Vacations are over, school is back in session, we’re back to the office…and that usually means a lot more conversations with a lot more people. It got us thinking—in the vein of the 5^th week’s focus on Hospitality & Service—about a humorous and recurring dynamic we have as a couple.  

After an event (a wedding, a meeting, a back-to-school night, or a family get-together), we often have the same post-op conversation. Here’s a paraphrase:

“I talked too much… I wish I would take up less oxygen and try harder for more balanced conversations. Letting the silence just be is so hard,” one of us says.

The other responds, “I wish I had stepped up in conversation, instead of slipping into my passive listener-observer role. Others seem happy to do the work.”

While we tend toward opposite ends of the spectrum (hint: Silent Swede & Irish Gab), we each have to admit that it’s a form of laziness when we slip into our default over-talkative or overly-quiet approaches. In our laziness, we miss the authentic encounter—a true interpersonal exchange that requires work, a kind of balance, integration, a giving and receiving that is ultimately modeled for us in the “communion of persons” of the Holy Trinity.  

Say “Hospitality and Service” (Level 5) and most of us immediately think of the material time and resources it takes to host someone for dinner or undertake a service activity. But while those material aspects create a context, the heart of Level 5 is the conversation, the sharing, the personal encounter—whether it takes place over dinner at our home, at a work meeting, or out and about, as we “host” many conversations in the course of a day.

“Face-to-face conversation is the most human—and humanizing—thing we do,” writes Sherry Turkle in Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age. “Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It’s where we develop the capacity for empathy. It’s where we experience the joy of being heard, of being understood. And conversation advances self-reflection, the conversations with ourselves that are the cornerstone of early development and continue throughout life.” Amen to all that.  

So, as we all head into our busy fall, let’s strive to have a more human—and humanizing—season by deepening our practice of hospitality in daily conversation. To try to avoid the extremes of “dominating” and “passivity” in conversation, here are a few practical ideas we’ve discussed as a couple: 

• Send up a quick prayer such as “Come, Holy Spirit.”
• Challenge yourself to ask questions and listen carefully.
• “Offer up” your personal discomfort (whether that’s talking more or talking less) and take a step toward a more personal encounter.
• Look for opportunities to include someone else in the conversation.
• If appropriate, continue hosting the conversation afterwards with a follow-up text, email, call, or even hand-written note.

We’re sure you have humorous or even regretful “post-mortem” conversations like we do—where you look back on an interaction, and wish it could have gone better. “We have time to make the corrections,” Turkle writes, acknowledging the toll that digital media has had on our caliber of conversation. “And to remember who we are—creatures of history, of deep psychology, and complex relationships. Of conversations artless, risky, and face-to-face.”

Of course, learning to host a better conversation begins right in our own homes—around the dinner table tonight. You might even say that all hospitality and service flows from the family: how we form our kids, how we host conversations with them, and how we model hospitality and service for them.

It’s not too late to go against the tide and show our children a better way, remembering who we are as creatures who bear the “image and likeness of God,” our God of interpersonal communion, of self-gift, of infinite and abundant love.