For better or for worse, summer is the season of hospitality. You may be welcoming relatives for a long stay; the ones who showed up without exactly asking first. You may be visiting friends somewhere “summer” means high temperatures, sunshine, and a break from San Francisco’s ever-present fog layer. Or you may be staying in town for the summer, spending more time with friends on those rare warm days; taking kids to the zoo; exploring parts of the city you’d been saving for this particular season.
Whatever the case, the call to be hospitable is especially pronounced in the summer season. We find ourselves in “Ordinary Time,” that is, a season that is not really a season. It’s fitting because in San Francisco, we find ourselves with a summer that is not really a summer. But we do what we can with what we have to make these few months as sweet as possible. We travel, host barbeques, spend time at the beach covered with sweatshirts and blankets. It’s a time to spend with people we may not get to see terribly often, or to be with them in a less hurried way.
The rhythms of hospitality are not glamorous—folding towels, washing dishes, preparing meals. They are mundane activities, which is fitting for Ordinary Time. We do things that attract little attention and require no celebration, just the repeated living out of food and conversation, motion and sleep. That’s the ordinariness in the time.
One of the most important acts of this season, then, is the act of hospitality. We can invite people into the everyday nature of our lives and, in turn, enter into theirs, because it is in the ordinary moments of washing dishes and running errands that we make our lives.
This summer, we want to lean into the hospitality of ordinary time as a church. There are specific ways we will do this (see Sutter lunches and Mission dinners), but there is also an underlying principle we want to understand and allow to transform us. One of the best places to see this in the Bible is in Luke 10, where Jesus is visiting Mary and Martha in their home. They invite him in and Martha busied herself preparing the house; she was “distracted by her many tasks.” Mary, her sister, sits herself down at the feet of Jesus and listened to him speak. Eventually, Jesus noticed Martha’s distraction and invited her to stop, be still, and sit. “There is need of only one thing,” he told her. “Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Hospitality is not about who can set the best table or who has the most welcoming home. For you, hospitality may mean inviting someone in to your house when it’s a Tuesday night and there are toys all over the floor and a sink full of dishes. Hospitality is not about showing someone your best self and hoping they will be impressed; it is, at bottom, about making space for other people in the real life you are always living. Sometimes that means pausing, like Mary did, to sit and listen. Sometimes the best act of hospitality is more active, inviting people into the chaos of life or going with them into theirs.
It may be that there are really specific ways you can practice hospitality this summer. You may have a revolving door of guests or a commitment to see friends once a week. Or your summer may feel like business as usual, with little time to host or visit or take vacations. Whatever the case, think about a time when someone practiced hospitality and you benefitted. I remember when a friend of mine invited me to her house to bring lunch and take a walk with her son—nothing massive or impressive, but it still felt to me like I was being welcomed into something precious. The dailiness of it was what made it special.
We may not be able to create eighty-degree days at the beach in San Francisco over the summer, no matter how dearly we wish for them. We may be nervous about initiating new friendships. But there are a million great places in this city to invite someone to grab a beer, or bring dinner over, to get together, and to welcome each other into your lives. That is the best place to be during the summer—or anytime of year—and it will not be taken away from us.
Ways to Participate