It has been almost three years since the entire global creation care family mourned the loss of A Rocha leaders Chris and Susanna Naylor and Miranda Harris, wife of Peter Harris. But what a beautiful way to bring Miranda’s memory back to life in the pages of A Place at the Table, a new book set to be released by Hodder Faith on 18 October 2022.

Here is the publisher’s description:

Rooted in the story of the Christian environmental conservation charity, A Rocha, and the life of its late co-founder Miranda Harris, A PLACE AT THE TABLE: Faith, Hope and Hospitality (Hodder Faith, Oct. 18, 2022) is a profound reflection on hospitality and the transformative power of community.

Miranda Harris’s tragic death in 2019 sent a shockwave across the globe to those closest to her and the many who found her approach to hospitality and community a life-long inspiration. Her daughter Jo Swinney honors her mother’s dedication to a life of community and fellowship with A PLACE AT THE TABLE—pairing her own words with her mother’s writings and exploring how sharing food is at the heart of a shared life.

Lyrically written and structured around the shape of a meal, A PLACE AT THE TABLE explores the six parts of a meal:
•Hunger—a God-given gift reminding us to seek out what we need to live and experience joy
•Preparation—preparing our houses, ourselves and our food, and doing so with love
•Welcome—the biblical practice of hospitality and how it challenges us to open our hearts and homes to people very different from ourselves
•At the Table—how sharing meals forms relationships and the meaning and significance of community
•The Clean-Up—tending to the messiness of life: inner messes, outer messes, relational messes
•The Forever Feast—God’s promises for tomorrow foreshadowed today and loving God’s people in the waiting

With prayers, biblical examples and stories, and personal reflections A PLACE AT THE TABLE meditates on themes of belonging, loss and community and is an encouraging call to action to make hospitality a part of daily life.

More information and preorder links are here. But before you do that, spend a couple of minutes listening to Jo tell us how she discovered the unfinished manuscript in her Mum’s office:

Thank you, Jo, for helping us all to remember Miranda.

Description below; more information and a trailer here.

We are living in a time of crisis for the planet. Our overuse and misuse of water, energy and food has led to dangerous levels of habitat loss, pollution, soil degradation and ocean acidification. As a result we face the giant issues of climate change, biodiversity loss, disease and poverty.

A Rocha has always been a voice of hope in the environmental space. The Field Notes podcast, hosted by Peter Harris and Bryony Loveless, is an exploration of the ideas, practice and experience making a difference on the ground, through conversations with people who really know what they are talking about – from conservation scientists, explorers and biologists, to artists, entrepreneurs and theologians. They have hopeful stories to tell.

Since that time, Peter has been recovering and moving into a volunteer role at A Rocha. Here he shares some of his thoughts on the tragedy, the healing power of creation, and (he hopes) the eventual return of joy. Thank you for listening, and for continuing to pray for Peter and the other Harris and Naylor family members.. Six months is nothing after an experience such as he is going through.