Broken Bread

God Cares More About How You Eat than What You Eat Christians should have their heads on straight about food—but too often our eating is complicated by burdens and rules, by diets and dependencies. So how can we keep a spiritually healthy view of what we eat? Should Christians stop eating white sugar? Does the Bible ask us to go paleo? Most questions about food aren’t really about nutrition but about how we understand God. In Broken Bread, Christian Book Award–winner Tilly Dillehay challenges us to abandon the concept of good and bad foods and instead offers a way to… celebrate food without obsession make healthy choices without bondage to rules feed our families without feeling frazzled find satisfaction without using food as an emotional crutch This isn’t another diet book. You won’t find any system or plan for eating but rather a joyful call to develop a vision of Christ that informs the way you eat. Take delight in food again, and discover a feast for today that whispers of the eternal feast to come.

The author of this stirring book shows how we (like bread) are consumed in the gift of ourselves to our fellow men and women. We die in order to rise to new life.

This is a book made up of fragments. The Master once said “Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost.” It may be that victuals will be found here that may feed those who cannot sit down to a meal. Many of the articles have appeared in Joyful News already, but, perhaps, are none the worse for that. We send out this little book in the hope that both crust and crumb will be eaten!

The Holy Eucharist is the Church's most precious treasure, the source and summit of her worship and life. The Church is built upon and around the Eucharist. In this book, a renowned spiritual writer and Carmelite priest shows how receiving the Lord in the Eucharist has profound consequences, because the Eucharist is not only the great Sacrament that brings about oneness with Christ and with the faithful but also the foundational norm for Christian behavior. Any Christian who wonders how he should act, he writes, will find the answer in the Eucharist. He is called to become like Jesus—bread that is broken"for the life of the world" (Jn 6:51). According to Saint Thomas Aquinas, all the sacraments are directed toward the Eucharist as toward their final purpose. The author explains that the Church must therefore guard this precious gift. He correctly challenges the faithful to approach the Eucharist with great reverence and a clear conscience so as not to receive the Lord unworthily but to become his sacrificing and serving people.

"Lynne Anderson's portraits of recent immigrant families capture a crucial truth about how real food connects us to our culture, our memories, and to one another. This is an important book." —Alice Waters, Chez Panisse Restaurant "Everyone loves talking about food. In this remarkable book, Lynne Anderson lets recent immigrants to America speak in their own words about the foods they most loved from their homelands. Her cook-storytellers use recipes for cherished foods as a way to recall childhood memories, the events that caused them to emigrate, and their efforts to assimilate—the bitter along with the sweet. For a delicious introduction to the immigrant experience in America, I can't think of a better starting point than Breaking Bread." —Marion Nestle, author of What to Eat and Food Politics "Good ol' home cooking that's not chicken and apple pie. A feast of stories and flavors." Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club and the Bone Setter's Daughter "What's so lovely to me about this book is hearing the actual voices of the people and the unpredictable way their conversations about food capture life issues and truths that extend far beyond the kitchen. More than ever it seems critical to be finding and celebrating what we have in common and the connections between people."—Nikki Silva, co-author of Hidden Kitchens: Stories, Recipes, and More from NPR's The Kitchen Sisters "Breaking Bread throws open a delightful window on the immigrant kitchen in America, capturing the voices, traditions and--yes!--recipes of a couple dozen different food cultures in a single volume." —Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food "In 25 deeply moving first-person accounts from a wide range of immigrant families, each one sensitively introduced by the author, Lynne Anderson takes us straight to the heart of our common humanity. Sharing food and stories are what bind us all across differences in time, space culture, gender and identity. Apart from being an important cultural document, Breaking Bread is a rich, wisdom-packed experience for the scholar, for the casual reader and for all cooks who demand more than just recipes."—Niloufer Ichaporia King, author of My Bombay Kitchen

John Wright Follette was a gifted Bible teacher and author, who had both perspective and spiritual depth in his interpretation of the Word. He was an illuminated spirit in the field of spiritual reality, and had an unusual ability to impart "spirit and life" into those who sat under his ministry. A gifted Huguenot poet, and deeply spiritual teacher, he received the Baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1913 while a student at a Bible School in Rochester, New York. This book, Broken Bread, captures some of his deep passion in its collection of twenty of his sermons and some of his poems. Full of sound scriptural exegesis and practical insight, Follette instructs and entertains, engaging both the reader's heart and mind. His zeal for God is infectious, and will quickly spread to any reader of Broken Bread. Leonard Ravenhill recommended this book as one of the 'must reads' for every Christian.

The return of Christian social service to the centre of British political life through the emergence of the foodbank movement has elicited a range of ecclesial responses. However, in their urgency and brevity these Church responses fail to systematically integrate political critique and social analysis, nor do they undertake a sustained integration of the recent gains in political theology with the realities of our current ‘mixed economy of welfare’. Charles Pemberton draws on interviews with foodbank users and volunteers to defend and advance a Christian vision of welfare beyond emergency food provision. He suggests that behind the day-to-day struggles of those using foodbanks there are wider much concerns about loneliness, marginalisation and the wholesale fragmentation of society.

Nearly 70 renowned New England writers gather round the table to talk food and how it sustains us—mind, body, and soul A collection of essays by top literary talents and food writers, Breaking Bread celebrates local foods, family, and community, while exploring how what’s on our plates engages with what’s off: grief, pleasure, love, ethics, race, and class. Here, you’ll find Lily King on chocolate chip cookies, Richard Russo on beans, Jennifer Finney Boylan on homemade pizza, Susan Minot on the non-food food of her youth, and Richard Ford on why food doesn’t much interest him. Nancy Harmon Jenkins talks scallops, and Sandy Oliver the pleasures of being a locavore. Other essays address a beloved childhood food from Iran, the horror of starving in a prison camp, the urge to bake pot brownies for an ill friend, and the pleasure of buying a prized chocolate egg for a child. Profits from this collection will benefit Blue Angel, a nonprofit combating food insecurity by delivering healthy food from local farmers to those in need.