God Gardened East [Hardcover]

Working within two popular genres, gardening books and biblical meditations, God Gardened East offers a meditation on the first twenty-five chapters of Genesis, emphasizing the tropes of cultivation, wandering, and the east. Reconceived in a post-9/11 environment, Ruprecht wrestles with difficult questions about the violent legacy of monotheism and traces some of this violence back to the foundational story of Abraham and his dislocation from his homeland. God Gardened East is an essay in the tradition of?Thoreau and Wendell Berry.?It is about important things, such as?empire, the responsibilities of a citizen, the joys of getting one's knees?dirty in the soil, and the Book of Genesis.?Reading Ruprecht?is like taking a walk with?a wise friend.?He appears to meander, and wears his considerable learning lightly, but he is in fact moving artfully?from?the personal to the public, from the conflicted present to the conflicted past, and back again. --Jeffrey Stout, Princeton University, author of Democracy and Tradition Going forward in the Middle East is never easy for Americans. Too many conflicts mired in too much history seem to baffle even the most sophisticated and good-willed agents of change. No better place for a new beginning exists than the beginning of the Hebrew Bible and its book of beginnings, Genesis. Lou Ruprecht takes?his readers on a journey east that also is a journey into our collective future,?focusing at once?on?the?obstinacy of violence but also its limits. This book is a penetrating analysis and a must read for all who look to Abraham as a signpost of hope. --Bruce B. Lawrence, Duke University God Gardened East?is real nourishment for souls hungering for new ways to think about?a ravishing, and often frightening, world.?Full of?biblical and theological insight,?as humane as they are sharply intelligent, Ruprecht's?words?are both?warming and warning, reminding us that there are no easy answers in this all-too-human life of suffering, lS¦