purest and best form, hospitality has absolutely nothing to do with the state of the house and everything to do with the state of the heart.

Dictionary Definitions of Hospitality:

1. Cordial and generous reception of or disposition toward guests.
2. An instance of cordial and generous treatment of guests.
3. The friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers.
4. The quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way.
5. The act or practice of one who is hospitable; reception and entertainment of strangers or guests without reward, or with kind and generous liberality.

Synonyms-warmth, cordiality, geniality, friendliness.


The Equuschick's favourite synonym is "cordiality." Let's contrast cordiality with civility, a term that often confuses the idea of hospitality still further.

The Equuschick isn't against civility, it is a good place to start. Good manners are good, but they're only manners or methods of doing things and if the heart isn't right all the good manners in the world won't save your guests from an awkward reception. If your heart, however, is open and friendly than an uncertain grasp of "ettiquiette" won't matter. Your guest will still cherish your welcome.

Civility is placing your guest on the couch and offering to bring them a glass of water. Cordiality is when you take your guest into your kitchen and show them where the glasses are kept, where you get the water, and also where the milk, the juice, the soda, and all of the food is kept and when you do it cheerfully, because you are so happy to have a friend to share with.



And you do it whether your kitchen is particularly clean or not, because you are not sharing your house. You are sharing your home. The center of your little universe, the station from whence all the activity and life in your family flows, and you are sharing yourself.

The distinction between house and home is one often inclined to be troublesome when the lines are blurred and we begin to mistake one for another, and the trouble with hospitality may have begun, or at least been influenced by, the confusion women fall into about the crucial differences between keeping a house and making a home.


The Equuschick is a stay-at-home wife who does not believe it is wrong for women to work outside the home and Shasta and The Equuschick chose this route for many reasons, each of them their own.

But the point is, she has never even considered it as her job to "keep house." She is not a house-keeper. If her only job was to keep the house clean, she could be replaced by a maid who might not even speak her family's language. (But could probably do a better job.)

The older women in Titus were not commanded to teach the younger women how to get stains out of the carpet and the best way to dust wood furniture. The commandment was to teach young women to "love their husbands and keep the home."

First and foremost, to love their husbands. If The Equuschick is unwilling to set aside a household task she'd wanted to do to spend with her husband, she is not loving him. If she threatens a relationship for the sake of the furniture, she threatens the stability of the home.

The Equuschick's favourite piece of furniture in her whole house is the coffee table. Do you know why? Because the couches didn't come with foot stools, and she absolutely loves it when she can eagerly shove her wooden coffee table over to a guest and say "Here, put your feet up! That's what it is for!"

No, you don't understand. She really loves it when I get to do that! It means she has a true friend in her house. She'd rather have a true friend than a spotless coffee table any day.

Will the needs of the people often demand some care of the house? Of course. Food must be eaten. Healthy living conditions must be allowed to prevail. There's not much peace to be found in a house where no one can ever find anything, and the individual preferences and needs of each family member must be taken into consideration and met in whatever way necessary.

Alas for The Equuschick(never one to worry unduly about the state of the house) when Shasta's allergies began to bother him severely this spring and summer and they realized one day that the Zeus Dog was no doubt bringing in all sorts of pollens from the outdoors and leaving them all over the couch where yes, he is allowed to sprawl himself. So now The Equuschick washes couch cushions much more often than she'd ever dreamed she'd have to and she has a sheet that she spread over the loveseat that Zeus likes best and she washes the sheet regularly too.

But she doesn't do it because the couch cushions are a valuable part of the home and family. She does it for Shasta, who is.

While she doesn't believe it is wrong for women to work outside the home, she does get awfully tired of the poor fools who say "I just couldn't stay home, I'd be bored all day." But she also suspects that the confusion between home-making and house-keeping is a great deal to blame.

If "all" (The Equuschick does suggest that those who think of housework as unchallenging have never had to do much of it) she did was keep the house clean, The Equuschick would have gone suicidally insane by now.


But the house is not her job. Sometimes she has to clean it. Sometimes Shasta does too, because it is in the best interests of the family they are building together. The Equuschick's job is to help him build our family, to create a home environment that is peaceful, imaginative, challenging, nurturing, educational, interesting, and secure. A home environment that encourages and does not discourage opportunities like hospitality.

The Equuschick never realized how much she took the very free and open hospitality of her family for granted until Daddy got out of the Military and the Common Room folk suddenly found themselves in a land where hospitality as it is often only known to those who have been way-faring strangers themselves was very seldom practiced.

Only then did she begin to realize that when she watched her parents open up their hearts and home to friends and strangers in such a free and open way, she was watching an endangered art in action.

That endangered art of open cordiality in the home, extended to all and sundry, is one that The Equuschick very much wishes to pass on to her children.

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