Let's talk about food: EAT WITH JOY

 No, let's not talk about food.

Not if food means a dreary presentation about weight control or pesticides or glycemic indexes or, God help us, "nutrients."

But wait... what if food brings to mind generosity, friendship, hospitality, pleasure, healing, creativity, gratitude--JOY?

That's how Rachel Marie Stone has learned to think about food, after several years of seeing food as the enemy. Now, by contrast, Rachel believes that "God made eating sustaining, delicious and pleasurable because God is all those things and more. When young students begin at yeshivot," she writes, "they are given a dab of honey on squares of wax paper--and admonished: 'Never. Forget. What. God. Tastes. Like.'" Her book, Eat with Joy, might change the way you think about food too.

There is no textbook for the conversations about food we'll be having at St. Barnabas for three Sundays beginning September 22, but if Rachel's approach interests you, you may want to buy (paperback or Kindle download) or borrow (the Glen Ellyn library has a copy) Eat with Joy and read at least the introduction and chapter 1 before the 22nd.

I interviewed Rachel for Christianity Today when her book came out last spring. You can read the interview, "Happy Meals," here.

And definitely read Ellen Painter Dollar's delightful review of Eat with Joy, which begins:

It is fitting that I’m writing this review of Rachel Stone’s new book Eat with Joy (InterVarsity Press 2013) while eating lunch at a local French café—an establishment that embodies why Rachel insists on seeing an authentically made French baguette as a gift to be enjoyed, white flour and all, in her generous, thoughtful, creative, challenging, God-centered vision of what food is, and can and ought to become.

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This is part of a series of short posts especially for people who attend St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, IL, where I'll be leading conversations about food on September 22, September 29, and October 6. I'll post about food every weekday between September 16 and October 4.