Slow Hospitality

Trying to do less when feel like you're holding it all.

“I’m doing too many things.”

This protest has been my refrain throughout my nearly-ten-years of marriage, ever since I left an academic, semi-monastic existence for a bustling life in the midst of a pioneering ministry. It remains my chief lament, even though my days of organizing conferences and launching jobs for the homeless have shifted to days of caring for a toddler, hybrid homeschooling a kindergartner, and developing value-added products for the church farm my husband runs.

It’s a really good life, and one I’m keenly thankful for. But even a beautiful house can become cluttered, and when that happens it can be hard to make room for welcome.

For Christmas my husband gave me Cal Newport’s newest book, Slow Productivity, and it galvanized my determination to clear more space in my work and days. Newport writes primarily for “knowledge workers”: researchers, writers, scientists, et al., and often focuses on how to create significant work amid the distractions and demands of our lives. His argument in Slow Productivity is that by strategically slowing down, we can produce better work and—paradoxically—more of it in the long run.

Newport’s first exhortation is that we “do fewer things.” He means that we should—whenever possible—minimize the number of meaningful projects we are working on. Any project brings with it a certain amount of “admin” —organizational and even bureaucratic tasks —and the more projects we have going simultaneously, the greater portion of our days will be taken up with “admin” rather than deep, creative work.

One strategy for minimizing our projects is to delegate certain responsibilities to others. This is my husband’s inclination, but I—far more conscientious and “type A”—don’t receive much real rest when delegating. Just this week, for example, I had hired a babysitter on Tuesday morning to allow me to do some deep work, and had arranged for my kindergartner to do her “home day” of schoolwork with a neighbor’s family who attends the same school. My babysitter had to cancel at 5am on Tuesday, and the neighbors called to say their own children were sick at 8 on Wednesday morning. And so I was left with my normal domestic responsibilities, plus the added stress of not being able to finish the deep and urgent work I had planned for those days. More often than not, these are my experiences with trying to delegate.

Instead of delegating, I’m working pruning as a strategy for making space for hospitality. This is a helpful way for me to think about work that I can’t actually stop doing: I can’t stop feeding family dinner, for example, but I can make a monthly meal plan, prep once a month on my day off, and eliminate the daily task of thinking about what to prepare. I can’t stop doing laundry, but I can begin actively teaching my children to help with the process, accelerating the day they will perform that chore for themselves.

Pruning requires examining our large projects or commitments and identifying any growth edges that are not central to the project’s flourishing. In our ministry, for example, our primary work with refugee teens and volunteers takes place on Saturday, when we host a morning of prayer, Bible study, and paid work on the church farm. Last year my husband launched a Wednesday-night tutoring program to support the teen participants, many of whom struggle with English and fall behind easily in school. Volunteers from the church signed up eagerly, and it looked like a successful story of program growth.

But it also meant that my husband was gone for supper and bedtime every Wednesday, and that he had to coordinate rides for the teens, a meal, and all the other event details. Even though I wasn’t directly involved in the event, it was a drain on our family’s collective energy and attention. As we spent January resting and resetting, I encouraged my husband to consider cancelling tutoring: besides the drain on attention, it was not really advancing the program’s mission, which is to raise up leaders in the church through regenerative agriculture. The students have lots of other resources for tutoring, I argued, and if we cut Wednesdays we can make Saturdays so much richer. We made the call, and so we have started our new year with a Saturday program that is tighter, more intentional, and more ambitious in its depth.

Another approach I might call weaving—intentionally integrating something I want to do with something I need to do or am already doing. At our Saturday farm ministry events, my primary job is to lead the young women in meaningful work using the farm’s produce. There are so many possibilities for what this value-added work could look like, but my husband and I have worked to focus it around using farm-grown botanicals to make naturally-dyed textiles and cosmetics. This is a craft I’ve been pursing as a hobby for years, and have even dabbled in making and selling similar products personally. By bringing this skill into the work I’m doing with the farm, I’m able to continue that pursuit and, even more importantly, I’m able to use that work as a platform for hospitality to the young women in the program, as well as volunteers.

On a average day, I still feel like I’m holding too much in my head, hearts, and hands, but to some extent that is simply the reality of living in in an information-saturated, nuclear-family, hustle-culture world. Pruning and weaving is helping me make room for welcome.

What are your strategies for making room when life feels too full?