Lee
[00:00:00] I'm Lee C. Camp and this is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.
Peter
If you live in community, you have no choice but to tell a true story.
Lee
That's Peter Harris, Anglican clergyman and founder of the global environmental organization A Rocha. I sat down with Peter in front of a live audience, along with his daughter Jo Swinney about her new book, [00:00:30] co-written by her late mother, entitled A Place at the Table: Faith, Hope, and Hospitality.
Jo
It's simple connections that are gonna nurture people and bring life to them.
Lee
The book and the circumstances in which it arose are a beautiful call to humility, vulnerability, and community.
Peter
I came thinking of what I would contribute here, and what I've learned is that my failures have encouraged people more than anything else I've ever done.
Lee
All coming right up.[00:01:00]
I'm Lee C. Camp. This is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.
Today, a vulnerable construal of hospitality from a father and daughter. Peter Harris is the founder of A Rocha, an international conservation organization. Peter has been on our show before, discussing A Rocha and a theology of caring for the earth. It's a beautiful episode, which I [00:01:30] highly recommend. On that episode, we heard Peter challenge the presumed dichotomy between faith and care for the earth.
But on today's episode, Peter is joined by his daughter Jo Swinney, co-author of the book, A Place at the Table: Faith, Hope, and Hospitality.
Peter's wife and Jo's mother, Miranda Harris, was killed in a tragic car accident. Subsequent to Miranda's passing, an incomplete manuscript by Miranda was found in [00:02:00] her effects. Her daughter, Jo Swinney, completed the book, a lovely and compelling treatise on hospitality.
And, as is fitting for a conversation around hospitality, we gathered a group of folks together in Nashville for a potluck dinner, and then sat and listened to Peter and Jo share openly and hospitably about their lives.
Peter Harris, after working as an English teacher at Christ's Hospital, and then as an Anglican clergyman near Liverpool in the UK, [00:02:30] Peter and his wife Miranda moved to Portugal in 1983 to establish and run A Rocha's first field study center and bird observatory. Its work has grown into an international conservation organization, including work in the United States.
And Jo Swinney is a writer, speaker, and editor. She was born in the UK, was raised in Portugal, and so you might suspect that she is also the daughter of Peter Harris and Miranda Harris. She's currently the Head of [00:03:00] Communications for A Rocha International, and tonight we're pleased to be discussing with Jo and Peter, Jo's new book entitled, A Place at the Table: Faith, Hope, and Hospitality.
Please make welcome Peter and Jo.
[Applause]
So Jo, can you tell us how this book came to be?
Jo
Yeah, it was in fairly painful circumstances, because it should have been my mom's book. [00:03:30] And the reason that I'm on the cover is because in October 2019, her and my father, um, were in South Africa, where one of the A Rocha organizations is, with the Chief Executive, Chris Naylor, and his wife.
And as they were heading home, there was a really terrible road accident, in which my mum died, uh, and so did Chris and Susannah. Um, so, my mum had talked about writing a really long time. I had had a lot of conversations with her [00:04:00] about this book, and-- including one quite snippy one over the Christmas turkey one year when she was saying next year was going to be the year and I said, well, tell me when it has been, kind of thing. I look forward to seeing the results of this book when you've written it.
And, um, when we were clearing out her study, we found a binder called 'The Book," and she had made a really, really good start on it. And so I set myself the challenge of finishing it. And so that's the book, [00:04:30] yeah.
Lee
And just came out, what, in the last couple of months, right?
Jo
It came out in North America, um, yeah, the middle of October.
Lee
Jo
Lee
Very good. Well, congratulations on the completion of that.
Peter, I wonder, um... as you've read the book, and as you've been involved in watching the development of the book, what's it been like for you to recollect all these memories? The book is filled with all sorts of wonderful anecdotes and memories of life full of hospitality.
And, uh, [00:05:00] I was-- in the way Jo's laid the book out, each chapter is kind of a part, from the preparation for the meal all the way through to cleaning up after the meal, each chapter organized around one of the elements of a meal and coming to the table. And, um, then at the end of each chapter she has excerpts from Miranda, her mother's, journals.
And I was, in one of these sections, I just started circling this theme that happened over and over again.
"We have a volunteer here at the moment," meaning at the house.
The [00:05:30] next month: "We had a whole variety of visitors visitors here lately."
A couple of months later: "The house will fill up with local friends and neighbors for St. Martin's Day. We've invited all and sundry."
A month later: "We had a wonderful house full over Easter."
Again, the next month: "We've had a lot of visitors in a seamless succession of arrivals and departures. My greatest worry is that of running out of personal resources in terms of genuine welcoming love and capacity to be involved in double listening. What is this [00:06:00] person saying?"
The next month: "Yesterday, a Cornish German couple arrived with teenagers, Apollo and Zion, saying that the Lord told them to come to us."
The next month: "Yesterday, a group of Portuguese people from the North arrived at 9 A.M., having traveled overnight."
The next month: "Constantly changing housefulls of students and visitors of various nationalities, lots of day visitors."
So, as you look back upon a life of hospitality, what's it been like for you remembering all these [00:06:30] beautiful moments of welcoming and hospitality?
Peter
Well, I think the truth is that Miranda was Irish, and so I used to say she brooded over the ancestral fires. She was, um, more retrospective than I was, and I guess with me and A Rocha it was always co-- oh, well, onto the next thing. Where are we in China anyway?
And I, I think obviously the accident changed a lot in that regard. And I've wanted to remember, and I've wanted to recollect. And there's a huge trunk at [00:07:00] the foot of my bed, which traveled all over the world with us and all over the world with her father. She, Miranda partly grew up in Uganda. And it's full of journals. She wrote a journal for every year of our 43-year marriage.
And, um, so, um, because Jo and I agreed, actually when I was in intensive care, that we would try and get Miranda's writing out to the world, I needed to go back and find some of these things and, and other things, often that had [00:07:30] been mixed into personal letters to people and all the rest. She was a huge letter writer.
And, um, I suppose I've been seeing retrospection a little differently, cloaked in grief. So, so that's a slightly different exercise. But all I would say is, we always tried, and if you live in community, you have no choice, to tell a true story, and not one that is in any way garnished or embellished or presenting the perfect whatever.
And I think [00:08:00] Jo draws this out a lot in her understanding of what hospitality is. And so looking back, I'm amused. Miranda had a huge sense of humor. Uh, if you didn't have a sense of humor, you wouldn't really do very well for a long time in that. You know, you, she would open her fridge to get stuff out for people and some, um, absolute expert on reptiles would have put a snake in there to slow it down enough to take photographs of it. That kind of thing.
There was, for quite a long time, a white stork in the freezer occupying at least two shelves, I [00:08:30] seem to remember, before somebody's project to stuff it ever came to fruition.
So she told a true story, and a lot of funny things did happen to us. And it has been interesting to look back because I haven't probably done enough of that in my life.
I've probably been, there's a French phrase, fuite en avant, which means running forward to the next thing. And nevertheless, recollection is an important thing.
Lee
So, uh, I think this would be a nice place for those who may not know much about the work of A Rocha... would you tell us a little bit [00:09:00] about, um, what your mission is in the world and what you've been up to over the last, what, since 1983?
Peter
Yes. It's really quite simple, I think. In one way, it's understanding that the love of God reaches to everything that He's made. And while people have a particular place and a role in that, it, it's not limited by that.
And so the mission, if you like, of A Rocha, has been to learn and practice what it means to love what God loves and to [00:09:30] shape all our relationships, including the relationship to His creation, by the character of God.
And I think we take our own place as an organization within the wide conservation movement in the secular place that is the effort that everybody is making to get through this tremendous crisis now engulfing us, you know, half of life on earth has been lost in the lifetime of our organization.
And so, we want to do that with that hospitality and welcome to all comers. [00:10:00] We hold to our own convictions as to why we do this, but we recognize that everybody else has their own as well and everybody is welcome within that conversation and within that place.
And we found a wonderful welcome within the conservation movement worldwide. We have allies and partners all over the world on the five continents that we work. But I think we're hoping to raise up the importance of sometimes asking, well, why are we doing this? rather than just, what are we doing and what are the impacts and how can we quantify that?
I think the [00:10:30] conservation movement has shied away from that. And I can give you a, an actual example of that. When the French had what was called the Grenelle de l'environnement, it was a big national debate that Sarkozy launched about the environment, and the, the verdict by Nicolas Hulot, who's the kind of French David Attenborough, on that whole debate, was actually we weren't allowed to talk about the main question, which was the question of belief and values, which drives how we treat the world around us.
And he said that was off the [00:11:00] table because we're a secular country. And therefore, he used the verb esquisse, we missed the point of the debate because we couldn't talk about motivation and why. We're trying to have that more complete conversation.
Lee
Thank you.
Jo, at the beginning of the book, you say, "Let's begin with a bold idea. Might hospitality be as close to the heart of a lived Christian faith as church going, financial giving, or Bible reading?"
Tell us more about that. [00:11:30]
Jo
If you look at, um, the person of God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the purpose of the Christian life to be transformed into the image of God for His glory and to reflect who He is, He's a hospitable God. He's a God who embraces all and-- who want to be embraced, and who asks us to host Him as well.
And so, um, from the beginning of the story [00:12:00] to the very end, we are supposed to be a hospitable people in reflection of that. I think it's absolutely fundamental to who we are as, as a people of God.
That's to say, hospitable, not entertainers. Uh, so I'd want to draw that distinction.
Lee
Yeah, and you, you, you draw this nice distinction between hospitality is not meant as a sort of exhibition of one's domestic virtues, necessarily, right, but, but a, but a sort of, [00:12:30] um, exercise even in vulnerability. You talk a lot about the practice of vulnerability or the honest, the true story, I think Peter said just a moment ago. Telling a true story in hospitality.
So fill that out for us a little bit more.
Jo
Yeah, it's, uh, it's tempting to make it about yourself and to make people think nice things about you and write nice things in your guest book when they leave. Um, but actually, if you're focused on the other person, sometimes it's really encouraging to, for them to see that, um, your front hall is covered [00:13:00] in shoes, as ours always is. And um, maybe fewer shoes than they have in their own front hall.
And so, and also people don't notice your mess in the way that you think they're going to. It's about feeling embraced and the person's presence with you in a nonjudgmental, warm manner, and feeling cared for. It's really very, very little to do with matching things and folded things and clean things, which I'm very grateful for because I have no domestic abilities.[00:13:30]
Lee
Peter, further thoughts on the vulnerability piece in this?
Peter
I think it's an inevitable condition of the Christian life, and we just gotta get used to it. But I do think that what Jo was saying, that the attentiveness to the other person inevitably puts you in a position of, of welcome and of care. And if you are in a competitive hospitable environment-- somebody came up today [00:14:00] with a phrase that I hadn't heard before of 'performance hospitality.'
I think we have to get well away from that and, and find a way to be able to be vulnerable. I've had little choice in that because of the physical weakness I live with. I've had a wretched back for most of my life, but I've had to do important meetings lying on the floor sometimes. So you don't feel particularly powerful under those circumstances.
And I've been grateful for those who have accepted those particular ways in which I walk with a limp. [00:14:30] And so I think that, as Jo has has said very clearly, if we're seeing this as some way of presenting a public face, which is very different from the, from the inner story, we do no service to anybody. But rather, by allowing people to walk into our own lives as they are, into our own homes as they are, and into our own communities as they are, it's actually profoundly encouraging.
I remember an extremely admirable Norwegian friend of mine, [00:15:00] Oivind, at the end of his 12 years in Portugal, we were there for about the same time. And he came to serve the student movement there, with an awareness of what he could bring to it, um... the kind of Norwegian idea of organization is virtually the polar opposite of the Portuguese idea of organization, and of time, and of many other things.
And um, and I think he, he said very movingly at the end of their 12 years, "I came thinking of all I would contribute here, and what I've learnt is that my [00:15:30] failures have encouraged people more than anything else I've ever done."
And I, and I think it's often like that.
Lee
You're listening to No Small Endeavor, and our conversation with Peter Harris and Jo Swinney, taped live at one of our events here in Nashville.
I love hearing from you. Tell us what you're reading, who you're paying attention [00:16:00] to, or send us feedback about today's episode. You can reach me at lee@nosmallendeavor.com.
You can get show notes for this episode, in your podcast app or wherever you listen. These notes include links to resources mentioned in the episode, as well as a PDF of interview notes and a full transcript.
We would be delighted if you'd tell your friends about No Small Endeavor and invite them to join us on the podcast. That helps us extend the reach of the beauty, truth, and goodness [00:16:30] we are seeking to sow in the world.
Coming up, we continue to discuss how practicing vulnerability and hospitality not only help us to live more flourishing lives individually, but also contribute to the good of the world.
Interesting to think about that sort of conversation [00:17:00] about vulnerability in light of the fact that many would categorize, especially from a secular perspective, what you are as an activist organization. That you're very involved in social activist issues in the world that are pretty polarized, uh, in the world, or that are polarizing.
And one of the things that we see increasingly across the political spectrum, is that those who are involved in various social issues and social work see virtue signaling as [00:17:30] their-- a sort of posture that so often gets taken on. Uh, that is, parading one's social virtues, and staying-- and moreover, if one falls into some sort of vulnerability, then a sort of canceling or sort of rejection, whatever the case may be.
But you're, you're, you both are kind of calling to saying that part and parcel of what you've done in your own sort of activist work in the world has to be woven together with vulnerability, which seems very counterintuitive. But any, any commentary about how that's worked together?
Peter
Well, perhaps I could make a distinction between being a [00:18:00] practical organization, that's to say we essentially-- somebody once called us 'the saints in the ditches.' We're known by the kind of stuff we do on the ground, around the place, and people can draw their own conclusions about that.
And I think activism is slightly different and more talkative perhaps. And I think, again, if you live in community, you can say what you like, but when people have been with you for a few weeks, they actually know what you're like, so there's not much point in saying what you like. And I, and I think that's the distinction I would want to make, that I think... Jesus said it, you know, [00:18:30] "they'll know you by your love," so as for the rest, you can say what you like.
And I, and I, and I, I think that's an important distinction. And what we've actually tried to do in contexts, uh, where these issues are polarizing, and I recognize that they are, is to gather everybody around things that everybody cares about and just do it.
So, for example, in South Africa, we have been cleaning up streams and rivers for communities, because everybody cares about that and needs that. And we want to lean into that [00:19:00] and celebrate that, rather than feeling that from some position of high ground, we're wagging the finger at anybody.
There was a very influential paper called 'The Death of Environmentalism.'
And essentially they were saying that, that fear and judgment and, and claiming that you know the story and that the others are the bad guys has been a disaster in communications globally. And, and really we've wanted to, to act out of love and compassion and to show how, living this way, that the character of God is reflected [00:19:30] in the landscape.
It's good news written in the landscape after some time of your working there. That's the way which is invitational, and anybody can be part of it. You know, if you want to come and clear a ditch with us, you are welcome.
Lee
Uh, Jo, you, um, talk a good bit about seeing hospitality as a sort of ministry to loneliness. And you taught me something I didn't know, that in 2018 the Prime Minister in the UK appointed a Minister for Loneliness?
So talk to us a little bit about how you [00:20:00] see hospitality, loneliness, and the sort of epidemic of loneliness that we seem to be facing around the world.
Jo
Well, we've had an extreme experience of that, even extroverts or people with really good social fabric around them. We've all been forced into isolation. And so, I think this is quite close to the bone at the moment.
But loneliness is more dangerous to our health than heart disease or smoking, over a lifetime. It's a really severe and acute problem and [00:20:30] it's far more common than you would realize.
Partly as a, an outworking of the current ideology of individualism. We are all encouraged to seek our own path in life, to put ourselves first, to fulfill ourselves in whatever way possible. And joy is a byproduct, not a goal often. And I think the byproduct of relationship. And so hospitality draws us into [00:21:00] where we should be to flourish with each other. It's an opening and extending of our space.
Even on public transport, it's amazing how ready people are to talk, if you just give them a flicker of eye contact. My daughter was waiting in a bus stop. She's 15, she was 15 at the time, is 15 still. And I'm-- just checking.
And it was late. And as she got chatting with a lady who said she was in her nineties and had nobody, nobody in her life, her, [00:21:30] um, her husband had died, she'd been childless, she had no friends, and she basically, by the end of the bus journey was begging my daughter to become her friend. Um, they told each other where they lived. And it's simple connections that are going to nurture people and bring life to them.
Lee
That reminds me, uh, some years ago, one of my undergraduate students who's gone on... he's one of my favorite students ever. Very intelligent, has gone on to do a PhD, and, and very proud of him and I [00:22:00] love him. But he was also always very serious. And, um, one day I said something and I mentioned the sort of virtue of small talk.
And he kind of laughed at me, kind of pooh-poohed that. And, and I said, no, seriously, I said, the Southern gift of small talk may be the only exercise of kindness some people receive all day. And so I think what you described is a beautiful invitation of the power of simple [00:22:30] kindness by paying attention, by care.
Peter
I'm with you on that. And I, I think it's an act of generosity to talk nonsense. And I don't have much small talk myself, so I'm inhibited that way, but I, but I try.
Jo
Not sure I agree. You should-- so, we're, we're as bad as each other though. In the airporting, um, yesterday, where were we, Charlotte? We couldn't sit next to each other, so we just started gabbing with the people next to us.
We made lifelong friends, we had like, exchanging contact details, photographs were taken.
Peter
Jo
[00:23:00] We sold a book each.
Lee
Peter, I want to go back to, so this notion of community that you raised a moment ago, um, Jo cites Miranda saying, quote, "Community includes not only the people around us, but also the creation itself."
And I wondered if you would spend a little bit of time-- we did this in a, an interview that we did together, which is one of my favorites that I've done, uh, 18 months ago or so, but I wonder if you'd just kind of very briefly point us towards ways in which you think theology has [00:23:30] unhelpfully or failed to draw out this sort of love of God's creation or, or, or sort of over-spiritualizing.
Peter
Well, I'm going to do this A Rocha thing on you and not go to the dark side and say, isn't it wonderful how a true theology has community right at its heart? Jo's already mentioned the three person God, that wonderful dance, actually, the perichoresis of the, of the persons of the Trinity. And so I [00:24:00] think we, we have a a God in community, in relationship, inevitably.
We are in inevitable relationship with everything. We breathe. We eat. The air we're breathing out now will be helpfully being sorted out by the plants outside within 10 or 20 minutes. And I think that these are inevitable relationships that we have.
And you notice how the days of creation are structured. We don't have one on our own. We, we share it with a lot of other things. And the first covenant [00:24:30] that we find in Genesis, in Genesis chapter 9, says 7 times, which is a biblically significant number, that this is God's covenant with all of life. And even the animals are specified as not domestic animals, not the ones that are useful to us, but just the animals.
And I love the Hebrew, and the emphasis in some of the texts on things that creep on the ground, you know, that this is the whole thing, is drawn into the love of God. And in Romans, we read that that glorious liberation that we all believe in for people, [00:25:00] that extraordinary transformation that's possible out of the ruins and out of catastrophe, is extended to the whole groaning creation, that's what Paul says.
So really, all I would say is we need to start taking the lenses of individualism and materialism and that genetically modified gospel with the DNA of all of that stuff woven in... we have to go back to what is actually authentic Christian biblical belief and read the texts for what's there. [00:25:30] And I'm afraid we've done a pretty poor job of putting an edited version out there in service of ideology.
Lee
I don't want to talk about this long, but I want to just throw this out here real quick.
Peter
Lee
Yeah. I want to throw this out here quickly. And we discussed this in the last interview we did. But, um, I, I think this was from an essay you had written. You quote the work of Richard Lovelace, Princeton Church historian, um, and he talks about the way in which this sort of distinction between spiritual matters and social matters developed.
Peter
Lee
Do you remember the, [00:26:00] what I'm referring to there?
Peter
Lee
Yeah. Would you just mention that briefly?
Peter
Well, Lovelace says these, this spiritual sort of material separation has some pretty unpleasant antecedents. And different church historians have located it in different periods. Some have looked at the Black Death in Europe, which were laid waste to the continent in a way that the pandemic looks like a mild dose of measles.
And uh, it was that reality that people were dealing with then that made them [00:26:30] dream away to an immaterial existence for the spiritual life. But Lovelace says, actually, that when people were trying to keep slavery and keep the Bible, at that point, they moved away from the plain meaning of the text. And the plain meaning of the text says that matter matters and that we have an incarnate God in Jesus Christ who was touchable, who ate after the resurrection and, and this is our God. And we have to recover the materiality, and the possibility of [00:27:00] blessing for the material that is at the heart of the good news of Jesus Christ and of the new creation coming, even while we live in this groaning one.
Lee
Thank you.
Jo, let's talk a little bit about the art of hospitality. And, uh, you discuss it as taking a vast number of possible shapes, from sharing coffee to a great feast, and you cite Eeyore: "A little consideration, a little thought for others makes all the difference."
And then later you quote Miranda saying, "Care begins [00:27:30] with noticing."
And so, I love this sort of notion that, um, simple intentionality might be one of the fundamental roots of hospitality, you seem to be telling us. So tell us, tell us more about that.
Jo
Somebody earlier today asked a question about, um, ideas for simple hospitality, and there were several in the room, but they came down to having a focus on the other.
So, things like, um, remembering that someone has a lactose [00:28:00] intolerance and keeping the kind of milk that they can use in your fridge when they come. My husband, he was raised in a very deprived and violent setting. And, um, for him, the great sign of hospitality is when people, um, just let him be in their house and don't fuss over him, but let him kind of find his place and settle in and, and be himself.
So neglect from him is a sign of great care, should you come to our house. He's giving you his very [00:28:30] best service. It's about not what you wish to do to them, but sensing out what the person needs to feel loved and, and at home with you.
Lee
Yeah, that's lovely. There's this beautiful passage you have, quoting your mom, where she said, "We need to try to anticipate areas of pain, and remember that not everybody finds parties easy. It can be hard for unmarried people to be with glowing couples. Hard for people in loveless [00:29:00] marriages to be with physically demonstrative couples. Hard for childless people to see a mother absorbed in a baby. Hard for parents of disabled children to see big, happy, carefree families where the children are bright and healthy.
The list is endless. We need to exercise sensitivity, develop empathy, and be alongside to support, encourage, and offer friendship. And we need to really listen, not just to the words, but also to the silences [00:29:30] and the feelings underneath the words."
It's a beautiful passage. Uh, Peter, any, any thoughts, uh, you hear those words of Miranda's?
Peter
Yeah, well, she did that. And I remember, you said something this morning, Jo, and I haven't, I didn't follow up on it. But actually, when we were engaged to be married, she said, "Well, we will, we will show hospitality to each other." And, um, I think she did that.
And I think she, she did have a remarkably empathetic [00:30:00] character. She, she felt, instinctively, people's pain. She carried some pain herself in different ways. And I think she understood that life is complicated and complex. And the Christian life is not about proving that Jesus Christ cleans everything up. It's really about showing that he came to be with us in our mess.
And that's that's, how she-- and we were, we were kind of obliged to live it anyway. I remember in our early marriage, we had 3 kids under 4, of [00:30:30] which Jo was--
Jo
Peter
--the first. And the favorite. Yeah. I know my other kids will never listen to this so I can say whatever I like.
And, um, We twe-- youth group basically moved into our house. And one of them said to Miranda one day, "What I grow up, my house is never going to be like this." You know, and Miranda sort of felt, well, it's like this because you're here all the time.
But, but I think I think it, you have to make-- if you're, if you're working in a, in a country like [00:31:00] Portugal where people don't kind of show up when they say they're going to, or with the people they say they're going to show up with, or anything like this, coordination and organization is difficult.
We several times lost snakes into the dormitories just before groups were coming and couldn't find them and just had to leave it to get on with it. And I think, you know, you can't, uh, you can't really avoid that sort of mess of, of life.
Jo
Can I just say though, she was an excellent cleaner, and she could come into our house and make [00:31:30] it look habitable in about, I don't know, maybe 3 hours... like, not in like 5 minutes, because our house--
But one time she was quite distressed I think, at the state, and it was beyond her on that short visit, so she offered to pay for us to have a cleaner come to do a kind of deep reset. This is when the girls were really small. I wasn't coping very well.
And um, so I booked a cleaner. She came in and put on her apron and whatnot, and then about 10 minutes later I saw her by the front door taking off her apron and gloves, and I said, "Where are you going?" And she [00:32:00] said, "I don't know where to start." And she left, and it was one of the most humiliating experiences I've ever had, and she didn't come back.
So I found another one... I cried a little bit. Not going to lie. I found another one. She was amazing. She was called Vanya and she came to love us very much, even if we were a bit of a project. So she came, she came for 2 hours the first day and then she said, "See you tomorrow." And I was like, what do you mean? We booked you just for today. She said, [00:32:30] "There are children living here."
Lee
We're going to take a short break, but coming right up, how hospitality might play a role in one's grappling with anxiety, depression, and grief.
Lee
[00:33:00] You have, uh, Jo, you have a passage from Miranda in which she recounts, uh, some friends coming to dinner. And she's anxious, and she was anxious because the couple that was coming, the man, the husband had just been recently released from the hospital, having been treated for mental illness. And she didn't know, had no experience of trying to welcome someone just getting over mental [00:33:30] illness, what it would be like.
And there's this beautiful passage where she said, "John," the man who had just been out of the hospital, "John sat stiffly on one side, his back against the wall, expressionless and silent. Jo, aged 4, slipped in beside him, shuffling untidily along the bench, until the gap between them disappeared, creating one lumpy form out of two misassorted shapes, [00:34:00] rather like Pooh and Piglet huddling together on the edge of a rainy Hundred Acre Wood.
Simultaneously, Joe tucked her small hand through his arm and laid her blonde head against his tense shoulder. I realized this wordless gesture communicated more powerfully than anything I could have learned in a hundred counseling courses. The tender total acceptance he needed in his bewildered fragility."
It's a beautiful passage from [00:34:30] your mom, and and then I'm struck that in the book you, too, also share that you've gone on to have fairly regular stretches of depression yourself. And you've written a book about depression entitled, Through the Dark Woods. And so I wonder, in the context of talking about hospitality, how has hospitality, and as we've discussed, the vulnerable-- vulnerability in hospitality, how has that related to your own processing of the, of the grief of [00:35:00] depression?
Jo
Uh, yeah, so from, um, the age of probably 13 through, well, to fairly recent days, I have had my battles with depression. Um, I'm glad to say I'm doing mostly really well these days, but it does remain a fragility for me.
I can think of a great number of occasions where people have offered me, I imagine quite costly hospitality, in the midst of those [00:35:30] really bleak and dark and lonely times, one of which, um, I thought I was inviting someone over to my house, but I, I did, I wasn't really able to be entertaining or the host I wanted to be. And she spent the whole time doing the dishes.
And the dishes, she didn't know this, had become a symbol to me of my inability to, to do my life. And when she left, the side was clear [00:36:00] and the plates were in the cupboards, and I felt like I had a chance at starting off on a better foot from that moment.
And, um, things like that or, um, meeting me as-- a student friend of mine used to come and get me for classes, during a bad patch, and walk me all the way, you know, door to door. I don't think they'll ever know quite how profound that was and quite what a lifeline it was. And, um, I'm sure not very enjoyable [00:36:30] for them. But, yeah. The depths you can go to are really a long way down. But when someone is down there with you in the pit, it's a good chance you're going to climb your way out again.
Lee
Thank you. Thank you for sharing that.
There's been a lot written on eco-anxiety and the sort of ways in which we're seeing a phenomenon, among young people especially, who are becoming aware of the climate crisis and, um, [00:37:00] anxious for their future life, life of their own children, grandchildren.
And so I wonder, Peter, in the work that you've done all these decades, in what sort of ways have, um, you had to deal with your own sort of anxiety, perhaps? Or what are ways you've seen, um, having to deal with the grief of being aware of what's going on, and in so many ways people are just not paying attention to it. What's that process been like for you?
Peter
Yeah, it's a very, [00:37:30] it's a very good question. I, I think the first thing is you have to acknowledge you're vulnerable to it.
And I, and I don't think anybody is bomb proof. And you might think you are, but if you expose yourself to a situation where climate change has completely ruined the possibilities of getting through the next season for a village, and the maize bins are half empty, and the children you see around you will not have enough food to get through, you, you have to understand this is not a situation that you're going to [00:38:00] be invulnerable to, that you're going to simply shrug off and say, well, too bad.
And I think-- so first of all, accepting and knowing how you're going to respond to situations of acute environmental stress and what they do. And even what they do to scientists, people who've given their lives to studying a particular species and it's on the edge and then they see the last one.
I know people who've done that and seen that, that lifetime of study go with the last living known [00:38:30] example of that species. So I think we have to first of all be realistic and it's a real thing And therefore if you want to do this for the long haul, I'm 70 now, and when we began A Rocha-- how long it took for people to get any attention to the issue of slavery, you know, in a real and legislated manner, was around 50 years. So we knew we were in for a long haul.
Therefore, you have to plan your survival strategies. And I often ask fellow professionals how they do that. [00:39:00] You also realize you're-- this is not you as a lone hero or an individual that's dealing with this. This is the calling of the people of God. And we support each other in doing all of that, as with all grief. It's not something anybody individually should be taking on.
And I would say, and I've talked about this a lot with friends of mine and others who don't themselves have a Christian faith, I think it's particularly hard if you feel the fate of the planet is on your shoulders And many of the younger [00:39:30] people in Europe who are deeply secular, who have not realized there's any possibility of knowing a loving God, they really feel it's down to them to save the earth.
And we know the world has a savior. We have no clue what that salvation will look like, but we are waiting for the new creation in this season of groaning, and the story is not over. And it's that hope which which carries us forward, and we draw on that. So renewing the depths of your well of life in Christ, as the [00:40:00] people of God together, keeps you going.
And we've often been at the foot of the wall with, with very difficult situations around the world where corruption or sheer greed is, is causing huge havoc. And it's been a matter, you can only, to use the biblical term, roll over to God in prayer, and, and leave it with Him, because it's His world that we were singing and thinking about, it's not our world. And we have a Savior and it's not us.
Lee
If you're open to [00:40:30] sharing, what's that-- the sort of experience that you've had over decades in of, of learning to deal with, um, that sort of anxiety, grief, um, how has that informed this new season of grief you've had to deal with, with the passing of Miranda?
Peter
Yeah. It's a, it's a big question.
I think what personal grief has done for me has been to widen my understanding of the vocabulary of suffering. I had no idea [00:41:00] just of the depths of suffering that are possible. But at the same time when you realize that, of course, you realize you're not among the worst.
Uh, even in the hospital when I was recovering and in intensive care, you know, I was, my kids were straight down there to South Africa, all 4 of them. My friends rallied round and organized who would come down and be with me. You know, I've been immensely supported. I've been probably one of the most privileged people on earth who goes through these kind of things.
And there are many, many [00:41:30] people who have-- uh, I've worked in accident hospital actually in Birmingham. And, and I, there are many, many people who've had far, far worse to deal with. So I wouldn't say it's anything new. I, I, I suppose I just feel more, feel more deeply how the very ordinary fact of being human can entail depths of, uh, distress that, of which one is unaware.
Jo
I was going to say that, um, nature can be a source of grief, um, at the moment particularly, but it can [00:42:00] also be the source of immense healing. And in the early, early days, um, after the accident, Dad was very disciplined in getting out for 2 walks a day. And it was, um, terribly bleak at first. It was deepest winter, very, one of the most, um, bleak and unattractive British winters, and we do some really good ones.
But, um, against the odds, like, everything looks dead and slimy and grey, and it starts coming back. You know, the twigs start [00:42:30] developing green buds, and things come back, and the warmth comes back, and you see creatures again. We did, all of us, experience a lot of healing from being outside, basically, and seeing the world turning and doing its thing and, and God's craftsmanship over every tiny detail.
And you can't feel that He's, He's abandoned the ship in light of all that evidence that, that He's invested in, in this [00:43:00] glorious creation of His.
Lee
So your last chapter, you turn, you turn eschatological on us in this last chapter, which is a, a lovely, uh, move at the end, and the chapter entitled 'The Forever Feast.'
And you, you point to one of my favorite texts, Isaiah 25.
And for those of you who don't remember Isaiah 25, this is, uh... I, I wonder if, um, Tolkien got the last of his, uh, Lord of the Rings trilogy from Isaiah 25 because it ends, if you [00:43:30] remember, with a great feast, uh, with the king, which is Isaiah 25. And it's this beautiful passage in which the prophet foresees the coming day of the Lord, in which there will be a great feast with everyone gathered around the great God of creation.
And it says there will be an abundance of, of wine, and an abundance, I tell my students, in the next part it says it'll be an abundance of high saturated fat foods, you know, and um, bone marrow, we don't do bone marrow, but you know, high saturated fat foods.
Peter
We [00:44:00] do bone marrow.
Lee
Peter
You need a special spoon with a very long handle.
Lee
Jo
When he says "we," that's not me and him, I don't do bone marrow.
Peter
Lee
Yeah, you British do lots of weird things.
Peter
No, no, that's not a British thing, that's more of a Swiss thing. Ossobuco. Anyway, whatever, that kind of thing.
Jo
Yeah, all Swiss people eat bone marrow.
Peter
There we go again, stereotyping.
Lee
Peter
Lee
Lots of wine, high saturated fat food, and then, as if you didn't get the point, it says, and lots of wine, again. And, uh, [00:44:30] it's this beautiful picture of, uh, this gathering at a feast, as sort of what the consummation of all things is about, right? Which is what your book's about, this gathering at the table, welcoming, hospitality, vulnerability, all of us gathered together in this beautiful act of materiality.
Which I think is a beautiful place of where the work of A Rocha comes together with this notion of hospitality, is the material, the beautiful materiality of it all, right? But reflecting upon that passage as we kind of get to the end of our [00:45:00] time together tonight, what does that evoke for you? What do you hope for and what do you long for and what are signs of hope towards that great vision of Isaiah 25?
Maybe Jo first.
Jo
There's something, um, about the now, where the kingdom has come but not in full, where you know for every, every good meal that hunger will return, and for every well-fed person there's someone who is going to not be able to sleep because their stomach is like caving in on [00:45:30] itself. And for everyone who is around a family table like the Christmas adverts on TV, there's someone who's sitting on their own, just distracting themselves with a TV show.
And so for me, that picture is, like, the deepest needs of all of us, and all of creation, met in a way that is sustainable and will go on. There's no fear of it ever running out, and there's no fear of separation from, from God or the creation or the food or each other.
[00:46:00] I, I've thought so much about heaven since losing my mum, and um, I am so hopeful for it. Yeah, it's gonna-- and you get glimpses now, those of us who live in, in enormous abundance, I think we're quite close to it sometimes. I really sometimes feel like the, the veil is thin, and the Lord's presence with us.
It's, it's not gonna be, for some of us, all that different, I don't think. Just the fear of it being whipped away will be gone. [00:46:30]
Peter
Yeah, I, I don't really want to add to that. That's what I feel too.
Lee
Well, we're grateful for your time with us tonight, and grateful for your beautiful new book, grateful for your beautiful decades of good work in the world, and, uh, we thank you.
Please show your thanks for Jo Swinney and Peter Harris.[00:47:00]
You've been listening to No Small Endeavor and our interview with Peter Harris and Jo Swinney, discussing Jo's book, A Place at the Table: Faith, Hope, and Hospitality.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of Lilly Endowment Incorporated, a [00:47:30] private philanthropic foundation supporting the causes of community development, education, and religion. And the support of the John Templeton Foundation, whose vision is to become a global catalyst for discoveries that contribute to human flourishing.
Our thanks to all the stellar team that makes this show possible: Christie Bragg, Jakob Lewis, Sophie Byard, Tom Anderson, Kate Hays, Mary Eveleen Brown, Cariad [00:48:00] Harmon, Jason Sheesley, Ellis Osburn, and Tim Lauer.
Thanks for listening, and let's keep exploring what it means to live a good life together.
No Small Endeavor is a production of PRX, Tokens Media, LLC, and Great Feeling Studios.