The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting toward God - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1608995925 ISBN 13: 9781608995929

Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2010

Synopsis

You are invited to a feast for the senses and the spirit! Thirty-four adventurous writers open their kitchens, their recipe files, and their hearts to illustrate the many unexpected ways that food draws us closer to god, to community, and to creation. All bring a keen eye and palate to the larger questions of the role of food-both its presence and its absence-in the life of our bodies and spirits. Their essays take us to a canadian wheat farm, a backyard tomato garden in cincinnati, an organic farm in maine; into a kosher kitchen, a line of hurricane katrina survivors as they wait to be fed, a church basement for a thirty-hour fast; inside the translucent layers of an onion that transport us to a meditation on heaven, to a church potluck, and to many other places and ways we can experience sacramental eating. In a time of great interest and equal confusion over the place of food in our lives, this rich collection, which includes personal recipes, will delight the senses, feed the spirit, enlarge our understanding, and deepen our ability to & eat and drink to the glory of god. &

featuring the writings of
robert farrar capon, wendell berry, lauren winner, luci shaw, andre dubus, jeanne murray walker, brian volck, and many others,
including original recipies!

About this title

About the Author:

LESLIE LEYLAND FIELDS is a writer, national speaker, workshop leader and professional editor who lives on Kodiak Island, Alaska in the winter and Harvester Island in the summer, where she works in commercial salmon fishing with her family. (Follow her weekly blogs from these islands at leslieleylandfields.com). She has written/edited 9 nonfiction books of memoir and essays on a variety of subjects: the spirituality of food, wilderness, forgiveness, commercial fishing, and parenting. Her forthcoming book is "Forgiving Our Fathers and Mothers" (Jan. 2014, Thomas Nelson).
Leslie is also a contributing editor to Christianity Today magazine and writes for Books and Culture and other journals. She loves to travel, and spent several years trekking around the world. She still travels often, leaving Kodiak to speak at conferences, churches, retreats, and universities around the country. In September 2013, she is beginning a new venture, the Harvester Island Wilderness Workshop at her remote fish camp island off Kodiak Island. (leslieleylandfields.com/p/harvester-island.html) 

She holds three graduate degrees in Creative Nonfiction, English and Journalism, and has taught for many years in both undergraduate and graduate programs in Oregon, Alaska and Washington and now continues to teach through college visits, writer-in-residencies, frequent radio appearances, speaking, and her professional writing business, The Northern Pen. 

Leslie and her husband Duncan have 6 children, a daughter and 5 sons, all of whom work in salmon fishing every summer. She can be reached at leslieleylandfields@gmail.com

Review:

* 1 of 10 Best Books of 2010: Image Journal* 1 of 4 Best Books of 2010: Hearts and Minds Books* Best Books of 2010: Her.maneutics           "From the sheen on the belly of a fresh-caught salmon to the reassuring heft of homemade bread straight from the oven, this new collection by thirty-four outstanding writers opens by celebrating a sheer joy of eating, then ushers us into the realm of holy sacrament. The Spirit of Food, edited by Leslie Leyland Fields, is not only rich in wisdom gained the hard way--through the gathering, growing, and preparing of what winds up on our multifarious tables--but shines with luminous gratitude at the abundance graciousness of God."-----Paula Huston, author of Forgiveness: Following Jesus into Radical Loving

"I'm trying to resist the temptation to pun---describing this as a rich feast of essays, or essays one will relish with delight or essays that one should savor, and so forth---but I cant. This collection is a meal for the mind."  ---Mark Galli, Senior Editor, Christianity Today magazine


"This is a gift to the Body of Christ--delicious prose and glistening dishes to assist the necessary recovery of our whole persons. As Saint John Chrysostom proclaims: 'The table is rich-laden; feast royally, all of you! The calf is fatted; let no one go forth hungry! Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness.' Taste and see, indeed."----Scott Cairns, author of The Compass of Affection

About this edition

• Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1608995925
• ISBN 13: 9781608995929
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 286
• Editor: Leslie Leyland Fields