Bread And Fire

Prayers, responses, liturgies, songs, poems, reflections, meditations, sermons and stories, covering the weeks from Easter Day to Trinity Sunday, including Ascension Day, Pentecost, Saints' days, Rogation days, environmental days and many more.

“By turns funny, tragic, astute, and enlightening, [Dreams of Bread and Fire] is an engrossing coming-of-age tale.” —Library Journal, starred review Half Jewish, half Armenian Ani is desperately in love with a New England boy with a trust fund as big as his appetites, and the farthest thing possible from the Old World accents and superstitions that filled her childhood home. But after leaving for a year in Paris, she receives a letter from him ending their relationship. Embarking on a series of romantic misadventures, Ani soon reconnects with a childhood friend. Elusive and intriguing, Van Ardavanian is preoccupied with the Armenian heritage they share and provides Ani with a new connection to her identity—even as she begins to suspect that he has a secret, and dangerous, identity himself. The dark shadows of history surrounding Van propel Ani into a profound and passionate series of journeys: a quest for a long-dead father, a search for the clues of a nearly forgotten genocide, and a love threatened by a quietly gathering storm of murder and retribution. “Kricorian does for young women what James Joyce did for middle-aged men: She allows us to scramble safely amid the debris of new love, rejection, sex and identity.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review

Bread and Fire is about the everyday lives of Jewish women and the struggles and aspirations, failings and triumphs of their spiritual endeavors. The women whose writings appear in this book span a wide range of ages, backgrounds, perspectives and professions. In her own way, each one reveals God as an anchoring force in her life. Readers will find themselves laughing, crying and gaining reassurance and strength as they come face-to-face with these women women just like them who are moving forward in the ancient quest to find God in the everyday.

A compact and useful guide for Jewish brides and grooms about to embark on the building of a new home.

Winner of the Quebec Writers' Federation Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction Beena and Sadhana are sisters who share a bond that could only have been shaped by the most unusual of childhoods — and by shared tragedy. Orphaned as teenagers, they have grown up under the exasperated watch of their Sikh uncle, who runs a bagel shop in Montreal's Hasidic community of Mile End. Together, they try to make sense of the rich, confusing brew of values, rituals, and beliefs that form their inheritance. Yet as they grow towards adulthood, their paths begin to diverge. Beena catches the attention of one of the "bagel boys" and finds herself pregnant at sixteen, while Sadhana drives herself to perfectionism and anorexia. When we first meet the adult Beena, she is grappling with a fresh grief: Sadhana has died suddenly and strangely, her body lying undiscovered for a week before anyone realizes what has happened. Beena is left with a burden of guilt and an unsettled feeling about the circumstances of her sister's death, which she sets about to uncover. Her search stirs memories and opens wounds, threatening to undo the safe, orderly existence she has painstakingly created for herself and her son. Saleema Nawaz's characters compel us, intrigue us, and delight us with their raw, complicated humanity, and her sentences sing in the gorgeous cadences of a writer who chooses every word with the utmost care. Heralded across Canada for the power and promise of her debut collection, Mother Superior, Nawaz proves with Bone and Bread that she is one of our most talented and unique storytellers.

In response to Pastor John MacArthur's call for a "collective war," against charismatics, Dr. Michael Brown has called for unity in Jesus based on a return to the truth of the Scriptures in the fullness of the Spirit. As a charismatic biblical scholar and theologian, Dr. Brown responds to Pastor MacArthur's charges, making a biblical case for the continuation of the New Testament gifts of the Spirit and demonstrating the unique contribution to missions, theology, and worship made by the charismatic Church worldwide. He calls for an appreciation of the unique strengths and weaknesses of both cessationists and charismatics, inviting readers to experience God afresh, and he demonstrates how charismatic leaders have been addressing abuses within their own movement for decades. Dr. Brown speaks on behalf of millions who are not adequately trained to express in writing their own encounters with the supernatural power of God. - David Ravenhill I thank God for this biblically-robust, pastorally-sensitive, historicallyinformed, and graciously-articulated account of the work of the Holy Spirit in the church of Jesus Christ. - Sam Storms Dr. Michael Brown's Authentic Fire puts the brakes on John MacArthur's crusade against charismatics with irrefutable logic, extraordinary insight, Christ-like graciousness, and an undisputable handling of Scripture. - Frank Viola Michael Brown writes with clarity and courtesy as he confronts one of the most explosive issues among all those who uphold the Bible as the plumb line of truth. - David Shibley

An exuberant and magical tale of an Armenian woman that encompasses her vivid life experiences through comic interactions and battles that she wages in her new country--with a domineering mother in-law, a tradition-bound husband, Americanized children, and the man she secretly loves.