Tangible acts of feasting and celebrating have suffused Lanier Ivester's home all her life. But alongside her love of festivity, she's wrestled with profound losses that have reshaped the landscape--both around her and within her.
These coexisting forces of great grief and great joy come together in a place called the Ruff House, where Ivester's story not only reminds us of the inescapable presence of sorrow, but shows us how to celebrate and anticipate the return of glad and golden hours in the midst of it.
Like Robert Farrar Capon's Supper of the Lamb, this is a book that defies the trappings of a mere cookbook or a collection of craft projects. It's an embodiment of a rich theology of Creation, of what it means to be human when everything is both falling apart and coming back together. Tangible acts of feasting and celebrating have suffused Lanier Ivester's home all her life. But alongside her love of festivity, she's wrestled with profound losses that have reshaped the landscape--both around her and within her.
These coexisting forces of great grief and great joy come together in a place called the Ruff House, where Ivester's story not only reminds us of the inescapable presence of sorrow, but shows us how to celebrate and anticipate the return of glad and golden hours in the midst of it.
Like Robert Farrar Capon's Supper of the Lamb, this is a book that defies the trappings of a mere cookbook or a collection of craft projects. It's an embodiment of a rich theology of Creation, of what it means to be human when everything is both falling apart and coming back together. Lanier Ivester is a homemaker and writer in the beautiful state of Georgia, where she maintains a small farm with her husband, Philip, and an ever-expanding menagerie of cats, dogs, sheep, goats, chickens, ducks, and peacocks. She studied English Literature at the University of Oxford, and her special areas of interest include the intersection of Christianity and art, the sacramental nature of everyday life, and the truth-bearing witness of the imagination. For over a decade she has kept a web journal at lanierivester.com, and her work has also been featured on The Rabbit Room, Art House America, The Gospel Coalition, and The Cultivating Project, among others. She has lectured across the country on topics ranging from the meaning of home to the integration of faith and reason, and in both her writing and her speaking she seeks to honor the holy longings of a homesick world.
