Bless This Food: Ancient and Contemporary Graces from Around the World

By Adrian Butash

Book Overview

All religious traditions and world cultures have some form of celebrating food and offering thanks. This book gathers the best of those prayers in an elegant volume.Grace before meals is the prayer said most often in homes around the world, an act of worship common to every known society. The universal experience of sharing food fundamentally connects people to one another, to nature, and to the infinite. Expressing thanks for food represents a wonderful tradition that acknowledges bounty and our daily sustenance as gifts from the divine. 'Bless This Food' presents 160 timeless mealtime blessings in an easy-to-use format. The eloquent prayers and poems have been carefully selected from the world's major religions, ancient traditions, and the work of great poets and thinkers, with sources ranging from Shakespeare to Starhawk, Tecumseh to the Tamil tradition, the North American plains to Pakistan. Each grace is introduced with cultural context and details about its history and evolution. Also included are two prayers in American Sign Language and the short prayer "bless this food" in nineteen languages. The result is a unique kind of soul food and a recipe for gratitude at any mealtime gathering.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1608682145
• ISBN13: 9781608682140
• Release Date: August 2013
• Publisher: New World Library
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.9" x 7.2"

Customer Reviews

bless this food

find a place for this book on your table. when you open it , there will be no disapointments. the challenge will be to find the blessing for that moment.

Even if you don't have a formal religion in your life

This is a wonderful way to be greatful for all that we have. So many differrent types of blessings. We prefer using the word blessing rather than grace but either way you slice it, very nice compilation.

Lovely blessings & meditations from many cultures

This is a unique book of blessings, graces, and meditations on food and thanksgiving. There are several traditional christian ones, but also buddhist, native american (several), african, and more. I really like the fact that the author has included a brief paragraph about the author of the grace, the culture, or the history surrounding it. I have marked several "favorites" & I plan to read one at our dinner each evening with the kids. We are Unitarian Universalists, and we appreciate the wealth and diversity of many religious and cultural traditions. This book is perfect for sharing a glimpse into thankfulness as expressed all over the world.

Bless this Book and the Food for Thought+

This is an excellent little prayer book on various ancient and modern graces.It's not just a European christian benedictory ,but from differnet cultures ,around the world.In our modern world,we have really lost the religious experience of eating.With our fast food society all around us,the companionship of 'breaking bread' with the family and friends,is a rare sacred event indeed thesedays.I've never seen anyone pray before eating their burger combo.We have gotten away from the knowledge of our food.Where is it grown? How is it grown? What nutrients does it contain? We just take it for granted everyday.We are what we eat.Natural foods are healthy and connect us to Nature,the Infinite.Our Earth can produce a bounty of food gifts.The Wise give thanks for fair weather and equal balance of sunshine and the rain.Both the communists and capitalists have tried to fetter the forces of Nature,for their various planned quotas or profit margins.Yet,Nature is still an awesome power that operates freely ,from human machinations of restraint.This book has so many worthwhile eloquent blessings.These mahlzeit evocations all have some basic common beliefs.That of heavenly gratitude for our daily nourishment,the communion with earthly nature,and the spiritual connection with the righteous. For a small alimentary breviary,it has a lot to digest and to nourish one's soul.

Bless This Food

When I think about food blessings, I tend to think of Christian graces said before meals. So when I came upon Bless This Food, I rather expected a book filled with traditional Christian graces. That would have been somewhat interesting but not really all functional for anyone who isn't Christian. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised that Bless This Food actually only contained a handful of Christian graces. Inside this book, the prayers and blessings represented many different cultures, religions, and beliefs systems, both contemporary and from the very distant past. Moreover, not only had the author included some very intriguing pieces but each entry included a little blurb stating the history and explaining a little about the cultural reference of the work. Well done.