It was a stressful couple of days leading up to dinner, and even the moments right before serving were especially stressful, because it is so hard to get the timing just right, because you can’t start the gravy until you have the pan drippings from the turkey, and by the time the gravy is done the mashed potatoes are definitely cold, and I didn’t want my guests to be disappointed by cold mashed potatoes. But I realize now I was missing one of the most important things guests really need to make them feel at home.
Scientists tell us we are always scanning the environment for cues of safety. We’ve been doing this since we were a baby. We would look at our mother’s face, for something as simple as soft eyes and a relaxed forehead. We still do that today. If we see that the people around us seem anxious, we become anxious. If people around us meet our eyes with soft eyes and a relaxed forehead, something inside us feels safe. And when we feel at ease we can play and socialize and learn and grow.
So more than having the best china, the clean house, and 2 kinds of home baked pies, perhaps the most important way we can make a guest feel welcome, is to know that we ourselves are safe. To cultivate in ourselves a sense of basic trust. The house will never be clean enough, the food will never be perfect enough to give us that feeling. We just have to take a moment and remind ourselves that really everything is fine, that we are enough. Because that sense of ease is contagious.
And if you are a guest this holiday season, you might offer to bring a hot dish, or help with the dishes. But you might not realize one of the best things you can offer your host is just a relaxed smile that says “I can tell this is going to be fun. You are doing great.” The fancy science word for that is “co-regulation.”
When we come together as a congregation, we try to help one another feel welcome and at ease. We do this not just because it’s kind, although that is important. We do this not only because it helps us learn to think of others, although that is also very important. We do it because at the heart our congregation is about learning and growing and healing, and neuroscientists are finding what most of us have already experiencing, that most kinds of learning and growing and healing are almost impossible to do when you are anxious.
So we do things to make this feel like a safe and caring place. Someone comes early to turn the heat on. Someone makes a pot of coffee. Someone makes beautiful music. And we all try, as we are able on any given Sunday, to greet one another and say “you are welcome here…we are glad you are here.”
Our church feels like a sanctuary not only because we have lovely windows, and beautiful music and hot coffee, but also because this is a place where people come to root themselves in what is good and loving. From the first notes of the prelude to the end of social hour, we cultivate that sense of trusting ourselves, of trusting the universe, and trusting one another.
I’ve changed my mind about how I want to be as a hostess this Thanksgiving. There will be just 4 of us, and I’ve decided that the right number of dishes to make is whatever number will allow me to sit down at the table without anxiety. That the first most important thing I want to prepare is myself, remembering that feeling of being safe at home, so I can communicate that trust, and communicate my caring to the people I love, even if the mashed potatoes are cold.
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