The Life of the Body: Physical Well-Being and Spiritual Formation by Valerie E. Hess
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold address an important and oft not addressed subject–how our bodily life relates to our spiritual formation. The authors explore Christ’s embodied life, how our physical presence and health affects the body of Christ, and how our self-care affects our spiritual growth. There is helpful material on rest, body-image, exercise, and most of all, our diets. Much of the book seemed focused on this and encouraged diets rich in unprocessed foods, those purchased from the perimeter of most grocery stores. There are also chapters on our seasons of life and bodily changes and how our own choices contribute (or not) to the health of our physical world.

Recently I reviewed Rachel Marie Stone’s Eat With Joy. Although Stone’s book did not explore the spiritual formation dimensions of food, I found hers a much better book on the spirituality of food because of her infectious joy. By contrast, while the authors of this book have many good ideas (many of which are similar in content)the book lacked for me the infectious joy that made me want to try these in my own life–it felt more like “you should do these things because they are good for you and position you to love God better.” While I found myself helpfully challenged at various points by this book, I found myself excited about trying the ideas (and even recipes) in the other.

Each chapter concludes with several practical exercises and there is also a guide for small groups in the end. One of the most interesting parts of the book for me was an appendix on “The Bible and the Body.”

View all my reviews