Welcome to another edition of the Mueller Report!
As I promised last week, here is a longer review of Billion Dollar Whale.
Today I am offering a personal reflection about hospitality and how that relates to The Abbey (origin story).
Academia
I am passionate about gathering thoughtful people together to talk about interesting and important topics. Academia, at its best, does just that. My favorite activity as a professor is participating in colloquia with other faculty and graduate students based around a set of readings. Liberty Fund puts on these colloquia regularly (I am attending one next week, in fact, about Tocqueville and Smith). So do the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, the Institute for Humane Studies, the National Review Institute, and I am sure several other organizations.
These colloquia are rich because of the people who come - generally thoughtful, intelligent, well-read folks. The colloquia are also rich because important ideas or questions are engaged in a sustained way - not with a single conversation but with a day or two of ongoing conversations. Not only do I learn at these colloquia, but I often find myself inspired to read, write, and teach more. I have also developed sweet friendships with folks I don’t interact with on a regular basis.
Hospitality
But not everyone can live or work in academia. My wife and I both desire to see thoughtful people from all walks of life engaging in meaningful conversations. We have found hospitality to be the key ingredient in making that happen.
We have experienced and practiced hospitality in a variety of ways over the years. Our first apartment was a 600 square foot 1 bedroom in Arlington, VA. It was a great size for us, but there wasn’t anywhere to put guests. Yet guests we had! During the two years we lived in this apartment, we probably had over two dozen people visit and stay at least one night. They would sleep on the couch or on an air mattress in the middle of the apartment.
Still, we felt like many of our social activities like church, community group, Bible study, and game nights were good but rarely fostered deep relationships and conversation. Most of our time was spent catching up on the details of each other’s lives and talking about the latest news.
But when I took the job at The King’s College and we moved to the NYC area, we decided to take a more radical approach to hospitality and building community. We chose to live in Harrison because we could afford to rent (and later buy) a house there while still being close enough to downtown that students would come out for dinner.
That first academic year we had 3-6 students over for dinner about twice a week every week. Many dinner conversations with students didn’t go anywhere beyond that evening. But having students over for dinner laid the groundwork for our best and deepest friendships with students. Eventually many of these students babysat our children regularly, visited us in Colorado over the summer, and a few even lived with us during the school year.
Hosting dinners twice a week for most of an academic year, while having two small children, thoughts us a few things:
You cannot keep your house as clean and pristine as you would like. If the cleanliness of our house or life was a prerequisite for having people over, we would rarely have people over.
You don’t have to do everything yourself - most people are happy to chip in with food, setting the table, washing dishes, or most importantly, playing with and reading to small children.
Sometimes the most important part of hospitality is not the conversation, but the experience. When students came over they saw how we lived, what our marriage was like, and how we cared for our children.
It helps to have some structure/questions planned ahead of time - just keep them simple.
Deep conversation and friendship take time. Having dinner with people or hanging out periodically is much less effective than spending concentrated time together over several days and nights - and sharing living space.
That last point is important. One of the main reasons that so many people struggle to form good meaningful friendships after college, after getting married, or after having children is because they see fewer and fewer opportunities to share living space, even for brief times, with others.
Yet sharing space is so important! Our personalities are rarely on full display over dinner, or on a play date at the park. They are not fully expressed in conversation after church gatherings or over the phone. And they certainly find limited expression in online spaces like social media.
Yet a key part of friendship is knowing and being known. What are you like after the kids go to bed? Or first thing in the morning? Or in the midst of breaking up a fight between your children? What do you like to do in your spare time? When do you read the Bible and pray? What routines do you have for parenting or for work or for life? Talking with someone about these questions is good - observing them actually living out the answers to these questions is better.
Obviously we cannot welcome others into every corner of our life, nor should we (except for our spouse). Nor can we welcome everyone into our life - we are limited beings after all! But most people don’t invite others into any part of their life except for the brief, structured, socially acceptable times when we are on our best behavior.
There is no silver bullet to making friends or being known, but practicing radical (by today’s standards) hospitality is a good start. Commit to having people over, even when things might not be as put together as you would like. Invite people to visit and stay overnight. Think about whether you have the means and capacity to have someone come live with you for a while (or to go live with someone else!)
You should do these things thoughtfully, of course. Having someone live with you is not trivial. But so many people don’t even consider the possibility. Nor do they make plans to create the possibilities in the future. And this is where The Abbey comes in for us: we are making plans for the future to expand this kind of radical hospitality. We have had people live with us in our house, though you might not think there is enough space with seven of us in three bedrooms (one of which is like a small office with no closet) - but we have! It can be done.
But having someone live with you is the most intense form of hospitality. There are other ways to practice purposeful hospitality short of that. One is to vacation with other families - especially by sharing a large house.
We are very close with friends from college who have their own families now. But we started trying to vacation together after we bought The Abbey. Now these are special friends for many reasons, but you can get a sense of why when I tell you that our first trip together at The Abbey was while it was being remodeled. We had one working bathroom for six adults and seven children five and under. We had to wear shoes between the bedrooms and the chapel living area because of dust and dirt in the hallways from the construction. It was like urban camping - and it was a sweet time.
We met again with these friends at The Abbey last year. Conditions with bathrooms and floors were much better - but this time we were just finishing up remodeling the kitchen (our Covid-19 project). There were six adults and nine children this time. Next time, should the Lord tarry, we will be six adults and eleven children - assuming no one has anymore before then. Good thing we have a whole Convent!
But I digress. The reason I am sharing these thoughts on hospitality because our vision for The Abbey centers on inviting thoughtful people to come have conversations about interesting and important topics. Besides gathering with these two other families, we hosted our first intellectual retreat for fellow Hillsdale alums in June of 2020.
This summer, we are going to try hosting two intellectual retreats, one for alums of Hillsdale College, the other for alums of The King’s College. Down the road, we plan on expanding the number of intellectual retreats and their scope so that people who went to other schools or are from other walks of life can participate.
I have been inspired by Russell Kirk’s Mecosta and Francis Shaeffer’s L’abri. Newer model I am interested in include the Davenant Institute which also has the Davenant House and Laity Lodge which Alan Jacobs speaks so highly of.
Parting Thoughts
As I reflected a few weeks ago, one of the challenges of our time is curating information, content, and even community. Should I be a part of this group or of that group? Which of these hundreds of podcasts should I listen to? Where is my community?
I can’t answer that question for you. For myself, I consider several concentric circles of different communities or networks: Immediate family, a small number of close friends, my church, Hillsdale College, King’s College, and then my wider network of acquaintances and colleagues.
But there is still so much good stuff out there! A fellow Hillsdale alum is doing interesting things at a charter school in NC and runs his own podcast that I don’t listen to. A former student is doing interesting things in film and in forming his own intellectual community. He also has a podcast that I don’t listen to. Not listening to these podcasts has zero to do with their quality and everything to do with 1) the limits of my time and 2) they are not part of my immediate personal intellectual community.
But I value knowing and talking with both of these men as the opportunity arises. And I am encouraged by the good work they are doing. They are exactly the kind of people I hope will come to intellectual retreats at The Abbey.
My goal is not to build a movement or an institute. We have a lot of those already. I want to develop a loose network of thoughtful people by creating touchpoints for conversation and building connections between individuals and groups who can partner together productively. And most of all, I want The Abbey to be a place of peace, rest, and vitality that inspires folks to enter the fray again, whether the fray is their work or their parenting or their church or their family.
At the same time, The Abbey is a bed and breakfast that will continue to host people who simply want a nice place to stay while they visit Leadville - something you all are welcome to do anytime!