Open table, open heart

A PLACE AT THE TABLE:
Faith, hope and hospitality
By Miranda Harris and Jo Swinney
Hodder and Stoughton. 244 pages. £16.99*
ISBN 978 1 528 392 050

Many people have found that clearing out their parents belongings after their death can take them on an unexpected journey. That was certainly the case for Jo Swinney.

Her mother had died in a tragic car accident that left her father fighting for his life. A year later, having discovered among her mother’s papers a book proposal and a partial manuscript of a book based on diary entries of a significant life lived on three continents, Jo started to shape the material into a book.

In it, Jo completes her mother’s book with her own reflections on faith, hope and hospitality. Miranda Harris was a co-founder with her husband of A Rocha, the Christian environmental charity. In one of the stories in the book, Jo tells of her mother buying a large and expensive table for the first A Rocha house in Portugal. Although its purchase meant that the family had to go without other things, the table was a symbolic statement of the importance of the generosity and openness of a hospitable home.

‘Might hospitality be as close to the heart of a lived Christian faith as churchgoing, financial giving or Bible reading.’

Jo gently unfolds this thesis by the use of a creative format, using the six stages of a meal to communicate how to really make people feel at home. The book also includes six illuminating reflections on Biblical accounts of hospitality.

One of the surprises that Jo had in piecing together this book was to see that her mother did not merely have a supportive role in the formation and development of the work of A Rocha, she was the driving force of its mission. For her, hospitality was a reflection of the Creator’s generous care for the earth. For Miranda Harris hospitality and environmental action were both ways of demonstrating love for her Creator, His world and all the people He had put on it. Read and be stimulated to action.