Allow me to give you a piece of marriage advice: things will be easier if only one of you cares about food. Otherwise, planning for dinner parties becomes a battle of wills. Your spouse feels that a double-crusted turkey pot pie would be nice, while you want very badly to make 48 hour short ribs. It is unlikely that you will make two entrees, which means that at least one of you will not get your way. The likelihood of pouting is significant.
Of course, you both mean well. You want to present your guests with good food in a welcoming environment. You are imagining a scene of conviviality, where everyone is comfortable, happy, and nourished. You are driven by hospitality, that noble old human instinct. But is it possible that good conversation, even more than good food, is the heart of hospitality?
Augustine seemed to think so. Once, for his birthday, he invited a group of people to join him for a meal. “I had already provided a little feast for the body,” he said, adding that “it was fitting that I should also provide them a feast for the soul.” Just as he had chosen a meal to fit the occasion, he took it upon himself to prepare a topic of conversation.
Augustine understood that people are embodied souls. Our bodies are important, certainly, and hospitality requires that we consider the comfort of our guests. But we aren’t simply animals, interested only in what we can taste and smell. If we leave the table with famished souls, then we have not really feasted. “There are two kinds of food for the soul just as there are two kinds of food for the body: one, wholesome and helpful, the other, unwholesome and harmful.”
The good host is thoughtful. She considers the occasion, her guests, and her own resources. She knows whether the event is formal or casual. She keeps in mind how many children will be present, or that one of the attendees fancies himself allergic to gluten. Her hospitality is a dialectic between her own creative expression and the situation at hand. These same factors have to be considered in the preparation of a discussion. I should know, because I have suffered the consequences of ignoring them.
I once tried to lead a conversation with a group of friends on a Saturday morning. We were packed into a living room, struggling to hear each other over the din of crying babies. As toddlers stumbled between breakfast plates, I cleared my throat. I was determined to make some point about Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher. This alone should tell you how oblivious I was to the situation at hand. One of the young mothers had her child in a headlock, trying to extract an alien object – perhaps a watch battery or a cyanide capsule – from his stubborn maw. I thought it a good time to ask her for an opinion on Kierkegaard’s concept of the teleological suspension of the ethical. She replied with a glare, the meaning of which is unprintable. I had misunderstood the situation, and my mistake was a failure of hospitality.
I like to think that I have improved over the years. I’ve tried to be a generous host and a gracious guest. I’ve even been known, with great effort, to hold back a bawdy, inappropriate joke. I still want to make those 48 hour short ribs, and maybe I will. But, I suspect I can be a better host when I attend to people’s souls as well as their bellies.