Dreams of hospitality

It’s hard to welcome others when you don’t feel you have much to give.

Even as the heirs of staggering material abundance, we feel the pinch of poverty in other ways: in our stuffed and speeding calendars; in our strength-sapped, careworn hearts; in houses that feel too small to make room for anyone else.

Over the last year, fear has hobbled my love for hospitality. This fear is a vine with deep roots and many branches. Church conflict, painful memories, betrayal, debilitating anxiety, and a deep conviction of my own sinfulness are just a few of the creeping threats.

More than anything, it is the memories and thoughts themselves that have imprisoned me, rutting my mind with expectations of failure, doom, and disaster. I have repeated my fears and laments so many times that my mind has begun to believe that they are the inevitable path.

Battling these fears with Scripture, song, and story has helped, but even when I emerge from the worst of the mental and spiritual battle, my world has felt cramped: the house too small and too cluttered, the demands of “back to school” for my first-grader weirdly overwhelming. Even the garden hasn’t inspired me, as I’ve been too busy to keep the late-summer weeds at bay.

I tell you all this not to depress you, but so that you might taste of a bit of the miraculous consolation I’ve received alongside these fears. Over the last six months, God has blessed me with some of the most vivid dreams I’ve ever had. These dreams have renewed my sense of God’s mercy in powerful ways.

In one dream, I was with a few friends, making our way through the abandoned streets of strange city. Narrow cobblestone streets were flanked by tall wooden shops and houses. The city must have been built into a mountainside, because the streets wound steeply up. It seemed to be early evening, and although the city was utterly still, there was some urgency in the dream, as though it were very important for us to find shelter soon. I was heavy with that old childhood fear, that something or someone was following me. At one point a door opened, and a gracious-looking woman called us in. Her little shop was full of greenery, and she offered us tea from a steaming pot. Looking more closely, however, I realized that all the plants surrounding her were poisonous: foxglove, hellebore, oleander, castor bean. I whispered these to the others, and we fled the shop quickly, this time running up the streets.

Just as darkness began to fall, a door opened, spilling warm light into the street. We hurried inside, heard the door shut behind us, and took a deep breath of air that smelled like nutmeg. The laughter of the innkeeper drew us further up and further in.

In another dream, I was with an old friend in the spacious kitchen of a beautiful cathedral. We were making bread together, and when I woke I could still smell the fragrance of warm dough and rosemary.

The most powerful dream came only a few nights ago. I dreamed that I was in the basement of my house, sitting at the cluttered desk in my office/sewing room. The fluorescent lights were flickering, and I felt (as I often do when sitting at the desk), the weight of so many cares, including the many boxes and piles stretching out behind me, waiting to be sorted, managed, or given away.

Suddenly, I looked up and noticed a door in the wall - not the door back upstairs, nor the door to the outside, but a door I’d never seen before. Opening it, I went up a few stairs and found myself in a beautiful room, illuminated with sunlight and carpeted with something soft and clean. There were built-in bookshelves and plenty of space. My mother was standing in a patch of sunlight and she said, “I wondered how long it would take you to find this! Wouldn’t it be a nicer place to work?”

I remember laughing with her, and then noticing yet another door, and finding yet another lovely room. This one was not empty, but filled with all kinds of curious and useful tools that (in the dream) I somehow knew had been left by the previous owner of the house. That turned out to be only the beginning of the discovery, as door after door revealed a whole wing of my house I’d never realized was there.

I woke awash with a feeling I can only describe as relief, with a good measure of bewildered joy. It’s a joy I share with the Psalmist when he proclaims that “[The Lord] brought me out into a spacious place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me” (18:19).

These dreams have been so contrary to the patterns of my waking thoughts, that I can only receive them as gifts. They have pulled me out of my rutted visions of worry, providing emblems of security and hope. And as “every good and perfect gift comes from above” (James 1:17), I have heard the Holy Spirit’s laughter in these dreams. It is as if He says to me, “Little one, you have not even begun to discover all the rooms your Father has prepared for you.”

These dreams have brought home several truths about hospitality.

1. When we welcome strangers and entertain angels, we are rejecting “this present darkness” (Ephesians 6:12) and should not be surprised when we experience spiritual push-back in the form of fear, depression, anxiety, acedia, and more.

2. The most sure foundation for hospitality is not our own capacity, but the abundance of God. At my worst, I’ve been convinved that I’m not worthy to even own a beautiful house and table, not worthy to eat a well-crafted meal or sit among a circle of people made in God’s image. While arguing against these feelings has only led me in circles, these dreams have reinforced what is written plainly in Scripture: that because of sin, it’s true — I’m not worthy of anything but death. And yet, having been rescued from sin by Jesus, I’m part of a royal priesthood, heir to riches untold. Upon that inheritance, then, I begin to see God’s abundance all around me. This dear little house and rambling garden, the sturdy table and food in the pantry, the children and the books and all the other treasures of my house — they’re not stolen goods, but rather signs of God’s incredibly mercy. Not mine to hoard or boast, but to share.

It was never my merit that brought me to this good place — it was only ever mercy grounding, sustaining, and perfecting. And as that mercy is not threatened by feelings or failures, neither should my confidence that I have riches to offer those who come through my door.

It was only ever mercy.