The Dine and Disco Auction

From Rev Ruth Scott, Anglican Vicar in Richmond:

Today’s Children in Need auction package is a cornucopia of delight. Not that I’d have the right talents for it. I’ve never progressed beyond Crazy Golf - so called because trying to hit a ball in a straight line on a surface as uneven as an artexed wall is enough to drive you mad. As for the disco ending the day, my children would ban me from the dance floor: Apparently I look like a ‘constipated chicken’ when I’m dancing! Although I’m rubbish at golf and the antithesis of Ginger Rogers, I’d be very much at home enjoying the star-chef-cooked dinner in your pub, Chris, chatting to fun people like David Walliams and Miranda Hart. Great hospitality is hard to beat. I guess that’s why it’s such a central strand in all the major world religions and cultures. ‘Children in Need’ is very much about hospitality because it asks us to make room for, and be generously responsive to disadvantaged children. How we welcome them and others into our space, and are welcomed into theirs says a lot about how at ease we are with ourselves and those we meet. I’ve found the more open I am to what life has to teach, to new ideas and knowledge, to new ways of seeing and being, and to embracing my flaws and failings as well as my giftedness, the more hospitable I can be. Through this journey of personal exploration I’ve come to know and accept myself as a ‘wounded healer’. With others I can offer the right kind of help because I understand what it is to hurt. After a lifetime of worship in the Church of England new experience and a growing need for shared silence drew me into the Quakers. The first meeting I attended sticks in my mind because those who greeted me recognised my desire for quiet without me having to say so. They made sure there was a mug of tea in my hand at the end of worship but didn’t badger me with small talk or questions. So whether it’s through small sensitive gestures, or grand acts of extravagant generosity for Children in Need, let’s make hospitality the order of the day.