God Gardened East: A Gardener's Meditation on the Dynamics of Genesis

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 ones 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 Ruprechts words are both warming and warning reminding us that there are no easy answers in this all-too-human life of suffering violence and misunderstanding on both personal and global levels. --Lori Anne Ferrell Claremont Graduate University In God Gardened East Ruprecht has achieved a rare feat--a successful combination of extraordinary scholarly originality and insight with an intense personal passion and acute dramatic sensibility. His love for the material--literary and organic--makes him an ideal guide over landscapes from Israel to Greece to downtown Atlanta. At one and the same time he encourages you to rush out of your library and into your garden . . . and vice versa. --Mike Lippman Assistant Professor of Classical Studies at Rollins College Cultivating a journey of land people and religion Ruprecht reveals new insights about interfaith relations global politics and hope after 9/11. In his scholarly hand the stories of the monotheisms founding from Adam through Abraham come alive fertilized by his extensive knowledge of the Greek world biblical traditions and Western philosophy. Each chapter weaves insights and questions harvested from Ruprechts backyard garden with these Genesis stories of human conflict transition and quests for meaning in community. The texts rich images of gardens generations and God keep the reader enthralled. --Barbara Patterson Emory University Ruprechts remarkable book combines garden journal travelogue treatise and commentary in a sustained meditation on freedom faith politics and place. God Gardened East challenges its readers to dig into the rich soil of many traditions--Hebraic Christian Islamic and Greek--moving from one to many to the infinite. A gardener knows the cadences of light and dark dry and wet the march of seasons and the transformation of death into life. Ruprecht shows us that by growing the soil of our own gardens we nurture also the patience attention and humility in which dialogue can take root across the boundaries of nation and religion. --Anathea Po