Conversations about hospitality often turn around a person’ s eagerness to invite others into their home and their skill in serving food and drink. If that is the proper definition, then Martha is close—but her hospitality is mismanaged. Perhaps a Martha Stewart party book would advise her to prepare food in advance so she wouldn’t be so stressed when Jesus arrives. But we must take our definition of hospitality deeper. We have all been in settings in which delightful aromas wafted yet the air somehow smelled of unwelcome. Comfortable chairs, massive amounts of food, and overflowing glasses are not necessarily synonymous with hospitality. 

Martha is “distracted by many things,” observes Jesus, and my guess is that Martha has made a common mistake: she has focused on the trappings of hospitality but has missed its heart. Carving a turkey is not as valuable as carving out real space for others, to help them feel at home with us and not just give them a chair at our dinner table. “Mary has chosen the better part,” Jesus says, and I think the better part is him. True hospitality is about receiving people. Martha has focused on filling Jesus’ cup, but Mary seeks to have her cup filled by him. More specifically, what Mary chooses to do, as Luke tells us, is to sit at Jesus’ feet and listen to what he says. Here is a picture of true hospitality: a host listening to her guest. Mary’s interests are beautifully simple; she focuses her attention on Jesus, directing her energies toward him and opening up space to receive him. Hospitality that does not include listening is not true hospitality. 

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01.  Martha Minds

Mary’s example of hospitality resonates with those of us on the introverted side of the spectrum.There are many definitions of introversion and extraversion. In general, introverts are those who find their energy from being alone. Merriam-Webster defines introversion as “the state of or tendency toward being wholly or predominantly concerned with and interested in one’s own mental life.” For many of us, the more “traditional” definition of hospitality is unappealing, because our homes are our sanctuaries. Our overstimulating world divides us from ourselves, and we feel like we leave pieces wherever we go. Thus we flee to our homes, our safe-harbors where we can be remade. Inviting someone into that space sometimes feels impossible—a task that would force us into scurrying around like Martha, rather than sitting quietly to receive as Mary. Admittedly, we can be territorial about our physical spaces, but despite unfriendly appearances we do so not to reject others but to reemerge filled with energy to offer to our work and relationships. 

As we shift our understanding of hospitality from the more obvious, exterior actions like welcoming someone into our home to something that encompasses the broader and, perhaps, more biblical practices represented by Mary’s rapt attention at the feet of Jesus, something freeing happens. Because focused, open listening is a form of hospitality that introverts can get behind. Generally, we process silently, chewing on information in the privacy of our minds. We may prefer to perch on the fringes than to sit in the center. Listening is our default. Listening, we introverts think, is something that I can do. Even as I say that, however, I wonder whether listening, for prideful human beings (introverted or extraverted), is ever truly natural. I wonder if we excel in the outward trappings of listening while missing the heart of it. 

In addition to writing and spiritual direction, I work as a hospice chaplain. Entering a stranger’s home is an anxious experience, but most of my visits present no surprises. The most disturbing occasions have come when I enter the home of a compulsive hoarder. On the outside the house looks ordinary, even beautiful, but the inside is teeming with decade-old piles of papers, boxes, clothes, old exercise equipment, kitschy collections, and what can only be described as junk. The person answering the door cracks it open a few inches, because he literally can’t open it any farther. I follow him through the channels that cut through the hallway, careful to put one foot directly in front of the other, weaving my way on a perilous journey to the patient’s room. When it’s bad enough, we have to declare a fire hazard and remove the patient from their home. 

Over the years, as a pastor, chaplain, and spiritual director, I have built an impressive listening façade, yet I have a suspicion that my inner life is cluttered and crowded, with little space to truly host others. You would never know it by appearances. I have a shiny listening welcome mat. I can follow all the rules for active listening: the eye contact, the responsive sounds, the paraphrasing, the occasional empathic interjections. But my mind can be so far off. I so easily hoard the contents of my inner world. I so easily become Martha, washing and stacking my serving dishes in neat rows while Jesus is in the other room, waiting for me to welcome him into my interior space. 

True hospitality begins on the inside, which is exactly where we introverts confront how we, too, “are distracted by many things.” Our distractions are not so easily seen on our quiet exteriors, yet we may be more preoccupied than Martha. Admittedly, our internal worlds give birth to some of our greatest gifts, like insight, creativity, and spiritual depth. Neurological studies have demonstrated that the brains of introverts have more blood flow and more natural activities than extroverted brains, and thus we need less outward stimulation. We have busy brains, or as my pastor friend says, “It’s never quiet in my head!” This may be as true for extraverts as introverts; however, it is the introvert who has spent more time developing those inner voices as she sits, seemingly quietly, carrying on conversations in her inner world. Interestingly, the externally talkative extravert may have a quieter interior world. While our extraverted friends have consistently been pigeonholed as Martha-types, we quieter introverts may truly be the ones with “Martha minds.” 

Despite the great (and often underappreciated) gifts that introversion brings, our inner worlds can bend in on themselves and close us to others. You would never be able to tell from my quiet countenance that I have a loud, constant cacophony of voices in my head. I have even named the personalities who talk in there. There is the Professor, who shares whimsical insights; the Preacher, who waxes eloquent; the Comedian, who makes witty rejoinders; the Parent, who scolds me more than I would like; and the Boxer, who wants to fight all of them. Henri Nouwen was on track when he said that our inner lives are like banana trees filled with monkeys jumping up and down. 

My inner conversation is a compelling and terrifying thing. It’s a world I relish, yet it can become so loud as to drown out the voices of the people and the needs right in front of me. For we introverts then, and probably a fair number of extroverts, truly welcoming people will involve clearing space in our heads so that there is room for others. We need to learn how to turn down the internal volume and discern which voices needed to be silenced. In doing so, our gifts for hospitality (holy listening) will begin to prevail over our perceived weaknesses (our need for privacy). Then we will be on our way to offering the same sort of sanctuary to others that our homes provide for us. 

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02.  Making Space

So how do thought-cluttered introverts or noisy-headed extraverts begin the process of clearing out our interior space to make real room for others, instead of simply the exterior trappings of hospitality? Here are a few exercises and practices that we suggest. As you embark on them, however, remember that these disciplines take time. Don’t be discouraged if you hear your inner voices screaming at you from behind the door you’ve closed on them. Over time, you’ll learn when to listen, and when to tune them out.

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03.  Housecleaning

If we are to provide a hospitable interior space for those around us, we must first go about creating our own inner order. As Margaret Guenther writes in her book, holy listening, we must know ourselves well—both our clean, presentable places, and the darker corners of ourselves that are apt to collect dust and mold. It won’t do to simply throw a tablecloth over the table with a wobbly leg, or push the unfolded laundry into a closet before guests arrive. Spiritual housecleaning is subtler than physical housecleaning, and we must not go about it alone. 

Clearing up the interior clutter involves allowing someone to pull up the blinds of your story, letting the light of the spirit in to show you all the places that you’d otherwise not see. Doing this vulnerable work with someone trustworthy— a spiritual director, pastor, mentor or spiritual friend—allows you to see the truth of your interior world with love, rather than shame. This kind of work ensures that you will have the kind of freedom necessary to listen attentively, without imposing your own opinions, ideas and stereotypes on the person who has come to you to share their own story. 

There are many practices that can help declutter that space, practices that support us in discerning the mental and emotional junk from the items of real value that need to take care of rather than thrown to the curb. These include, 

1. Spending some time journaling regularly. Writing out the things that fill up your interior space gives them a place to be seen and known. Once they are on paper, their value can be rightly discerned, and those things that truly need attention can be explored. 
2. Going on regular spiritual retreats. Unlike vacations, retreats are meant as a time of connection between you and God. Especially when we are in positions that ask us to give of ourselves regularly, our interior spaces can become tangled up with stuff that isn’t ours to carry or store. Retreat time allows space to reconnect with God and allow him to sweep away the superfluous, to fill us once again with his love. 
3. Spending time with children or animals. Just being with a child, who wonders at the world and chooses play over obligation reminds us to keep things simple. Animals slow us down, teaching us focus and joy. Being with those who aren’t analyzing and reanalyzing every move and every conversation remind us to let go of the brain chatter that often leads us away from the kind of life that God has for us and for others. 

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04.  Sitting in Silence

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.
–Henri Nouwen 

 Quieting our inner chatter involves finding time to be silent. While introverts naturally gravitate to solitude, silence is not necessarily right on its heels. If you’ve never developed a practice of silence, begin by dedicating 5 minutes a day to simply being silent, in body and mind. You might decide to sit with a cup of coffee in your favorite chair in the morning, or to take a break midafternoon and sit silently in your car or office. Turn away from every screen or distraction. Begin by breathing deeply and slowly. 

I find it helpful to enter into silence by imagining myself on a journey from the busiest intersection in New York City to a silent grove in a forest far away. As I travel toward that grove, surrounded by all the traffic around me (my busy thoughts and emotions), I simply let them pass me by, rather than trying to silence them all at once. Slowly the busy city fades into suburbs, and I see less and less “traffic” around me in the form of distracting ideas. Slowly, I travel further away from the suburbs, into the fields, and beyond, to the forest, where a tree stump awaits me and I settle down into a place of interior silence and rest. 

Over time, you can increase the duration of your silence, allowing the spirit of God to quietly go about his work in your soul, stripping away what is impeding your relationship with him and with others, creating a welcoming, Christ-filled space from which to listen to others. St. John of the cross said that silence is God’s first language, and in committing to a discipline of silence, we purpose to listen to God’s native tongue.