Giving Thanks & Cleaning the Gutters

I do think that if I had to choose one word to which hope can be tied it is hospitality. A practice of hospitality— recovering threshold, table, patience, listening, and from there generating seedbeds for virtue and friendship on the one hand — on the other hand radiating out for possible community, for rebirth of community.

— Ivan Illich, in a 1996 interview

On the eve of an unusual American Thanksgiving, I am thinking a lot about hope and gratitude, against the background of the exhaustion and anxiety of the last year. Ivan Illich’s tying together of hope and hospitality offers us some clues to creating more sane and humane spaces for the next season of remote learning and teaching in our schools. How might we recover “threshold, table, patience, [and] listening,” even if we are mostly not gathering in person over the next few months? How might we design opportunities for hospitality at different levels within our schools and communities? 

These are essential questions in a country that has still failed to take full, coordinated action against the worst pandemic of the last hundred years, and a country with schizophrenic, often unhelpful views about K-12 teaching and learning. The lack of early federal action has deepened the effects pandemic and lengthened its stay, and forced us to be in reactive mode, left to our own devices and resources. Some state and local leaders, and some education leaders, have stepped up, and done wonderful, generous work. But in many places, the stresses of dealing with remote learning, remote teaching, pandemic parenting, unemployment, long-haul COVID sickness, financial and health precarity have left people and communities strained. In some school communities, people are not able to “bring their best selves” to work, and professional relationships are stretched or damaged. 

Some friends of ours just bought a big, old house on the East Coast. Soon after they bought it, but before the deal closed, the realtor called them to let them know that rain was pouring into the front porch, damaging the ceiling tiles, pooling on the wooden floor. When they went to inspect, it turned out the roof itself was fine. It was late autumn, and the big deciduous trees from their yard had dropped so many leaves over the house that the gutters had completely clogged, so with a big rain the water level rose to a point where it simply bypassed the flat roof and poured between the roof and brick walls. 

Seeing anxiety and exhaustion levels at schools in the last few weeks reminds me of this roof. As leaders, we’ve created systems that normally work really well to keep all the people in our community connected — to each other, to their purpose, to our missions. These aren’t normal times, and we have to figure out how to clear the gutters. As we set our small tables tomorrow, let us think about the tables of hope and hospitality we can set in our schools and communities throughout this school year. 

None of this is easy, but as bell hooks reminds us:

To live our lives based on the principles of a love ethic (showing care, respect, knowledge, integrity, and the will to cooperate), we have to be courageous. Learning how to face our fears is one way we embrace love. Our fear may not go away, but it will not stand in the way.” (bell hooks, All About Love, 2018)

As leaders, what we model, what we diffuse, matters. As Etty Hillesum wrote in her diary while in Auschwitz,

Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: To reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace. And to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.
(Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries 1941-1943.)

Wishing you all a peaceful and safe Thanksgiving no matter where you are, and a season of courageous gratitude and hospitality.