Local author Donna Sinclair launches new book

Gulliver’s Books
News Release

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Making, enjoying, sharing and the communion of bread is a healing, spiritual act according to the author of a new book in the Spirituality of ..Series by Northstone April 2007.

In The Spirituality of Bread, Donna Sinclair stimulates our senses, stirs memories and brings pleasure by sharing heartwarming stories, recipes, and ideas about precious loaves. Beautifully illustrated, this book is truly about bread – why we make it, how we make it, what it has to teach us.

Sinclair feels enjoying bread is a spiritual act and offers four thoughts to savour:

1. Bread offers connection – Through bread, Demeter, the goddess of grain, bound herself to her daughter; Jesus connected with his friends; and we connect with our families. People of every culture are tied together by the breads they bake. Bread helps us remember who we are and whom we love.

2. Bread gives us calm – It is the opposite of fast food. You cannot make bread in ten minutes and the slow work of kneading and shaping and meditating heals our over-scheduled lives.

3. Bread demands peace – You cannot grow grain in a battlefield. It also demands justice; cheap bread that depends on the loss of the family farm is too bitter to eat.

4. Bread rises up out of the past into our fractured postmodern age – When we question all our assumptions and struggle to find a reason for existence, the making of bread gives meaning. There is no rational explanation for this – the healing power of making bread has nothing to do with the mind and everything to do with the wisdom of the hands.

Sinclair states that, “Bread carries many messages: I love you, welcome home, be well, be strong, and – oh yes, remember me.” Sinclair muses about how her father made wine “to mark every celebration and turn every dinner into a feast… It tasted like Northern Ontario, like my father’s garden, like home.”

No wonder Jesus shared bread and wine with his friends. With this elemental pairing, he wanted them to remember him.”

Donna Sinclair, a journalist for more than 30 years, is an award-winning writer who has traveled widely in Canada, Africa, Central America, Britain and Eastern Europe. She is the author of The Spirituality of Gardening, A Woman’s Book of Days, A Woman’s Book of Days 2, and numerous other titles. Donna lives with her husband, Jim, in North Bay, Ontario.

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