When the Guest Becomes the Gift
Mentor in Residence opportunity and an invitation to join an online salon on joy!
I’m Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility and founder of Civic Renaissance, a movement to renew our culture through beauty, wisdom, and civility. Here, we take part in the Great Conversation—the ongoing dialogue among seekers across time and place about what it means to live well, to belong, and to flourish together. Civic Renaissance exists to help us remember what is most worth loving—beauty, goodness, and truth—and to live those truths in the work of restoring civility, meaning, and grace in our daily lives.
At Civic Renaissance, you’ll find ideas that form us, stories that inspire us, and communities that heal us—a place where the life of the mind meets the work of renewal.
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Gracious reader,
I recently hosted a chef’s appreciation dinner, something I have wanted to do for years. Chefs spend their days nourishing the rest of us. I wanted to create an evening that nourished them in return.
We gathered a room of friends and patrons. I cooked an elevated, familiar-yet-surprising Thanksgiving feast: sous vide turkey scented with Provençal herbs, hand-rolled lobster ravioli, and a poblano and brioche stuffing that stole the show.
Our guest of honor was Ben Hardy, the creative mind behind Gallery Pastry. His restaurants rose with real imagination and ended far too quickly, as the restaurant world often demands a pace and pressure few people ever see. Over dinner he shared stories of what he hoped to build, what it required of him, and what remains possible for chefs in Indianapolis.
Then he told a story I will not forget.
There was a patron who used to walk into his restaurant, place his credit card quietly at the host stand, and ask staff to put every table’s bill on it. These were not small tabs. Sometimes they reached into five-figure territory. He never wanted credit. He never revealed himself.
Ben described what happened next. A server would approach a table and say that their meal had been taken care of, and that they were invited to order whatever they wished. In that moment, the atmosphere changed. People sat back in their chairs rather than forward in calculation. Conversations loosened. There was a softness, a sense of shared delight.
And then something else happened. Guests tipped as if they had paid those extravagant bills themselves. Receiving generosity awakened generosity.
That story captured two things for me.
1. Hospitality has always been mutual
We talk about hospitality as if it flows in one direction, host to guest. But the relationship is reciprocal. In ancient Greek, xenos referred to both stranger and guest. The border between giving and receiving was porous. A guest could elevate a host, or make their work harder. A host could uplift a guest, or do the opposite.
Hospitality and hostility share a linguistic root for a reason. Encounters can nourish or drain. They can expand us or close us down.
That anonymous patron was, in his own way, practicing hospitality as a guest. He entered someone else’s space and decided to make it more life-giving.
2. Grace multiplies when it is received
Ben’s story reminded me of Babette’s Feast, which I write about in my book. A French refugee prepares an extravagant meal for a small, austere Danish community. Her gift opens hearts that had been shut for years. At the end, General Loewenhielm quotes scripture:
“Mercy and truth, my friends, have met together. Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another.”
That line captures what happens when generosity is offered freely. People become capable of giving what they had withheld.
We cannot give from an empty place. Sometimes we need someone else to fill us, even for a moment. That was the purpose of the chef’s dinner: to honor the people who spend their lives honoring others through their work.
Generative Generosity
The word generosity comes from the Latin generosus, rooted in gen, meaning birth or bringing forth. It is the same root that gives us genesis, generate, and generative. All carry the idea of giving rise to something new. When we act with generosity, we do not simply transfer resources. We create conditions for something to be born in the other person and in ourselves. Generosity tends to give life to more generosity. It sets off a chain reaction in which one act makes the next one possible.
When we give, we often receive in ways we could not have predicted. Our gifts mean more, and we receive more, than we may ever expect. I invited a friend from church to join us for the chef’s dinner at the last minute. He accepted, and immediately asked if my children might enjoy a children’s Advent book he had been hoping to give to someone. They were delighted. It gave us something meaningful to begin Advent with on a day when I would have had nothing planned.
Later he sent me a note thanking me for something I had not intended. Among the people gathered that evening were several he cared about and had not seen for a long time for reasons beyond his control. The dinner gave them a chance to reconnect. We never know how our invitations might serve as instruments of repair. All we can do is act with openness, set the table, and trust that the right people will arrive. Hospitality is never wasted.
Generosity is generative.
What is one act of generosity you received this year that surprised you, and what did it open in you?
Who is someone you could invite to your table this month, even in a small way?
Here’s a little glimpse into our evening:
The Joy We Forgot
All of this has been on my mind as I prepare for an upcoming conversation with theologian Junius Johnson called The Joy We Forgot. The event explores an idea that has become important to me: joy often begins where certainty ends.
Not certainty in the sense of understanding or competence, but certainty as control, grasping, prediction.
The kind of certainty that insists the world must bend to our plans.
Joy opens in the space where that grip loosens. When we let ourselves be surprised. When we allow room for generosity we did not earn. When we stay receptive rather than defensive.
The anonymous patron did not know how people would react. He acted anyway.
Babette spent everything she had, unsure of what her feast would accomplish.
Hosts, guests, strangers, friends, chefs, patrons, neighbors — all of us live inside networks of giving and receiving that we rarely see until someone breaks the usual script.
Joy often emerges exactly there.
If this resonates, I would love for you to join the conversation. Civic Renaissance patrons are invited to join an exclusive pre-salon gathering. Look out for an email with more information soon.
I hope you will be part of it.
Warmly,
Lexi
In the News
Holiday Survival 101: How To Deal With “That One Relative”: The holidays are here, which means two things: calories don’t count, and every family has at least one relative who makes you question the Geneva Conventions.
So with Thanksgiving and Christmas knocking, I talked with my friend Alexandra Hudson, author of The Soul of Civility, to get some wisdom for those of us preparing to sit across from Crazy Aunt Agnes, Uncle Blah Blah, or That Cousin Who Thinks Facebook Is a Peer-Reviewed Journal.
Author of The Soul of Civility Warns Against Political Debate
Mentor in Residence Opportunity
We are seeking an extraordinary person to join our family and the Civic Renaissance team as a Mentor in Residence. This role is for someone who loves children, loves learning, and wants to help cultivate a rich atmosphere of curiosity, beauty, kindness, and intellectual life for three young children ages five, three, and one.
Our home is an atelier, a space of creativity, innovation, learning. It is a place of ideas, stories, nature, music, art, conversation, and unhurried discovery. We are building an educational model for our family that brings together nature exploration, early literacy and numeracy, storytelling, cultural formation, ample leisure and unstructured free time, and the joy of hands-on making. We hope to share this model with other families over time.
We are looking for a guide who brings presence, steadiness, imagination, and an instinct for wonder. You do not need classroom experience. We care about your character, your curiosity, your capacity to listen well, your intellectual interests, and the way you see children and human flourishing.
This is a national search, and we welcome candidates who are open to relocating to Indianapolis. Please share widely.
Year Ago on Civic Renaissance:
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