An Improbable Feast: The surprising dynamic of hospitality at the heart Geoff Boyce, 2010
This book has surprised and delighted me. I approached the book expecting a “good read” about tertiary chaplaincy. Yes, it is certainly that. But it is far more!
What Geoff Boyce has done is to provide considered reflection on recent world history and its impact on the ways the world in general, and Australians in particular, have responded to “the other” in our midst.
Using the context of the tertiary chaplaincy environment in which he works, and illustrations from his experiences within this context, Boyce holds up a mirror to us and shows us the various ways we as Australians and we as Christians have reacted to “the other”. It is not always “pretty”.
Boyce works from the premise of a God who has both created all and who reaches out to all in love. In example after example, and with deep theological underpinnings, he shows how we can “go and do likewise”.
Never, in this book, is there the remotest suggestion that we Christians should be “watering down our faith”. Rather, Boyce has that great capacity to articulate in non religious language that is acceptable in a secular environment, the very essence of acting out the love that was so fully demonstrated in Jesus of Nazareth. In doing so, he names those things which we stand against - the evil, the hopelessness, the despair, the fear in our midst - and demonstrates, through the dynamic of hospitality, the welcoming embrace of God.
The underlying themes in this book have a far wider application than tertiary chaplaincy alone and it is my hope that many Australians, and in particular Australian Christians, will take hold of the visions and possibilities that are set out here.
Reviewed by the Rev. Heather Griffin