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For all who inhabit a body and wonder about its place in the universe.
In Loving What Doesn’t Last: An Adoration of the Body, Christina Kukuk reminds us that what matters most are things don’t last forever. We find faith, hope, and love in and the string of endings and beginnings that make a life: a mother who plants an orchard in her son’s memory, a girl’s struggle with food scarcity, an adolescent awakening to infatuation at summer camp, and a woman waiting hours for her lover’s recovery on a hospital’s transplant floor. In every fleeting moment from the first pangs of birth to our last breath, God is in all of it.
“Down and occasionally dirty, poetic and stirring, very funny, very painful, and very poignant, Loving What Doesn’t Last plunges us into the odd ecstasy of a faith attached unreservedly to human flesh, for better, for worse, for glory.”
—Mary Luti, United Church of Christ pastor, professor of Christian history and worship (retired), Andover Newton Theological School, now Andover Newton Seminary at Yale
“Though the Christian faith has at its center an embodied Christ, it hardly has a history of adoring the body. In this gorgeously written, compassionate, and refreshingly honest book, Christina Kukuk has done a great deal to redeem that historical lack.”
—Debbie Blue, author of Sensual Orthodoxy and Consider the Birds: A Provocative Guide to the Birds of the Bible
“These searching reflections of a pastor opening herself to the vulnerability of others and to her own vulnerability by being present to the flesh deepen our understanding of what it means to say, ‘God with us, God among us.’”
—Mary Lane Potter, author of A Woman of Salt
“Christina Kukuk’s book is a guide to helping us find ways to be more embodied in our faith lives, not just for our own sakes but for the body of humankind as well. Poignant and thoughtful, this is a book to help guide and accompany the reader.”
—Kaya Oakes, author of The Defiant Middle
“This book is medically accurate, deeply thought-provoking, and wonderfully entertaining. I’ll be recommending it to my medical students and my patients.”
—Michael P. Schaefer, MD, Division Chief, PMR, Department of Orthopaedics, University Hospitals Cleveland, Associate Professor of Orthopedics, Case Western Reserve University