Humble Beauty and the Art of Hospitality

The following is an interview with filmmaker Houston Coley, conducted by Jeremy Bugh. The contents have been edited and condensed for ease of understanding. 

Jeremy: For those who aren’t familiar with your work, can you tell us more about who you are and what you do? 

Houston: I’m Houston Coley. I have been on YouTube since I was 11 years old, which started with LEGO stop-motion animation videos, and eventually transitioned into film analysis and video essays, and finally into some short films. A friend of mine said that my videos are about “cultivating spiritual imagination around current pop culture,” and I’ve sort-of internalized that. In 2020, I went to this place called L’Abri Fellowship in England and had a very profound and transformative experience there. From that point onward, this documentary called A Kingdom of Tea & Strangers began to take shape—and that’s been the last 3 years of my life, alongside writing film & culture thinkpieces on Substack, doing a podcast called The Art Within Podcast, and living and creating in Nashville. I am also the Artistic Director of a nonprofit called Art Within, which my dad founded 30 years ago and I resurrected—initially to make this movie, with the hopes of continuing to make more documentaries that show surprising images of faith and community in the world.

Can you briefly summarize what A Kingdom of Tea and Strangers is about?

The funny thing about this movie is that it’s about this place called L’Abri, which is notoriously hard to describe, and that’s part of why we wanted to make the film. L’Abri was founded by Francis and Edith Schaeffer in the 1950s, as a shelter where people from all backgrounds around the world could engage with their deepest questions, thoughts, and doubts surrounding faith, philosophy, and human life while living in community for a short term stay. This film is a portrait of one summer at L’Abri, focusing on five particular strangers from around the world who are wrestling with some questions of their own, particularly about how to find community and spirituality in their ordinary lives. So in a sense, the film is about these characters having a profound short-term experience and then figuring out how to translate it back to their lives when they go back home. And I think that’s the universal thread of the movie: while not all of us have been to L’Abri, many of us have had a profound spiritual experience somewhere, found it really rich, and wanted to take it back with us somehow but not fully known how to do that. The film wrestles with those sorts of temporal community experiences and how we take them with us, as well as struggles with being human in the midst of modernity. We released the film in August in The Belcourt Theatre in Nashville, and have toured it since then all around the US and Canada before releasing it for free on YouTube in May. 

You have said that “Art has the power to give us common ground and shared understanding as we behold the same beauty together. Art has the power to generate empathy for experiences that are not our own. It can call forth a vision for what a good and righteous world can look like.” You said that this is why you’ve made documentaries and shared them with groups of people. Tell me more about that.

I believe it was Robert Redford who said, a few years back, that the most important medium for the future would be documentaries. At the time, he was talking about our media landscape, fake news, and basically saying that documentaries help show us what’s real. But he couldn’t have predicted the rise of AI that will continue to place us in a sense of unreality where we even don’t know if the photos and videos we see every day are real. In that way, I do think that documentaries are going to continue to become a really important medium because they give us that common ground. But even outside of the AI issue, I think that at this moment in history, we are living in different universes from other people—partly because of our algorithmic social media bubbles, partly because of the isolation of the modern world, car dependency, and a hundred different issues. And I think that when you gather in a room with others and experience art together, it suddenly gives you this common ground—in the sense that you are part of a community with everyone in the same room, sharing the same common truth that is up on this big screen in front of you that you can have a conversation about.

In that way, I believe art, and documentaries in particular, can give us language for the mending of community so that we can live in the same universe again. And even from a faith perspective, we often live in different faith universes. People have very skewed perceptions of what ordinary Christianity is or isn’t, especially based solely on the kind of faith that makes the headlines. A big part of my heart has been to make documentaries that show some of the surprising hidden work of God that usually goes unnoticed and makes people go “oh, I didn’t know faith could look like that. I didn’t know Christians could engage with that. I didn’t know they could have that opinion, or that faith could look that way.” That is very much what L’Abri was for me. 

In regards to how you actually made the documentary, I was intrigued by what you said in a previous article on The Rabbit Room. You said that when you and your wife were making the film, when you first began, people were really hesitant around the cameras and you really struggled to have people seem natural on camera. Then some of the L’Abri workers encouraged you to set the cameras down for a while and just be with the people and then eventually start filming. Can you tell me more about that experience?

I think it was a process of learning to put people over project, and trying to make the film in a way that was in accordance with the values of what the movie was, and with the values of this place that we were capturing. L’Abri in French means “the shelter,” and many people come there for shelter, even from technology. And so we had to do our best to try and honor that. In hindsight, I'm really grateful that the workers forced us to take three or four weeks without filming anything and just get to know everybody, because the trust and relationships we built during that time really come through on camera and on screen. You see the relationship that we have behind the camera with the people in front of the camera, and just a comfortability and ease that wouldn't have been there otherwise. And in that way, I think it almost invites the viewer more into the film. There's a moment in the movie where one of the characters, AJ, leaves L’Abri and he hugs me as I'm holding the camera. Some viewers have said that it almost feels as though he is hugging them as the viewer, and that they are almost one of the characters in the movie. And I think that sort of relationship and the immersive perspective it provides wouldn't have existed if we hadn't taken the time to really gain trust.

One theme of the film seems to be the ways that community mirrors music making. From how you created the sections of the film to the beautiful message you filmed culminating with Antonio Lotti’s Crucifixus in Eight Parts. Was that something that you knew you wanted to focus on when you went into this, or was that something that just sort of revealed itself as you began? 

No, we had no idea. It was totally either a coincidence or God thing, and I would lean towards God thing. The workers at L’Abri had told us we could film one lecture that term. We saw that there was one about harmony and music, so we sort-of casually decided, “eh, I guess we’ll film that one.” Little did we know that that lecture would end up being this incredibly revelatory cipher for the thematic of the entire movie. Not to mention, that lecture was towards the very end of term. And so we filmed that at the end of the production, having no idea the ways in which it had already been rippling out in the interviews that we'd done prior to it—where already you'd had several characters talking about needing people to sing the harmonies in their lives, characters playing music together and that being a source of community, a lunch discussion about dissonance, etc. So it really rippled out in these big ways that we hadn't planned. And when we got into the editing room and we were watching that lecture again, we realized that this was actually the key to the whole movie. 

It does seem like L’Abri really celebrates and prioritizes the arts and allows space for artists, too. Do you think that is something that is an intentional decision made by L’Abri workers, or is that just a natural outcome of living a slower style of life?

Yeah, that aspect of L’Abri was definitely one of the things that attracted me to it when I first went. I had grown up with Christian parents who very much valued the arts, but in general, in my church community, that wasn't really something that was valued that much. And there was certainly a reticence against the “sinfulness” of worldly art or secular art or that sort of thing. When I came to L’Abri, I remember being shocked at how much there was an engagement with art and culture—and not just that, but a prioritizing of excellent art. The first term that I was there in January of 2020, there was a film festival, which they have every year. It was a weekend long festival where people came from all around the area and stayed for two days to watch and discuss films. And I remember seeing it on the schedule and thinking “Oh gosh, what's it gonna be? Like, God's Not Dead or something?” But it wasn’t. We watched Marriage Story, and Lady Bird, and several excellent foreign films, and A Hidden Life by Terrence Malick and one of the Before Trilogy movies. And it was just really excellent, excellent art by actual art standards. That was huge for me, to see how L’Abri understood the common grace and goodness of God in real beauty and excellence rather than just in preaching a message. 

I think you see that in the movie, with the flowers and candles being meticulously put on the tables and the idea that God values beauty, and that this extravagant aesthetic hospitality is part of bringing dignity to everyone at the table. And that doesn't mean that you have to spend a bunch of money on it. It doesn't mean that you have to put on a show or a performance. I almost want to say it’s a scrappy sort of beauty, a humble beauty. It's about how we can make this place and this space beautiful using whatever we have.

Do you feel like that is one of the main things the church could learn from L’Abri and how it embraces artists and the arts? 

One of many things, yeah. I think there is still this tendency within the broader church of seeing a divide between the sacred and the secular. I really wish that we could open our hands a little bit more and see that God is the ultimate creator, and all creativity ultimately comes from him and all beauty glorifies him. I think one of the things that L’Abri does really well is just taking the ideas and art of our current moment and saying, “We don't have to agree with all of this, but we should engage with it.” It’s a little ironic because you might look at L’Abri from a distance and think that they're doing almost an Anabaptist or Amish kind of withdrawal from the world, compartmentalizing themselves off from things. But actually, L’Abri is a place where people come to lean in, to engage with ideas, and current culture, and arts, and philosophy, and the things that we're all thinking about, rather than escape them. And I think the church should be the same. I think the church should not just be a sanctuary where we get away from everything going on. It should be a place where we figure out how to engage it well. That’s one of the many things that I think L’Abri models very beautifully.

That's actually one of the paradoxes that I noticed and wanted to hear your thoughts on. I'll start with one aspect of it. In the movie, Ellie said that entering L’Abri feels like going into another realm and she associated it with feeling like Narnia. Yet in the film, the people of L’Abri push back against the idea that when you leave L’Abri you’re going “back into the real world.” How do you see L’Abri as being both a different realm and an experience of what’s real in the here and now?

I mean, partly you just can't deny the beauty of the space itself. It's a 1600s manor house in the English countryside. It's unimaginably beautiful. Almost all of the L’Abri locations were gifted to L’Abri by donors, and all of them are exceptionally beautiful in their own way and exist in exceptionally beautiful places. And I just think that's such a gift of God. But I love that you identified that as a paradox, because it is. I think there are things that do make L’Abri feel larger than life. Obviously, short-term community itself is a moment where it often feels like you can sort of lean into things in a way that you couldn’t sustain for a long, indefinite period of time. I think there's a sense of getting outside of your comfort zone and even engaging with your hands and doing things that you're not good at, and feeling your mind sort of re-center and not just be scattered across a hundred different things while you're there. As one of the L’Abri workers, Joel, says in the film: when you get home, your attentions are just more dispersed. But at L’Abri, your mind is able to focus in on ideas and the things that you've been thinking in the back of your head a little bit more. You feel yourself having original thoughts again. Suddenly you’re hearing from God, because you finally allowed the silence to exist and slowed down a little bit.

And so I think some of those things do give it a heightened feel; the beauty of the space, the slowness of it. At the same time, I had some of those heightened experiences at other places when I was a kid, and they didn’t always stick the same way. I went to church summer camp every year when I was in youth group growing up, and I wouldn't totally diss that experience. I think there were really meaningful parts about it. But I do remember uniquely at the end of every summer at church camp, I would think, “well, I guess I’ll have to wait until next year to hear from God again.” It really seemed like God was only truly present in his concentrated form at camp—and I think camp programs can really try to cultivate that kind of mountaintop smoke-machine lightshow experience, which feels great in the moment but makes everything else pale in comparison.

On the other hand, I think L’Abri really resists pushing for that sense of dramatic spiritual encounter. I think one of the things that people often take away from L’Abri experiences is a finding of God in the ordinary. I remember when I came home from L’Abri for the first time, it felt like God was in more places in the world, and not less. And so there is an element, as you see in the film, of L’Abri still feeling realer than real life. It can be hard to go back to “real life.” But by having the third act of our film go back to the outside world, hopefully it confronts the viewer with the reality that this is just a “way of being” that can be embodied anywhere, and that L’Abri doesn't have the monopoly on this way of life. My hope is that it would make God bigger rather than just putting him in a box, which is what L’Abri did for me.

I resonated with that a lot because I can romanticize the idea of community and I'm very much an idealistic person. And so when I watched it, I thought that my wife and I were going to want to drop everything and move to L’Abri. But I was surprised and delighted to see that I left the film realizing that I also really just wanted to be hospitable in my daily life. And I wanted to enjoy, to borrow a phrase you used earlier, the “humble beauty” of the things around me. I found myself enjoying my cups of tea in the morning a little bit more as a result, and have found myself wanting to really lean into and build community this summer. But I think it was because of that third act that I was able to respond in that way. So can you tell us more about that transition from L’abri back into one’s daily routine? What have you noticed about that transition in your life or the lives of those you filmed? 

Since my time at L’Abri, there's definitely been a desire to integrate some of those rhythms of community into life. So we have regular dinners on Sunday nights similar to AJ, the character in the film who has dinners open to any and all people that he knows. A big thing that I've learned in cultivating community in my normal life is inviting people to do things side by side with you rather than trying to put on a show for them. So rather than making dinner and inviting everyone over to have it, I say, “Hey, come over and help us cook dinner.” It’s helpful to us, but it also leads to more community because you're doing something side by side together. There's a quote from Wade Bradshaw in his book By Demonstration: God, which is the best book about English L’Abri, in which he says that hospitality is not entertaining people, it is simply including them in what we do. So many people, when they want to be hospitable, they think that they need to put on a performance and invite people into this perfectly curated, manicured sort of vision of what their life and home are. But actually, the real community happens in inviting people into the messiness and allowing them to participate rather than making it perfect before they arrive.

In your screening guide, you asked maybe my favorite question about the whole documentary. “Have you ever had an experience similar to L’Abri in your life? What did it look like for you to translate that experience back to ordinary life?” Can you tell us more about the response from audiences to that question?

Many people, of course, bring up a summer camp experience that they've had. Some people have brought up fraternities or sorority situations. Some people have brought up other kinds of retreats or monasteries that they've been to. I've heard people say really good Bible studies. I've also heard people say boarding schools or just all sorts of different things. But the common thread tends to be living in close proximity with other people, sharing meals together, and having a sense of structure and rhythm to when they would see people regularly. And I think it's really sad, in a way, that almost all of those experiences tend to be associated with something that you do when you're young and then that stops when you get older. I've heard people say the reason Americans romanticize the college experience is because it's the one time we live within walking distance of all of our friends rather than having to drive everywhere. I think that's so true. It doesn’t have to be that way, and hopefully the film gives some handholds for overarching ideas of ordinary spiritual community that can still be a reality in daily life. I think L’Abri definitely gave me a greater sense that the church has a big role to play in that.

Is there any other common theme or individual story that stuck with you from the responses of people as you shared the documentary?

Oh, man. One thing has been just how much I've heard from non-Christians, agnostics, or people who were raised Christian and have sort of drifted away, who have really connected with the film. Many of them particularly connect with the honest wrestling of the character of Ford in the movie—and how he says at one point that he is “sitting on the front porch of Christianity.” That image really seems to resonate with those folks, and lots of folks have told me that it gave powerful language to how they feel. Many of those people have told me that they expected this to be some cheesy Christian movie, but instead, they felt like it was surprisingly accessible and invited them into the dialogue. That has been music to my ears, because it was the hope from the start. We hoped that it would feel accessible to a variety of audiences, that it would feel like it gave dignity to all of the characters regardless of where they were coming from, that it would allow them to speak honestly. And some of that isn't even my doing. I'm just very grateful for Ford's honesty on camera and how open he was about his questions and doubts about the church and God, and yet he still put himself in this spiritual community that was pushing him and causing him to really wrestle with those things intentionally.

Admittedly it’s been interesting because some people walk away from the film saying, “Well, I don't know about all that God stuff, but the community stuff was great. That's what I connected with.” Part of me wants to say “No, you need to understand, the community flows out of the God stuff. It only exists because demonstrating the reality of God is at the center of it. And that's why it's able to be as good as it is.” But at the same time, I've met plenty of people who come to L’Abri not for God but for the community itself—and L’Abri doesn’t try to force anything on them. So at some point, you also just have to release the fact that people will respond to what they respond to. And that's also been one of my great joys, hearing from people at the discussions, reading their Letterboxd reviews and getting to see how every single person connects with the film in a completely different way and takes something different from it. I love it when someone teaches me something about my own movie.

On the flip side of that, is there anything that you haven't heard people discussing much about the movie that you wish they would highlight more? 

I talk about this in my commentary track on DVD and Blu-Ray, so maybe some people will get it from that…the precious few who buy the DVD and Blu-Ray and watch the commentary track.

For me, one of the most crucial sequences in the whole movie is the Winnie The Pooh read-aloud sequence. For those who haven't seen the film yet, it’s a sequence where several of our main characters are all sitting in the backyard after dinner and they all read a story from Winnie The Pooh together, with each of them doing the voice of a different character. I think some people will watch that and think, “oh, the point of the scene is that it's a fun and whimsical community read aloud. Read alouds are good.” And yeah, yeah, I think so. It definitely shows how the act of play is important to community. 

But I think it's also deeper than that, because for me, that read-aloud sequence embodies everything that the lecturer, Jonno, is articulating about harmony later in the film. Harmony is when every person is completely different, and yet they are fully one. He says, “the parts serve the whole, but remain distinct.” So you have all these characters who are reading for a character in Winnie The Pooh and they're just fully coming alive, expressing themselves as this cartoon persona, and each of them really suits the character they’re reading in a delightful way. And you're seeing the joy of the diversity of all of these different people's personalities, and how God made them each uniquely. But at the same time, they are bound by this common story that they're telling in the shared text that they're reading together. And so there's this mutual individuality and community, this pairing of self-agency and submission to the form. I think ultimately, it's a model of the Trinity. The Trinity is a picture of community where all of the members are fully themselves and yet fully one. And that is sort of the deepest cosmic meaning of community. So ya know, this scene seems like sort of a whimsical, cute little moment. But to me, it's deeply theological and actually a really important cipher for the whole movie.  

You can support Houston’s work by subscribing to his YouTube channel and Substack. Learn more about his work at Art Within, and watch A Kingdom of Tea & Strangers here.