Soil and Sacrament: A Spiritual Memoir of Food and Faith

Part spiritual quest, part agricultural travelogue, this moving and profound exploration of the joy and solace found in returning to the garden is inspiring and beautiful.

A POWERFUL, PERSONAL STORY OF HOW GROWING AND SHARING FOOD PULLS US CLOSER TO GOD

Like many seekers of the authentic life, Fred Bahnson sought answers to big questions like What does it mean to follow God? and How should I live my life? But after divinity school at Duke, Bahnson began to find answers not in a pulpit, but at the handle of a plow. After his agrarian conversion, Bahnson started a faith-based community garden in rural North Carolina to help its members grow real food and to feed his own spiritual hunger.

Soil and Sacrament tells the story of how Bahnson and people of faith all over America are re-rooting themselves in the land, reconnecting with their food and each other, and praying with their very lives the prayer of the early Christian monks: “We beg you, make us truly alive.” Through his journeys to four different faith communities—Catholic, Protestant, Pentecostal, and Jewish—Bahnson explores the con­nections between spiritual nourishment and the way we feed our bodies with the sensitivity, personal knowledge, and insight shared by Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben.

Soil and Sacrament is a book about communion in its deepest sense—an inspiring and joyful meditation on what grows above the earth, beneath it, and inside each one of us.

• Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating
• Making Peace with the Land: God's Call to Reconcile with Creation (Resources for Reconciliation)
• The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays of Wendell Berry
• Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating
• Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading Of The Bible
• We Will Feast: Rethinking Dinner, Worship, and the Community of God
• The Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection (Modern Library Food)
• A Field Guide to Nature as Spiritual Practice
• Nature as Spiritual Practice
• Taste and See: Discovering God among Butchers, Bakers, and Fresh Food Makers