Take This Bread: A Radical ConversionRandom House Publishing Group, 19. nov 2008 - 320 pages “Mine is a personal story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert.” –Sara Miles Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one winter morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. “I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian,” she writes, “or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut.” But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed. The mysterious sacrament of communion has sustained Miles ever since, in a faith she’d scorned, in work she’d never imagined. In this astonishing story, she tells how the seeds of her conversion were sown, and what her life has been like since she took that bread. A lesbian left-wing journalist who covered revolutions around the world, Miles was not the woman her friends expected to see suddenly praising Jesus. She was certainly not the kind of person the government had in mind to run a “faith-based charity.” Religion for her was not about angels or good behavior or piety; it was about real hunger, real food, and real bodies. Before long, she turned the bread she ate at communion into tons of groceries, piled on the church’s altar to be given away. The first food pantry she established provided hundreds of poor, elderly, sick, deranged, and marginalized people with lifesaving food and a sense of belonging. Within a few years, the loaves had multiplied, and she and the people she served had started nearly a dozen more pantries. Take This Bread is rich with real-life Dickensian characters–church ladies, child abusers, millionaires, schizophrenics, bishops, and thieves–all blown into Miles’s life by the relentless force of her newfound calling. She recounts stories about trudging through the rain in housing projects, wiping the runny nose of a psychotic man, storing a battered woman’s .375 Magnum in a cookie tin. She writes about the economy of hunger and the ugly politics of food; the meaning of prayer and the physicality of faith. Here, in this achingly beautiful, passionate book, is the living communion of Christ. “The most amazing book.” – Anne Lamott |
From inside the book
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... stands in clear relief to the drone of megachurch jin- goism that has so dominated the American cultural landscape in recent years . -National Catholic Reporter " A love song to the feast at the altar and the feast of a food pantry ...
... stands in clear relief to the drone of megachurch jin- goism that has so dominated the American cultural landscape in recent years . -National Catholic Reporter " A love song to the feast at the altar and the feast of a food pantry ...
Page vii
... Standing the Heat 10 14 Chapter 4 Cooking with My Brother 24 Chapter 5 War Years 35 Chapter 6 First Communion 54 Chapter 7 Crossing 65 Chapter 8 Histories 74 Chapter 9 Crossing II 91 Chapter 10 Seeing More 98 Chapter 11 " Good Works ...
... Standing the Heat 10 14 Chapter 4 Cooking with My Brother 24 Chapter 5 War Years 35 Chapter 6 First Communion 54 Chapter 7 Crossing 65 Chapter 8 Histories 74 Chapter 9 Crossing II 91 Chapter 10 Seeing More 98 Chapter 11 " Good Works ...
Page 4
... standing of God's fatherly purpose for them . " For a smart , ambitious girl , becoming a missionary was not just about duty and responding to God's will : It meant adven- ture and escape and , in a strange way , freedom from gender ...
... standing of God's fatherly purpose for them . " For a smart , ambitious girl , becoming a missionary was not just about duty and responding to God's will : It meant adven- ture and escape and , in a strange way , freedom from gender ...
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... stand the " blood " of the Lord's Supper and refused to pretend the grape juice her father poured reverently into little cups was anything but grape juice . " You'll grow up and see , " my grandmother told her . It was inconceivable to ...
... stand the " blood " of the Lord's Supper and refused to pretend the grape juice her father poured reverently into little cups was anything but grape juice . " You'll grow up and see , " my grandmother told her . It was inconceivable to ...
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... stand out . My parents ' atheism proclaimed this world , in its physical beauty and fascinating human complexity , as what mattered . We believed them . My sis- ter , Ellen , loved music and books ; my brother , David , and I learned to ...
... stand out . My parents ' atheism proclaimed this world , in its physical beauty and fascinating human complexity , as what mattered . We believed them . My sis- ter , Ellen , loved music and books ; my brother , David , and I learned to ...
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Common terms and phrases
altar American Anglican Communion asked baptism believe Bible blessing body bread and wine called Central America Christ Christian church communion congregation cook Corpus Christi massacre crazy David deacons Derek Donald door El Salvador Episcopal Episcopalians Eucharist faith feed felt Food Bank food pantry Friday friends Fromberg God's going Gregory of Nyssa Gregory's groceries hands happened healing holy huge hunger hungry Ignacio Martín-Baró Jeff Jesus Katie kids kitchen knew learned listening liturgy lived looked lunch Lynn Martha meal meant Michael mother Nicaragua Nirmala Okay once ory's panettone Paul politics poor Potrero Hill pray prayer priest pupusas religion religious restaurant Rick San Francisco Sandinista sang Sasha share singing smiled someone started Steve strangers Sunday Susan Kellerman talk tell thing thought told took trying volunteers waiting walked wanted week who'd woman words
Popular passages
Page 6 - Waft, waft, ye winds, his story, And you, ye waters, roll, Till, like a sea of glory, It spreads from pole to pole; Till...
Page 3 - From Greenland's icy mountains ; From India's coral strand ; Where Afric's sunny fountains Roll down their golden sand ; From many an ancient river ; From many a palmy plain ; They call us to deliver Their land from error's chain.