Mindful Cook or Violence Hospitality and the Cross

Mindful Cook: Finding Awareness, Simplicity, and Freedom in the Kitchen

Author: Isaac Cronin

"With humor and vitality, Isaac Cronin's words renew our capacity to delight, to be filled with life. Flavorful recipes welcome our hearts and hands to cook and be nourished. Our presence in the kitchen makes all the difference."
—Edward Espe Brown, Zen priest, author of The Tassajara Bread Book and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings

The inner game of cooking—a book of essays, exercises, and recipes designed to help experienced cooks and nov-ices alike find joy and fulfillment in the experience of food preparation.

Many people enjoy cooking; others dread it. This book is for people who want to learn to love it. The Mindful Cook draws on two traditions—meditation, as practiced in East-ern spirituality, and mindfulness, as outlined by Western psychologists and in books like Diane Ackerman's Deep Play—to help experienced cooks and novices alike find a sense of wonder and fulfillment in the essential human act of preparing food. Brief personal essays by food expert Isaac Cronin explore various aspects of food and cooking—history, preparation, the sense of the kitchen as place, balancing flavors, the joy of mistakes—and are followed by exercises that involve both meditation and hands-on ex-perimentation to help make the process of creating food as rewarding as the final result.
        
Beautifully designed and including twenty-nine delicious recipes, The Mindful Cook enables us to nourish the soul, develop the mind, and eat well at the same time.

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Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition

Author: Hans Boersma

The cross is central to understanding Christian theology. But is it possible that our postmodern setting requires a new model of understanding the cross?

Hans Boersma's Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross proposes an understanding of the atonement that is sensitive both to the Christian tradition and to the postmodern critiques of that tradition. His fresh approach draws on the rich resources of the Christian tradition in its portrayal of God's hospitality in Jesus Christ.

Library Journal

Boersma (religious & worldview studies, Trinity Western Univ., British Columbia) here offers a scholarly review and analysis of differing historical and contemporary understandings of God's work of reconciliation in Jesus Christ, particularly with regard to hospitality and violence. He examines and compares three main atonement models: moral influence, penal representation, and Christ as victor. Boersma sees Christ not just as priest and king but also as prophet and teacher and argues that moral influence is an indispensable anchor for the hospitability of God. He asks evangelicals to recover the Catholic emphasis on moral integrity and the visible Church, viewing Christ's death on the cross as "the divine punishment of exile." Further, he sees the Resurrection as God's pure hospitability as illustrated in the parable of the prodigal son. Though well structured and readable, this book is scholarly in tone and would be of interest only to graduate studies faculty, particularly those wrestling with the atonement in its historical and contemporary understanding. Recommended for scholarly theological collections.-George Westerlund, formerly with Providence P.L., Palmyra, VA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.